On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Pavlo Shevelopavlo.shevelo@gmail.com wrote:
- ... Older age groups are not interesting
anymore in the sense of quantity
Are we really interested in quantity as that? Are we?
In other words, whatever we want or prefer, projects which hope that their main recruiting age is older than 30 -- are dead projects in the long run (i.e., if you are spending time of people in 30s to recruit people in 50s, who will spend time to recruit more people in 50s when those who are now in 30s will be in 70s?).
:) My point is not switch from "15-24" to "50+" age limits, but to object narrowing of limits too much. I mean that combining of several age diapasons could provide "best of two worlds" result.
And "recruiting" process should go as snowball - for example "50s" should hunt for more "50s" (as "30s" seems not mature enough to do that really well :) )
I have to say a lot about this, but I'll try to be concise...
Let's make one more very rough statistical analysis.
It is year 2009 and the age distribution of our contributors is very straight:
15-19: 1000 20-24: 1000 25-29: 1000 30-34: 1000 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1000 70-74: 1000 75-79: 1000
and we have 13.000 contributors.
Now, we are starting with the implementation of the Scenario 1: we want to attract more retired academicians and we don't care for younger and we are very successful in that implementation. So, during the next year we are getting 500 more contributors in the ages groups between 60 and 79.
This is year 2013 and we have the next situation:
15-19: 500 20-24: 1000 25-29: 1000 30-34: 1000 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1500 70-74: 1500 75-79: 1500
and we have 14.000 contributors. This is very good beginning.
And we are continuing with caring with older generations, and not caring for younger... This is the year 2019:
15-19: 250 20-24: 500 25-29: 1000 30-34: 1000 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1500 70-74: 2000 75-79: 2000
and we have 14.250 contributors. Still good, but not as good as it was during the first year.
2023
15-19: 150 20-24: 250 25-29: 500 30-34: 1000 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1500 70-74: 2000 75-79: 2500
= 13.900, which means that we are behind the peak and that number of contributors will be just lower and lower.
OK. Let's try to implement Scenario 2: We want to spread our efforts both on young and old generations.
It is 2013:
15-19: 1250 20-24: 1250 25-29: 1250 30-34: 1000 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1250 70-74: 1250 75-79: 1250
and we have 14.500 contributors.
It is 2019:
15-19: 1500 20-24: 1250 25-29: 1250 30-34: 1250 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1250 70-74: 1500 75-79: 1500
and we have 15.500 contributors. And we may expect slow raising of a number of contributors.
And let we try to implement Scenario 3: We are concentrated just on young generations.
2013:
15-19: 1500 20-24: 1500 25-29: 1500 30-34: 1000 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1000 70-74: 1000 75-79: 1000
= 14.500
2019:
15-19: 1500 20-24: 2000 25-29: 2000 30-34: 1500 35-39: 1000 40-44: 1000 45-49: 1000 50-54: 1000 55-59: 1000 60-64: 1000 65-69: 1000 70-74: 1000 75-79: 1000
= 16.000. Which means that the number of our contributors continues to raise faster.
This is a simplistic view, of course. There are a lot of other variables. And, usually, those variables would bring just less contributors, not more. So, in the Scenario 1 we'll have stronger lowering, in the Scenario 2 we'll have, at the best, stagnation and in the Scenario 3 we'll have, at the best, slow raising. Not to talk about the fact that you efforts to find retired academicians are much more expensive than efforts to find young people; as well as that the fact is that lower number of young people means lower capacity for getting old people. Also, it is proved that we don't need to wait for two decades to see the results. 3-5 years are enough because age groups are our simplistic way for grouping data; children are becoming young people every minute, as well as old people are dying every minute.
So, to give the answer about quantity vs. quality: We need quantity to have sustainable community development or even just a sustainable stagnation. We shouldn't be shy of saying that quantity is very important to us because we are able to build quality. And, yes, it is possible that quality brings quantity. This thread is about that: we have to think how to do that. If we don't think (thinking=quality) how to bring quantity and our quantity is lowering: we are at the dead end.