“One-half of one percent”

This is, loosely, a response to the following context:

Feedback received by SCA Inc

Text reproduced in full from current content of https://www.sca.org/news/feedback-received-by-sca-inc/

Recently the following statement occurred on the personal Facebook page of the Board’s Executive Assistant, Leslie Luther-Fulton

‘My husband is a very wise man. He reminded me that 125 of 25000 is one-half of one percent. And that is my vague booking for the day 🙂 “

The statement was removed after approximately 20 minutes.

While it is not normally the practice of SCA Inc. to comment on the personal posts of its employees, the statement has been interpreted as a sign of disregard or contempt for the feedback SCA Inc. receives from participants.

Mr Fulton’s full quote which was paraphrased by his wife is as follows:

‘Over the last five years the 125 or so people removed from the Society do not represent at all the vast numbers of the members let alone those who participate and are not members. Maybe one half of a percent of everyone who is just a member.’

Ms Luther-Fulton apologizes for the impression her post created.

All feedback that is received by SCA Inc. is read and actively considered. Changes and improvements to how the Society and the corporation works have been made based on previous feedback received and will continue to be made.

We thank everyone who cares enough to take the time to share their thoughts and ideas for the future.

Note that a large part of the negative feedback that was likely received due to this “vaguebooking” was because it sounded like it was a response to the Board of Directors receiving comments by members about their recent decisions. (For context, Leslie Luther-Fulton is married to the President of the SCA, John Fulton. See also https://annasrome.com/2023/04/24/let-them-eat-cake/)

My perception, as someone who emails the Board of Directors about once or twice a year about events and decisions they have ultimate oversight on, is that they generally do not respond privately in a detailed manner, and only sometimes respond at all. It’s also true that they recently clarified that they do not accept anonymous comments - for more on that see (excellent as always, and someone I know personally in the SCA) Mathghamhain at http://creativeadministration.org/collecting-petition-signatures-online/

I am not a lawyer, so I can’t help you there, but have some statistics

If you want a lawyer’s take on recent BoD decisions, try this post: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XnXqVmXCNYP8nohS4_cbupUi2zoo_5vA/view

In September 2021, I had a conversation in the East Kingdom Webministry Slack which roughly amounted to (my words are direct quotes, other participants anonymized and heavily paraphrased)

me: it does make me wonder: what type of solution would you send the BoD? I have sent them a few emails and inevitably I get an answer saying in essence "thanks for your email" and then it feels like whatever was going to happen happens anyway. I've had better luck with some of the individuals (I like our Society DEI) but certainly not all of them and I don't seem to be alone in that

me: I'm happy to send them yet another email but I'm not even sure where to begin

them: they don't respond to individual emails, nor should they act based on every individual email received

me: sure but then we shouldn't be telling people to email bod

them: We should be presenting the BoD with a compelling story backed by data if we want them to change

Note that (1) nobody seems to be all that interested in formally aggregating much data at a Society level into a compelling story and (2) that conversation in 2021 took place well before the petition signature ruling I cited above.

This started me down a path of looking up online courses about survey design and statistics, and long story short, I signed up for some and received a Master’s of Science in Data Analytics in April 2022.

Is one half of one percent worth thinking about?

24,000 is roughly the current number of paid SCA memberships, excluding Australia/NZ, known as Lochac: see http://creativeadministration.org/kingdom-membership-numbers/. So 125 is in fact slightly over one half of one percent, the math is accurate so far.

The “one-half of one percent”, if the apology is accurate (and judging by my Facebook friends, not everyone does believe the context shared in the apology is accurate!), refers to the number of members removed by the Board of Directors and banned from further participation. I was unable to verify this as, since I am not and have not been a seneschal, I cannot access the Big Book of Banishments** (See https://www.facebook.com/SCADiversityEquityInclusion/photos/310525180798935/ for more on that.) If you assume that this number of banishments comprises the sum total of people who are problems, then sure, it’s a low percentage - compare to 1.6% ish of violent victimizations (16 per 1000 people) at https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/quick-graphics#quickgraphicstop. I do not believe that the BoD acts on every problem person by banning them forever - see https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system for an analogy outside the SCA.

** edit: I have heard on Facebook from a seneschal in the East (thank you!) that there are approximately 200 entries for all time in the book, and that more than half of them have occurred in the last 10 years (note that it is currently AS 57, and the turnover is in May and it’s currently April). So it is plausible that the last five years contain 125-ish R&D entries.

What if “one-half of one percent” did refer to the number of SCA members who complained?

Since that is how it was interpreted, let’s go down a thought experiment.

Is the set of “people who complain” a representative sampling of all people in the SCA? Obviously not. We cannot draw a conclusion about the average opinion from only complaints, petitions, or self-selecting-in survey respondents.

How many people would have to complain to indicate an issue?

Sarcastic answer: One, but only if he’s a duke.

Actual answer: One complaint does indicate something happened to someone (regardless of stature in the SCA). Is it worth addressing? Depends on what happened.

How many people would have to complain for it to matter?

Sarcastic answer: If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Somewhat relevant info about statistics:

See https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/.

Another way of asking is: Given a population of size N, how many people do we need to sample to achieve 95% confidence in a significant result?

Like many things in statistics, it is difficult to guess what the right answer is, but straightforward to find a calculator to do it.

The sample size calculator linked above gives us a result of 379 people, for 95% CI, 5% margin of error, 24,000 population size. So if the SCA were to randomly sample its population, they’d have to somehow poll 379 paid members about it to get a statistically significant result. This isn’t what’s happening of course, and we can’t assume the inverse is correct (that if we get 379 responses it’s a significant issue).

I think it is safer to assume that if one-half of one percent of people complain about something, at least one percent of people think it is an actual issue (see RAINN citation above for how this breaks down for assault and other crimes being reported to police). I don’t think sexual assaults being reported to police is of the same caliber as someone emailing SCA corporate but I think the analogy that not everyone who sees something submits a report applies.

Takeaways

  • A surprisingly small random sample would give potentially good statistical data, but…
  • Laypeople in the SCA can’t randomly sample members or attendees, and the administrators who could don’t seem to want to
  • We have no systematic way to hold the BoD accountable for this (or any) choice(s) they make

Postscript: Is disallowing anonymous comments the only way to have good data?

Let me be clear: I don’t think the BoD would even be able to recognize good data if they saw it. For proof of that, see the data on membership cited above, and look at the Lochac row.

I do think they should admit when they are out of their depth at serving their constituency, whether on data or otherwise. For more on that, see https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pp4U19TG2uLncLhe5DbuacNkAaK2ZRtH/view?fbclid=IwAR1UsqmdIbObsivl5Mo9LSxtWCCz5kCOC8V26cYVMqE_aW3kFe6T5-D65Yw.