• My community is limited to 18 students (and me) and is a required component of the course. Students would definitely notice if others left. What's interesting though, as noted in the Wiki article, is that even though students aren't physically leaving the group, many seem to be mentally and emotionally exiting as they're forging their own paths away from the group. As an instructor I notice when students sudenly aren't showing up in discussions and on the Wall, but my assumption is that students only notice it by suddenly feeling like the voices that do speak up echo a bit more.
• In regards to students mentally leaving the group, the community--unfortunately--seems to detach themselves at all. There has yet to be a rallying cry in support of the community over the individual. As discussed in class, in conversational terms the people who stay become the perceived "nerds" who want to please me as the instructor/administrator instead of supporting the community on their own.
• The one feature that Facebook Groups have that is beneficial here is the archiving of Discussion posts and Wall posts. The person who exits always lives on; once he or she leaves the group he is not able to go back into the group to delete his postings.
  • I think there is an overall sense that someone has left, and so voices seem to stand out a bit more than they would otherwise. However, in this low-level required course, it would be almost taboo to call someone out for leaving the group.

John Blair

With a community membership of over 1.2 million, I don’t believe anyone notices when 99.99999% (not a supportable number, as I made it up for effect) of the people leave.  The one exception to this might be the posting leaders.  These people are sort of the “influencers’” or experts of the various groups.  They are almost always listed as both the top contributors for the past 30 days as well as the top contributors of all time (4 of 10 fit this scenario).   Given the volume of contributions these people make, I do believe members would likely notice their departure and perhaps send them notes (which are done privately through member connections) inquiring as to their status.

I have seen no indication that the community does anything if someone leaves, as I also don’t see any evidence that they would notice or acknowledge a departure – other than the aforementioned “top contributor” listings, which they obviously would have access to, but I have seen no evidence that if these top contributors were to stop their community activities, that the community leaders would notice or contact them.

Remnants of those who have left are basically none.  Their profile would be visible if they simply departed without changing their account settings to not receive any information from the community.  Profiles are viewable by any member anonymously, but contacting a member is dependent upon creating a connection through an invitation to that member that must be accepted.  The one exception to this is that everyone is connected to one of the community founders upon completing their profile.  Their contributions would remain, but that is about the only tangible indicator of their activity within the community should they decide to leave.

It seems odd to me that the community provides no mechanism for departure.  There is no delete functionality for your account settings or profile, nor is there an formal option to "resign" your membership.  Your only option really is to simply exit - though you could obviously voice your exit strategy if you so choose, but there is no formal means to stop being a member.

Other than dying, you can't really physically leave, but what can happen is mental exit. That member will stop participating in the community, and (try to) severe all ties.

In my alumni mailing list, exit can occur via the "Leave group" function in Y!Groups. Nevertheless, this community has not seen anyone leaving over the last 10 years (Maybe we did not notice). Perhaps this is "loyalty" as a result of being imbued the values of the alma mater for 5 years, and the forging of the social bonds. But it could also be a "sense of obligation" to the institution that has invested in educating and bringing you up. Indirectly, being indebted to the school makes you less inclined to leave the community of classmates.

But maybe the community has not yet grown into Level 5, where there is discomfort with diversity. We are in Level 4 where there are lots of threads everywhere. By not having a hierarchy of topics, one cannot complain that a discussion is off-topic (unless it uses the same headings). So, could this be a design feature to avoid dissent - that uncategorized messages disable members from complaining it is off-topic, which can prevent discomfort, and then leaving?

Nonetheless, as with other mailing lists, there are active and inactive members. I have been inactive before, and it was because of many reasons: I was busy to keep checking the site; the daily digest shows uninteresting/unappealing discussions; discussions did not involve me as an expert of my domain; no one asked for me... But occasionally I come back to say "hello" again, and people just treat me as new members (by asking the initiation questions).

So, do people notice my absence? Yes if you have been active, but no if otherwise. It did not seem to matter if you are an expert in your field, or if you are somebody in the outside world. I have noticed that an active member being silent for a while, prompted others asking for him. This acknowledgment only happens for active members. I have in one instance contacted that member via private channel, but did not persuade him to repost to the group (I had no reason to do so). But in my case, no one pleaded me to come back (not that I have left), or repost (not that I have posted so much). Anyway, if one assumingly leaves (by exiting or dying), he will leave behind his postings and photos in the community as memory. And if a member dies, probably there will be a period of discussion of how good the person was, etc..

Looking forward to 2071 when the members will all be 100 years old, I guess the mailing list will just die of natural death much-much earlier than that time. I don't think anyone will consciously Delete the Group. Oh, how emotional..

Since this is a very short wiki article, it mainly discusses the concepts of exit and voice, as well as the function of loyalty to keep people in the group, organization and community.

Based on the principal that "the greater the availability of exit, the less likely voice will be used", it is obvious that online users are more likely to leave one site. Therefore, it becomes more important for online community to build loyalty through group identity, user bond to keep users.

Further, I think the online community seldom notices users' leave, unless this user has special position on this site or there are too many users left at the same time.

In my opinion, how to deal with left users also depends on the size of left users and the importance of left users due to the cost of keeping users on the site.  

An exit or voice response to organizational decline reminds me of the fight or flight response to threats.  Whether people fight or voice may depens on how much they've invested (identity, resources, etc.) in the organization or conflict.  My takeaway point from this reading (and research into the 43 things exit process) is that us community designers should try to convince people to stay by highlighting how much they've invested in the community.  Also, highlighting startup costs of reinvesting elsewhere.
 
What does the community do in response to someone leaving?
 
Unless a member announces they're leaving the community, they're not likely to notice and activity would go on as usual.  It seems people exit from goals silently rather than voice their dissent.  Also, it's hard to find examples of people voicing their dissatisfaction with progress reports left by other people.  43 Things doesn't set off a siren, flash lights, or post any notice when a member leaves. 
 
43 Things anticipates the reasons members may have for exiting and addresses these concerns on an account deletion confirmation page.   Possible "exiters" are first given a small text box where they're asked to "let us know why you're leaving".  Giving voice here won't help 43 Things developers retain this member, but will likely help benefit community development in the future.  Before reaching a button that will let members really delete their account when clicked, developers remind people that they can edit or delete posts to remove identification details and can block annoying users from posting comments to their blog posts.  I assume these two problems are the most frequently cited reasons for leaving the community. 
 
The last roadblock to account deletion is a link to the "close your account" FAQ.  There are more details about how to resolve the problems I just mentioned, but 43 Things also gives information about how to change a display name or user name, as well as how to change account details.  The first question answered is "Can I undelete my account?"  Nope - so people are encouraged to be 100% positive that they want to leave for good.
 
What traces remain of the person who left the community?  Does the community notice if someone is leaving?  Does the community acknowledge that someone has left?
 
Nothing.  When a 43 Things member leaves, all their blog posts, comments, and goals are deleted permanently from the system.  If other members belong to the same goal, the page will persist, but if the exiting user is the sole member, the goal will be erased.  Losing data reduces value of the archive, but puts people in control of their information. 
 
The community may notice if someone leaves.  Their progress reports would disappear from goal pages which aggregate all progress reports related to that goal. 

I think the community will notice if someone leaves if that individual is involved within the community.  If the individual has been overtaken by apathy, indifference and lost their "voice" I think it can then be argued that this person is not really part of the community.   This is the type of rhetoric that has fueled many a  revolution (i.e Delacroix's famous "Liberty guiding the people" gives one a sense that the community is being led by leadership and are loyal to it).  

Within cgsociety.org the level of participation by
a member reflects how much the community will miss them.

Last year,  Glen Angus, a prominent, respected and well liked member of cgsociety died of an aneurysm. The following link is not only a eulogy but a testament to how truly woven into  the community he was.  This is a page that was created in lieu of his passing
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4169

This other link however is a string of comments from various community members demonstrating the level of ackowledgement  given Angus' untimely demise.  In this case, the community mourned together, they responded equally as such and the traces that Angus left behind(his artwork, friendships established) were honored.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=520285

On the other hand,
non influential members come and go all the time, and are rarely
missed, most people don't actively "leave" they just stop coming. In
the majority of cases this leaves any contribution they may have had to
cgsociety as their legacy. 

In my community (LibraryThing), it shows the most recent joiners to different groups. But there is no signal when people leave the group, except that group membership count decreases. I doubt that many people make the effort to formally withdraw from the group - they probably just stop returning or contributing.

One thing that strikes me about the idea of "exit" and "voice" is that people probably do not express voice unless they have been committed to the community previously. I would expect that in online communities, where  generally the cost to joining is very low, that we would see exit much more often because people are less likely to be committed to the group. (This is building off of the idea of 10% of users contributing 90% of content, or whatever the magic number is). So when members of an online community express voice, it's probably really important to listen because odds are that person is one of your strongest members.

As has been suggested by previous posters, I think this reading hinges on the bonds discussion earlier in the semester.  Whether a community member feels enough commitment to voice criticism depends upon the extent to which bonds/identity have been established.  Bonds are known among the designers in my community as being key to longevity.  I think we also benefit from significant barriers (monthly fees) and slow level gain, which increase the investment of our members and make it more challenging for them to depart.

Does the community notice if someone is leaving?

Because the game world is such a highly social place, almost all players' departures are noticed, at least by their own close circle of friends.  Obviously, the more well known a member was, the more people take heed of the departure.  Also, there is a specific category on the community forums in which people post both farewells and returns.  These posts are certainly noticed by a fair portion of the community.

What does the community do in response to someone leaving?

When players post farewells, other players and staff members drop by to send best wishes and sometimes urge the player to stay.  It is a true rarity that a farewell is not acknowledged by anyone.  All in all, it's amazing how positive the Farewells/Returns folder actually is.  Occasionally a player will depart with criticisms or anger, but most of them have simply become too preoccupied with other things... work, school, etc.  Many depart by posting a few sentimental memories.  In general, the attitude in the category is quite positive, particularly as the number of returns posted seems almost to match the number of departures.

What traces remain of the person who left the community?

Within the game environment, there are few remnants of a player's existence.  If they were a particularly prominent player (this is a rare few), it's possible that they have areas of the game named after them.  Outside the game, players leave many artifacts, including message board posts and all sorts of player-contributed documentation about the game.

I have seen some threads in Ubuntu Forums where the members have publicly announced their departure from the site.
Why do members leave?
The main reason for users leaving the community is disagreement with the community leadership. When a user violates a community norm, they are censured by the forum moderators, via private messages. If the user is not happy with the outcome of the back channel conversations with the forum leaders, they publicly announce their displeasure with the forums and announce their departure. This seems to be the main reason for users for publicly announcing their leave.

I have seen a user who said goodbye to the forums to prevent being banned forums. The user had received multiple warnings from the moderators and was afraid that receiving more warnings will lead to a ban from the forums. (Banning means that the user's IP address is blocked from the forums) Interestingly this means that the user wants to continue using the forums passively. So they are only announcing a departure from active membership.

• Does the community notice if someone is leaving? Does the community acknoledges that someone has left?

In Last.fm, I think in addition to friends or the site owner, there is no specific way to know someone is leaving if the person doesn’t reveal the info.

• What does the community do in response to someone leaving?

I guess it depends. One case I notice recently is that one group leader left a message saying that he would not be on the site much or at all due to a Internet problem. His friends (group members) left messages on his personal page saying “don’t go” and “hope to meet you again.” However, I doubt for those who are not active in Last.fm would receive any this kind of messages when they leave.

• What traces remain of the person who left the community?

Although members are able to delete their Last.fm accounts if they wish to do so, I guess most people just stop participating discussion or don’t come to visit the site again. If so, the account and all the info on the personal page are still there.

If you are interested in the actual reading. It is available here.

http://www.si.umich.edu/ICOS/Fall%202007.html

Search for "October 26th."

I remembered hearing about the concept of “exit” (voting with your feet) and “voice” (speaking up about your dissatisfactions) by professor Chamberlin a while ago at the ICOS seminar.

Whether or not the community notices if someone is leaving PBS depends on several factors. First, is the person an active, social member, posting on the discussion boards or participating in game swaps? Or are they a volunteer? If so, then they will surely be missed. One volunteer leader was sick and unable to return to the site for over a week and several people expressed concern, but this was a very active member who was often looked to for guidance.

If someone whose role on PBS is more social announces that they are leaving for personal reasons, I have witnessed the flow of support and emotional goodbyes that people write.

I was unable to find a case of someone angrily posting that they were leaving PBS, although one person confided in me that they stopped posting in the forums and only used the site for book swapping after some negative experiences on the forums. I am not sure how vocal she was to the founders about her concerns.

If someone closes down their account, I don't think they will have a viewable profile any longer. Thus, all that remains of their activity on PBS is the posts they made on the forum, and traces of their transaction history that are left within others' transaction histories.

For the community I’m studying (bbs.taisha.org), it is technically easy for community to notice if someone is leaving by simply checking the frequency of logging on the community as well as the time one stays online with the community. However, on the other hand, due to the large size, it is also hard for the community to keep track of where its members gone from the practical perspective. So far I do not notice anything that the community will do if someone if leaving. This, to my opinion, is partly because of the continuous join in of new members as well as the loyalty of a certain group of senior members. The community just has not experienced much problem due to the exit of some people. If someone has not logged into his account for quite a long time, it is undoubted that he has left. The community acknowledges this but takes little action.

Leaving KanTalk is a lot like leaving most of the other communities already mentioned. The people you interacted with the most will probably be the only ones who notice or care when you leave.  If you're a prominent member of the community with lots of friends your exit will have a greater impact than if you only really connected with a few people.

The community doesn't do anything in response to someone's exit except maybe delete the account after it has been inactive for a period of time, and the content a member submitted remains on the site even after they leave.

I agree with others' points so far that, as Hirschmann points out, it is the active community members who are the most loyal, and therefore the most vocal when they see problems with the community that they feel should be addressed. This is also the case at CouchSurfing, where the most visible cases of people leaving have been members who disagree with the management of the site, and left to start their own "Open CouchSurfing Community." They did this only after much posting on the 'Share your thoughts on how to improve CouchSurfing' discussion groups. When they didn't feel their voice was being heard, they left, though one member in particular left his profile on CouchSurfing up, with a big paragraph about why he had left.

In most other cases though, the members who leave are those who are inactive and lost interest. On CouchSurfing, members can either delete their profile, hide their profile, or set their Couch Availability to 'Not available.' This flexibility in how to leave the site is nice, because it still leaves the door open to come back later. Sites like CouchSurfing benefit from this, since many may only use the site when traveling and they have a need for it.

I agree with others that showing how many members have left can be bad - this is not positive information that you want to be salient.

In terms of closing down a community, and/or people exiting...

On Yahoo! Answers, the community as a whole will likely not notice when an individual leaves (especially if the individual is just a regular user). Even if the user was a "Top Contributor", he or she will only have presence in a few select "sub-categories". In other words, with a community that large and with such a diverse body of users and content, "exiting" likely goes un-noticed, besides in the sub-group and cliques that the user participates in. all of this is also contingent to the degree of the individual's participation level and presence on the sub-group.

Instead of thinking in terms of what Yahoo! Answers does in response to someone leaving, most regulars that leave tell their close friends and often update their profile with a piece of information that says that they are leaving or decreasing their participation level on the community (which might seem like a form of "exiting" to the individual him/herself.) Once again, on a community like Yahoo! Answers, the level of interaction among users is entirely dependent on the individuals or sub-groups' preferences. Its not extremely easy to generalize or determine what exactly the community does for someone that is leaving, since Yahoo! Answers itself is not the place for people to post "personal ads" or content that does not really fall under the characteristics of being a "question or answer".

Because Yahoo! Answers has its questions and answers all archived, content that is created remains available. In a sense, individual's that exit will have a continuous, but obviously, decreasing presence or "trace" on the community. For new comers, they may never happen to come across a particular question or answer from a previous user. Even in the situation that a new user searches the archives and finds content generated by a previous user, chances are new comers will not encounter the same exited-users' content repeatedly enough to recognize them. Unless something dramatic happens to a individual who is "important enough" (what exactly is "important enough" would also depend on the individual or sub-group), chances are the community will not do anything for the average user that leaves.

Being a hub for loosely connected blogs, AnimeNano has its fair share of users leaving. An individual "user" leaving usually doesn't have a marked effect on anything (it's hard to notice) unless they announce their departure. I don't think anyone has ever done this, however.

Bloggers quitting their blogs is something entirely different. There's a decision to be made when a blogger announces the end of their blog (and that's sort of a whole different process in itself!): whether to keep the blog in the directory or remove it.

I think it's better to keep the blog in the directory, because it won't really be taking up any resources (there's an option to turn off indexing) and users might find some use in the posts by using the search functionality. This is if the blog's archives still exist. Usually a completly dead blog will just be removed.

Often a blogger will refuse to stay down, so it's good to keep their options open. 

In response to someone quitting a blog, users might leave some nice comments, but usually won't post anything on Anime Nano itself. Maybe if a blogger died or something, but that hasn't happened yet either!

While it takes some work to get a blog listed on Anime Nano, The cost of actually leaving is low if one has the desire. This probably explains why most users decide to quit or leave unannounce rather than voice their contempt towards the site/community. Also, I don't think anyone actually holds contempt against the site/community!

Because Newsvine is mainly identity based I doubt that most users notice when someone leaves. With that said I also believe that during the exodus that resulted after the Newsvine prank many people who left did so because some other contributors that they had formed bonds with left.

There was a response from the Newsvine administration as a result of the prank but it was not specific to anyone users leaving. Rather it was the administrators trying to do what was in their best interest. In a community that relies on user generated content it is in everyone’s best interest to ensure that users stay, but it is also difficult to notice when people leave.

When these users left Newsvine the stories they had posted to Newsvine remain as well as content submitted to groups. However their profiles are now deleted. As such there is some record of their contributions, but there is not formal acknowledgement that they left.

A fellow PhD student, Lian Jian, is studying motivations for people leaving wikipedia. It turns out, one of the most difficult things to determine is when someone has really left. Is it relative, i.e. this person contributed daily for 3 months and now contributes only twice a year and hasn't contributed in 8 months? Has this person really exited? Or have they just reduced their contribution? Or perhaps it should be reckoned absolutely? I.e. This person hasn't posted in 6 months, let's say they have left.

It's a difficult question to answer, particularly when people do not announce it publicly. Obviously, a person who is inextricably intertwined into the functioning of the community will be noticed if they choose to leave, even if they do it covertly without big fanfare or announcement.

People leave a community for many reasons. How much someone's leaving is noticeable is relative to how much she is significant in the community. In an online community, there maybe many people have never been noticed. For example, most of the Wikipedia contributors and readers. On a forum I am looking at, the most noticeable leaving event happens to the persons called "board administrator" who is in charge of the editing and mediating. It is a job of intensive contribution as well as attentions, usually people very strongly respond to their leaving.
These significant persons' leaving can always be a stimulus of "event" of the community which motivates thread traffic. For example, the administrator of Beauty board is leaving just because of getting tired about the job, many people said sorry and tried to convince her to stay and some just sent thanks to her...in a word, people do feel something happening. On another board of "American News" leaving of the administrator was actually a big event, because he resigned due to many complains that he was biased to Hilary Clinton. During the time, people are actually quarreling there some support him and some are happy about his leaving.
For other people, some are getting less and less contributing and actually left finally. People would not really notice that. After a long while, there might be some trace leftover, someone would recall that "A was here and what what what..." Some people leave due to some mandatory reasons, for example, a friend of mine left the Tennis board in my college forum because he was leaving for studying in US. Then he would make a fare ware event on the board and everyone noticed it and said goodbye.
Online communities, like some other casual organizations, would have some collective memory to keep those who have left. But it would not be lasting because online setting only good for maintaining ongoing and intensive relationships: people use a pseudonym to login and when they left, other will be hard to trace her again. And all the trace she left would lose influence in an ever-changing environment.

Not all members bring equal value to the community. In ImmigrationPortal, not many people notice if someone, who is just asking the questions, leaves. In fact, it happens quite often: Members come, they discuss their problems, get solutions, and then they leave. However, there is significant impact on the community when members who provide solutions, leave.

I'm not convinced that exit and voice are the only options.  Exit is only valid if there is somewhere else I would rather be and that would be willing to allow me to be there (not always possible).  Voice is only valid if I think that speaking out will be a net gain, as opposed to simply getting me thrown in prison or killed or simply wasting my breath in an unresponsive environment.

Revolution is a perfectly acceptable alternative.

• Does the community notice if someone is leaving?
• What does the community do in response to someone leaving?
• What traces remain of the person who left the community?
  • Does the community acknoledges that someone has left?

 In the lego community, we notice when people leave and are often quite concerned about leavings and hurt feelings because we value our small pool of members and many of us have known each other for years.  We always try to make things work out.

When people leave, their work is still valued but if they take their images off the web then that work is no longer visible to either oldies or newbies.  This is particularly impactful when people sell off their lego, quit the habit altogether, and take down all evidence that they ever participated.

We've had deaths in our community, and we acknowledge those with commemorative contests where we "build in the style of [the person who is gone]" but we don't do that with people who have simply left.

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PHartzog@umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser