Is offsite recruiting a good idea?

[AGA]

I think more new people would make this place more active. People complain about how offsite recruits aren't really invested in the game and just vote the party line, but it's not like forum zombies who post exclusively outside this board are any more invested.

[Blair]

The problem is that virtually all the offsite recruits have no interest in the game and don’t make the game more active- how many of those recruited for February have had any role in the game?

[Blair]

It’s also worth noting that some zombies are swing voters- offsite recruits are not!

[Donerail]

The problem is that virtually all the offsite recruits have no interest in the game and don’t make the game more active- how many of those recruited for February have had any role in the game?

Think there's a cause-effect issue here too — off-site recruiting has historically been a symptom of good activity, not a cause of it. When people are invested in the game and the perceived stakes are high, they'll spend time doing off-site recruiting. Hard to recruit people to vote if activity is low and there's not much happening, and there's little incentive for existing players to put in the work of recruiting either.

[OBD]

Right. Clearly the solution to our inactivity problem is to import even MORE zombie voters! And, unlike forum zombies, who occasionally become active contributors to the game, I haven't seen any cases of an offsite recruit ever leaving zombie status.

[PSOL]

Offsite recruitment improves both Atlas and Atlasia by bringing in new faces and perspectives. Growth is always a good idea as a bottom line here.

[Senator-elect Spark]

Absolutely not. It will bring nothing but zombies into the game. Not the best way to help the game become more active.

[Adam Griffin]

We can't even seem to get our active forum members to be contributors to the game. How do you expect to make that work for people with no interest in the community?

Inflating the rolls only to have 60-70 people fall off every 2 months is not a benefit or accomplishment. The current leaderships and inner/active rings of the various parties and factions in this game need to take involvement, on-site recruitment and generating controversy for the game's sake a bit more seriously.

[Adam Griffin]

I'll also point out that at least some of this is unavoidable/cyclical/etc.

December & August: these seem to be the 2 deadest cycles in the game on an annual basis. The dead of winter/holidays & kids going back to school both have an impact on activity. The game also seems to be younger than it used to be, which means a lot more people are tied to high school/college schedules than in some past cycles.

Another key observation: Atlas as a whole seems to be rather dead right now. Only 7 eligible recruits have joined in the forum in the past 2.5 months. Atlas is also running at its lowest number of both summertime posts and YTD posts since 2015 (the last time we had a big crash).

But a good chunk of this seems to be that a lot of people in charge or who are usually ring-leaders have all but disappeared or just had other responsibilities to look after recently, causing a convergence of inactivity.