We should have less. Sure, the CPCC shows the clans fluctuate every week, but it's clear which clans generate the most activity flow. The ones that have a full, active staff, the ones with the more interesting plots and threads, and the ones that are naturally more unique in terms of territory layout, deity worship, and the clan background. Take SunClan for example. On the CPCC for 05/22/2021, which was an all-around inactive week, SunClan still had 45 posts that week, which is a good week for some other clans. That's because even on the weeks where our overall site activity isn't as strong as others, taking a hit doesn't hurt them the same way it hurts others. And like you said Berry, new members will gravitate towards the clan with the most thread traffic---and that's to be expected. You don't want to put the effort in to creating a character only to barely roleplay it because few people reply to threads in those clans. People get involved in places where they see threads being replied to daily, or close to it, which means the active clans would only become more active at the expense of the less active clans. It's pretty unavoidable.

Clan deletion is a question that pops up time and time again, and I think at this point it's less a question of if clans should be removed again, but rather a question of which clans we would remove if it came down to it, because it's not so cut and dry as to delete a whole set anymore in my opinion. There's no clear division anymore. There are certain forest clans more active than others, mountain clans more active than others, etc. I feel as if that uneven split is the bigger hold-up on clan deletions, not so much the issues presented the last times this was brought up.

Also, removing clans means more people will branch out to the ones left, meaning you begin plotting with people you may not usually and that's pretty cool. More people, more plots, more friends!

I feel as if maybe we should decrease to 4 to 6. That would, hypothetically, eliminate 5 to 7 clans/groups. There's a few ways I could see it going:
1.) Keep one subset of clans (i.e. All the Forest Clans or all the Mountain Clans). Delete everything else.
2.) Keep one subset of clans and all the rev groups, which would eliminate just four clans.
3.) Keep one Forest Clan, one Mountain Clan, one Rev Group, and the last one could be SwiftClan or LKR (I say or because SwiftClan is technically a rev group, but it's a better bridge between the traditional clans and the revs. That and LKR isn't that active in the first place.)
4.) Delete them all and start with fresh clans, which has been suggested previously.
There's probably some others I can't think of at the moment but I'll add them if I do.

I've always been an advocate for reducing the number of clans. I firmly believe we have far too many clans for the number of active users on the site- especially for people like myself, who don't like having a larger number of characters. I second everything woof said and would like to comment on the system for removing clans that Cleaver's mentioned as well.

To delete a clan, there must be a leader, deputy, and medicine cat that are making and responding to threads. There must be regular maintenance of the page and creation of plots.

These criteria imply that inactivity in a clan is due to a lack of staff members or a lack of plotting/innovative ideas, which may be part of the issue. However, it remains my opinion that the main issue is a lower number of active users than in previous years. A clan can't meet these criteria and be considered for deletion if no one is trying out for deputy of medicine cat (or, if people are consistently stepping down and new members aren't taking their place long enough to qualify for the criteria).

I do think there should be efforts made to increase clan activity and that we shouldn't delete clans without having criteria in place for what is considered 'inactive'. While the current criteria is well-thought out and meant to inspire efforts to boost clan activity before deleting it, I think that it can lead to a bit of a circular effect that ends up with a clan that probably needs to be deleted remaining around while we cycle through inactive leaders and deputies with the hope that that will fix it.

In summary: requiring there to be an active leader (and deputy and medicine cat) in order to consider a clan for deletion might work in another circumstance, but if there simply aren't enough active users to fill those positions across 11 unique groups (because active leaders are already leading other clans), it will lead to us never considering a clan for deletion as we cycle through inactive leaders. I think the main issue is not a lack of leading, but too many groups for too few users.

I know I haven't been back for long but low key, the fact that there's 11 clans (that require 2+ active staff positions each) and we average around 25~ people on each day (so I'm guessing, the average amount of active members?) which means we barely have enough people to fill in all the positions, so I think that might be worrying?

imo I think it'd be really fun if we did a huge plot event where like, a classic-pocalypse happened and resources were scarce and certain clans could combine. Like it'd be fun to see dayclan/sunclan and nightclan/moonclan uhhhhh merge and have a civil war and be forced to share the same forest but split the territory by day and night, only to ever meet during dawn and twilight and when you're out of hours, you're free game for.....murder....you know......it'd be lit and very dramatique .......

or like, imagine springclan and summerclan being some thematically linked to the idea of life, while winterclan and fallclan being thematically linked to the concept of death or something and finding a way to combine these, even temporarily.....you know.......

and keep two of the rev groups

and we'd have 6 groups instead of 11 and we'd still keep the essence of all the clans together while doing a really fun overhaul plot.

and like, the way you could combine these can be like, this temporary situation of 'new clans' formed of old ones and if we get an influx of users and happen to have too few clans, we can always split them back up again and bring back the clans they originally were by saying that the land was healing or something uwu

idk just throwing some funky ideas ♥ ♥ worldbuilding is my passion uwu

edit: also apparently moonclan does meet all the deletion requirements? LOL sorry someone told me dis 

[ i supposed to be asleep so i'm not here ]

one thing that has turned me off from joining other clans is the... idk how to say it, weirdness of them?
i came back for a warriors rp and those are the clans i've been drawn too. if we are to terminate anything, i think it should be down to a vote if people was traditional rps or fantasy rps, which is really not classic was to begin with, hence the name classic. anything like that should be kept to the separate groups in my opinion.

[ now i'm going back to sleep ]

I have to agree with Gidget, I am a bit hesitant to delete clans (might add more later I just woke up and I’m still on vacation for Memorial Day weekend) but I wanted to throw that out there!

I remember back in 2010 clans used to close joining for certain ranks or just for the whole clan whenever they reached a certain number of cats? Maybe we can do that again too?

Just an idea ^^;

my idea would be the following
-Merge either Moon and Sun for an Eclipse theme, or Moon and Night for a Dark Theme
-Then merge Day with whatever Forest Clan was left
-Merge Spring and Summer and Fall and Winter. i like the idea of a Life vs Death theme
-Finally merge PI and Swift because they're both about new beginnings? they also city bois
-Leave RR alone. Unless we wanted to switch up one of the pairings

That would leave us with the six clans mentioned. along with LKR. which i think will get more traffic with less clans. think about it. you have a character. you can either invest them into a clan, that has a lot more structure or nuance. or you can make them LKR. this isn't meant to crap on LKR cause i love LKR. but it's probably one of the most affected groups of how we have too many clans

or heck. you can even bring back The Pride from the clan creation contest. or an idea with a similar effect. for those that don't remember, it was a combination of PI, Day, Sun and Night. that would already drop our number of clans from 11 to 8. granted, it wouldn't work as well nowadays because the leadership in Sun and Night has changed. but the point is, we can do even bigger combinations. but if we did like a few big combos and leave the rest as they are, it does set them up for a raw numbers disadvantage. so while i think smaller and even combinations would be better, this is just another idea i'm throwing down

oh no. i wouldn't want to get rid of traditional rps. i think i'm getting to that point where i prefer it too xD

rn the Forest clans skew towards non traditional and the Mountain clans towards traditional rps so i would think like 2 of them could be non traditional and more complex, 2 can be traditional and more straight forward and the last 2 can be kinda a mix of both.

like i feel Primal Instinct is a good example. it's a very simple clan at it's core. it lives in the city. there's no god or powers. the ranks are different but they're easy to understand. but it's still non traditional in its names and it's way of living. i wouldn't consider a clan of murderers and the like very traditional xD

Hey, the admins have noticed there have been concerns about clans needing to be deleted. The admin team is looking into this and if anything is found it will be thoroughly discussed by staff. Thank-you for bringing this to our attention!

I feel like everyone has some good ideas here and there and a good brainstorm sesh would be fun tbh, and I agree that it should be a sitewide conversation too, or at least if it's not, that we should get regular updates or discussion sessions to have our input too! Maybe a fun way to propose this could be to do a contest or something where we can come up with ideas or plots or whatever to solve this 'overhaul' issue and vote on it?