Party members: Is there a such thing as too many members?

Is there a such thing as too many members?

While working on a little affiliating I stumbled upon admins who weren't advertising. They liked the number of members they had, and didn't feel they needed anymore. As a advertising crazed admin, that concept feels insane. I'd love to hear more about people's reasons behind this.

What are the benefits of a smaller site?

 

I don;t think there can anytime be too many members. And given that some get busy, enter hiatus, vanish without a word or post only once in a blue moon, the others, the active ones, are always needed.

 

Tbh, to me, the benefit of having a small site is less work to do for the admin. The benefit of a bigger site is a lot of creativity and a bunch of people to play with!

 

On sites that seem big but aren't recruiting often the staff will just get lazy with recruiting I think. They get in a comfort zone and they don't see the need to continue copy/pasting adds all over the place. I've seen big sites go stagnate because recruiting efforts stop and then the staff gets upset when activity drops and gives up because they don't understand why active members are plummeting. People come and go, and at least a few adds here and there will help keep more coming.

 

For a play by post game, depending on the frequency of posting by the players, 3 or so members is ideal and over 5 tends to make it such a long wait between posts (unless a very quick posting rate is agreed to before hand) that people become less engaged and they drop off until you're left with a small number of regular posters or the RP eventually fades away

 

It's easy to get overwhelmed if you are used to smaller groups. I'm one of those people; the majority of the groups I've written in over my ten or so years have generally been less than 15 players, but they were all very active and dedicated. Even with even fewer, so long as everyone is active, it doesn't really bother me. I do prefer to have 5+, but most of the people I write with have multiple characters and write them clearly enough that they don't blur in such a way that you know the same player is writing them.

 

It depends a bit on the kind of site you're trying to run. I think at least.
The upside of a smaller site, with fewer but engaged members is that you can have a real community. Cliques and niches are less likely to happen. On a bigger site, you'll easier find people to play with, but chances are also bigger cliques and niches become a thing. I'm currently a mod on a smaller site, and personally prefer this over the bigger sites where I've been staff. Right now, I can oversee everything. I can get to know all my members more personally. I like that. I've written member of the month pieces before where other staffers had to feed me the information cause I'd never even heard about the member I was writing about...