I just read JerryDon's post on participation in CDS again .. and yesterday I went to a meeting to plan for Floralia.. And last night we had a new citizen join CDS and there was a party in the street of NFS with about ten or twelve of us dancing around celebrating. Then I read and rated Gwyns post on getting us into the SL11birthday celebration and her ideas for getting land available for new citizens to buy.
As we talk about Measures of Success.. of course we have REVENUE as a measure of financial success, its an indicator of our viability as an entity and interest in us and all sorts of things. LONGEVITY in and of itself is a measure of success.. but that obscure and difficult to measure happiness factor is difficult to tease out. Are people happy with CDS just because they pay their tier and therefore CDS survives into its tenth year? Perhaps that's enough of a measure to say people are happy.
I propose that it isn't enough. I think that to really be all we can be we do need to have as a goal and strive to maximize citizen participation. This is a measurable factor. The first tier of participation in CDS is simply logging in to your computer and showing up on one of the five sims. Trebor pointed out to me currently some avatars that are citizens on the voting list who have not been in world for a couple of months. They might be very happy with CDS and help us survive and pay our bills. But is only voting and not being in-world at all a participating citizen? Perhaps. But barely. So the measure of participation in CDS is not black and white. It is a variable measure. I won't judge whether or not Participation is good or bad. But we can measure whether it is high or low without placing judgment on the person who does it. As a group though, a certain level of participation in particular aspects of CDS may be beneficial for our elusive "happiness factor" and may indeed be something we want to maximize. I sure do ! Our system itself and the way it's set up can not only measure participation but in fact maximize it.
First I assume that everyone would like to maximize INWORLD participation. We can measure and influence systemically both how many people participate, who they are and how much they participate
We can start at the lowest level of participation being owning a parcel and paying tier. At the moment this can be done by simply logging into sl to pay tier every three months, giving the chancellor of the moment unlimited discretion as to how long that parcel sits there in arrears after that. So in recent past, people have remained citizens at level 1 for for four, five or even six months, without even logging in. This kept people on the rolls... so the number of participants was at its highest, but the individual is all but absent from SL and CDS and worse than that...the opportunity cost. The parcel is held with no revenue for CDS, sure, but worse than that imho is that the parcel is not available for a more actively participating citizen.
Fortunately this of these factors has been partially addressed in Gwyns proposal that would require a parcel to be taken back and set for sale after it is 14 days in arrears. That is a step in the right direction in my opinion. It increases the systemic motivation to be a "participating citizen" at least logging in and paying tier. At least they are not keeping the opportunity away from someone else who might be more active. This still means that someone can pay tier for 90 days and then go to 104 days without even logging in to CDS and still be a citizen. If we wanted to have even more incentive to participate in CDS we would shorten this cycle, requiring the avatar itself to log in more frequently. This was required in the past, to be inworld one time a month to pay a tier box in order to remain able to vote. Honestly, I am all for that, if what we want is inworld participation in CDS. And I for one DO!
Things we can measure to determine participation are this :
Number of Citizens who own parcels
Number of times in a time period that a citizen logs into CDS
Number of Citizens who vote in elections
Number of Citizens who run in elections
Number of people in the sims per day
Number of people involved in events and other duties in the sims
Number of planned community events in a time period
Number of active outreach programs
Turnover of citizens/longevity
We can measure participation in many ways and then work to increase it in a measurable way by setting goals and making programs that will do this ...
As far as the last indicator, turnover and longevity, it would be good to know if participation and longevity are connected and how people are retained via participation.. having exit interviews with people who leave and why they leave.. or those who stay and why, and gleaning information from the numbers themselves.
ps
@ I suspect there is a group who own parcels in CDS and only log in to pay tier as few times as possible and then log in to vote. there may be legitimate reasons for this. Someone COULD read the forums ( is that really a true indication of what is going on in CDS or give one enough info to vote? I say not, personally, but I know others would disagree) and log in every three months to pay tier and vote, but..we do not have to allow that. The ones who are only voting are doing one of a few things... 1. they read forums and make decisions solely from that.. ( least likely)2. They have a friend in CDS who they "follow" and log in to vote the friends desire 3. They are voting based on a very old bias or opinion based on OLD ideas of what CDS is and needs. ... I cant think of any more reasons other than its someones alt, or a proxy vote, which I know is illegal and no one would do this, right? 
This is what I see as important but I am very interested in what other people think.