The issue of whether or not someone's ratio of donations vs. requests is a useful metric for kicking or promoting a member is a tricky one. My answer is that, in general, above a certain donation level it is not.
Let start with the low donation count- 20/300 or 50/500. That's pretty miserable and clearly indicates someone who might be taking advantage of the clan's generosity.
However… things get much more complicated when you're talking about highly active, very high donating players. The problem is that donations are a zero sum game- for every troop received, someone's donation count goes up and vice versa. This is where things get messy.
Imagine the simplest possible clan, with just two people. Both players are always on together and will fulfill any request immediately. Lets assume that they use their donations every time they fight (which seems like what we'd want players to do).
What will their ratios be?
The answer is... it depends on how often they fight. If both fight at basically the same rate, then their ratios will be even. However, if one of them fights aggressively while the other prefers to chat, then the ratios will quickly go out of balance even though the clan is functioning perfectly and everyone is getting units as soon as they request.
When this scales up, you see the process at work in our clan. Different people fight differently, and that shifts ratios around. Take a player like "Thesaurus". She chats and donates way more than she fights. So her ratios are going to be much different than mine (because I fight much more than she does). For "ssmith" to donate 500, I have to request those 500 troops. In the clan right now, "brueningb" has donated 1381 and received 240. That's fabulous! He's helping out the clan immensely… but, if you get fixated on ratios, it also means that someone else (or several of us) have requested quite a few more troops.
And that's when things break down. As a member, if I want to make up those "extra" units, the only thing I can do to improve my ratio is to request less often... which is the opposite of how I think we all want the clan to work. For my part, I want a clan where people feel free to request and donations are filled instantly. Focusing on the ratio doesn't make that better.
Honestly, my big concern here is that focusing on the ratio puts our attention on the wrong thing. I don't want people thinking "Have I requested to much?" or "Am I donating enough?". The "Have I requested to much?" is a recipe for a death spiral- people stop requesting, so people stop monitoring chat, so over all donations drop, so it's harder to recruit, etc, etc... I know it's easy to feel "mooched" here, but if we say "people should be in balance", then the only way that can happen is for the high donators to donate less, which I'm not sure we want at all.
So, I don't want you to focus on your donations versus received troops. I want you to focus on having fun, engaging in chat, and learning new things. One of the elders will talk with you if we think your donations are too low or disproportionate.
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