Sonious is right. 99% of what we record and report on conventions is done through long, tedious teasing of information from public tweets and announcements, video recordings, chats and even photographs (literally counting heads) - nowadays frequently via translation - as you can see from the extensive quotes from conventions in the prose above.
That's why, on WikiFur's annual articles, at least, facts such as event attendance typically come with a reference - usually to an official source; only in <~1% of cases does that say "personal communication with X". (One of my pet projects, which will also involve a fair bit of tedium, is creating a central, publicly-queryable database for such information on a platform that supports such references - and transferring the last 30 years of convention data to it.)
It's in a convention's interest and that of its attendees to publish information about itself. Because those attendees are furry fans, their interests are, broadly speaking, our interests; so WikiFur records and present a significant portion of that. Convention staff are often intimately involved. Indeed, if you read the section of discussion after the one I just linked, you'll find FrostTheFox from Furvana, and a certain Woody - who may be familiar to you from MFF - discussing how to represent the attendance of online events, and coming to much the same conclusion; that it'd be incorrect to show them in existing lists, at least in that case, and that a separate listing is appropriate.
[In a few cases, such as Form 990, and similar business records in the UK and Sweden, it's actually the law to publish data; though most of the information there is delayed by 6-12 months, and of interest mainly to those curious about how much money it takes to run a con - which is a lot, now - whether a charity donation has actually been made, and who's running the show.]
Yes, it's nice to drop into a board meeting, when I can get to them (for the benefit of readers: MFF has a public meeting at each con); but I'm not there merely to sate my curiosity, but to report on the convention for the benefit of the fandom - and the convention. As it happens, the only cons I've been able to get to recently have been this side of the pond; but I do read MFF's minutes, from which I know that its members also have hours of long, tedious work - most of which is incidental to the fun parts.
From my perspective, it's never been a matter of "you scritch my back, I'll scritch yours" - I trust it never will be. We're all working to serve our shared community, in the ways that seem best to us. On rare occasions, fiduciary duties mean we don't share precisely the same interests, but those cases are rare. Hopefully they'll remain so.
Sonious is right. 99% of what we record and report on conventions is done through long, tedious teasing of information from public tweets and announcements, video recordings, chats and even photographs (literally counting heads) - nowadays frequently via translation - as you can see from the extensive quotes from conventions in the prose above.
That's why, on WikiFur's annual articles, at least, facts such as event attendance typically come with a reference - usually to an official source; only in <~1% of cases does that say "personal communication with X". (One of my pet projects, which will also involve a fair bit of tedium, is creating a central, publicly-queryable database for such information on a platform that supports such references - and transferring the last 30 years of convention data to it.)
It's in a convention's interest and that of its attendees to publish information about itself. Because those attendees are furry fans, their interests are, broadly speaking, our interests; so WikiFur records and present a significant portion of that. Convention staff are often intimately involved. Indeed, if you read the section of discussion after the one I just linked, you'll find FrostTheFox from Furvana, and a certain Woody - who may be familiar to you from MFF - discussing how to represent the attendance of online events, and coming to much the same conclusion; that it'd be incorrect to show them in existing lists, at least in that case, and that a separate listing is appropriate.
[In a few cases, such as Form 990, and similar business records in the UK and Sweden, it's actually the law to publish data; though most of the information there is delayed by 6-12 months, and of interest mainly to those curious about how much money it takes to run a con - which is a lot, now - whether a charity donation has actually been made, and who's running the show.]
Yes, it's nice to drop into a board meeting, when I can get to them (for the benefit of readers: MFF has a public meeting at each con); but I'm not there merely to sate my curiosity, but to report on the convention for the benefit of the fandom - and the convention. As it happens, the only cons I've been able to get to recently have been this side of the pond; but I do read MFF's minutes, from which I know that its members also have hours of long, tedious work - most of which is incidental to the fun parts.
From my perspective, it's never been a matter of "you scritch my back, I'll scritch yours" - I trust it never will be. We're all working to serve our shared community, in the ways that seem best to us. On rare occasions, fiduciary duties mean we don't share precisely the same interests, but those cases are rare. Hopefully they'll remain so.