On 4/21/23 23:38, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 4:05 PM Maxwell G maxwell@gtmx.me wrote:
What evidence shows that the group is ever shrinking? I often see Self Introduction posts and new people interacting with project. I suppose that whether they continue interacting afterwards is another question.
I'm glad you asked. Earlier this week I decided to avoid doing other work by putting together some quick charts of devel list participation. Here's the number of unique participants per month from 2004–2022: https://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/images/devel-participation-monthly.png
And for a less-noisy version, the median of the monthly numbers per year: https://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/images/devel-participation-mean.png
There are a lot of questions left unanswered by this quick analysis, but there's a clear trend in fewer participants over time. In fact, last month had the second smallest participant count (tied with October 2022). Of course, these charts don't show _why_, but they do support the assertion that folks are dropping out of the conversation faster than others are joining.
There are fewer participants than in the early heydays, but to me the overall participation figures look remarkably stable over the last ten years or so. Certainly not any "we fell off the cliff" type fall I expected to see based on the discussion.
- Panu -