“The number of new event attendees, for a given group, who were not familiar with EA beforehand was even more striking. Here none of the largest groups were among the top groups”—too many new group members at once is not good for a group. Have you heard of the Eternal September effect?
too many new group members at once is not good for a group.
That’s plausible, but I’d be very surprised if it was causal of these groups not being amongst the top-performing groups on other metrics.
It’s also important to distinguish between people attending events who aren’t familiar with EA and new members. Given the very small number of members in these groups, relative to event attendees who weren’t previously familiar with EA (e.g. groups of 10-20 people and 350-600 attendee), it’s clear that these aren’t new members the to the group, so much as people attending an event, but mostly not then becoming group members.
Edit: Indeed, if you were worried about the effect of there being lots of new members watering down groups, you’d probably look to the larger groups to see whether they are having reduced impact. In fact, this is largely the opposite of the case.
“The number of new event attendees, for a given group, who were not familiar with EA beforehand was even more striking. Here none of the largest groups were among the top groups”—too many new group members at once is not good for a group. Have you heard of the Eternal September effect?
Yes.
That’s plausible, but I’d be very surprised if it was causal of these groups not being amongst the top-performing groups on other metrics.
It’s also important to distinguish between people attending events who aren’t familiar with EA and new members. Given the very small number of members in these groups, relative to event attendees who weren’t previously familiar with EA (e.g. groups of 10-20 people and 350-600 attendee), it’s clear that these aren’t new members the to the group, so much as people attending an event, but mostly not then becoming group members.
Edit: Indeed, if you were worried about the effect of there being lots of new members watering down groups, you’d probably look to the larger groups to see whether they are having reduced impact. In fact, this is largely the opposite of the case.