@Debray - I'm probably going to get a lot of negativity considering what happened the last time someone even posted about this, but have you tried checking with individual members of an FS?
Before anyone loses their temper, please read what I'm typing first!
If you check the FS on ElvenStats and the scores haven't changed in 30 days (ish), there will be a black triangle next to the name. There are some FS who have several members according to the numbers in the server window, but when looking on ES only have 1 or 2 active members. Have you tried approaching them individually to see if they might be interested in joining your FS? It's not exactly a merger, because you might not be going through the AM. There's one I just looked at whose AM hasn't been active since 2019, but the FS has active members on the roster. I think this type of thing happens when the FS is open to auto-join.
I know there's a rather heated... debate, if you will - over "poaching" from other fellowships. I do
not think asking someone who joined an FS they may not have realized was inactive if they want to move to an active one would be considered "poaching".
I have updated your FS' page on ES:
Eclipse Dragon. You have 15 members, which is more than the FS I'm in has openings for.
The steps I would recommend:
- check their FS overview page. There are some who state outright they aren't looking to do anything but sit in their happy little home. They are 'on hiatus' from the weekly tasks, so they probably aren't the type of players you're looking for, even if they were interested in a merge.
- if their stated goals on the overview page do not conflict with your own FS' goals, check their ES page. (If you haven't used the site before, click "Fellowships" then type their name into the search bar until it appears, click on it - making sure the server matches [US6].)
- if it hasn't been done in a while, click "Refresh Member List". Some of the pages are outdated by weeks, some months, some years. It all depends on when someone last went to check anything on the site about that group. Some of them, of course, are fairly up to date.
- if your goal is tourneys and there are several (but not all) black triangles, click on the last bar of the tourney bar graph (far right) to see who participated in the last tourney. Other goals are harder to gauge at a glance. There is no way to tell about Spire scores - who's gotten what - but you can search the FS while in the Sinya Arda server to see if they have a current Spire score, and what it is, to see if whoever is currently active in the FS is even interested in the Spire.
- if you scroll to the bottom of the ES page for an FS, there should be a list of players who have joined/left the FS. While there's no indication of reasons given, if the entire FS is black triangles, you might look into those players' individual pages and see if they are active and possibly looking for a new FS to join.
It never hurts to ask as long as you're polite about it. And, this way, the player in question takes the first step by leaving their current FS so that you can send them an invite to yours. Maybe follow up after a week if they haven't accepted and ask them if they're still interested. Explain you do have spots to fill and if they aren't interested anymore, you would like to move to recruiting your next potentiate.
Yes, there may be groups where there are 7 listed players, 3 of the accounts are obviously the same person, and the AM is inactive. You will have to decide whether you want to accept multiple accounts held and operated by the same player when determining whether to approach the remaining players of such a group.
I will note: if the AM is active, it is common courtesy, I think, to approach them first. They may not have anything on their in-game FS overview page. It happens. But since the worst that can happen is that you end up needing to block a player if they respond with vitriol, it doesn't hurt to be courteous in sending a message to ask if they would be interested in combining your two groups.