I sometimes wonder if the type of community and the members natural persona’s make a difference in the math. Perhaps there’s actually a bit of a sliding scale? If a community is a very mature long standing community, but it’s intent is more geared towards a shorter lifecycle, for example an earning an industry cert, “new members” might accumulate overtime, however as they complete the cert and move on, the majority may still also naturally move on as the core value of the space is no longer as relevant. Of course one would hope to retain folks as leaders and mentors, but at what ratio will that make sense?
In contrast with an “outdoors person” (for example) community, where it has a long use case lifespan for its members, that type of space may lean more towards a higher engaged/lurker ratio… ?
It’d be interesting to hear some thoughts on that… cheers.