Any time folks sell stuff for a living, there is usually a method of determining how well the salesperson is doing in terms of customer retention. In the insurance business, it's usually called a lapse ratio. When an insurance policy goes out of benefit due to non-payment of premiums, it is generally said to have lapsed. An insurance policy is a unilateral contract, meaning that only one of the parties making the contract can break it. That is the client and that is what he does when he decides to quit making the premium payments.

If the salesperson has a high lapse ratio, it will affect his compensation in some manner. It can also lead to termination if it gets high and stays high. It is an indication that something is wrong in the way he is marketing his products. It usually means that he is either misleading folks in order to makes a sale, or is neglecting the client after the sale is made. Or, it could be that he is not qualifying his prospects and is selling products to folks who really can't afford them. Either way, it's a bad thing, and it's terribly counterproductive for both the company and for the salesperson himself. It's a waste of time. He would have generally been better off doing nothing than selling a product which lapses early on.

Think about that when you look in Node Heaven and check the number of writeups you have there. Compare that to your total number of writeups remaining. Let's say that you have 20 writeups in Node Heaven and 200 writeups which still exist in the nodegel. That would give you a Node Lapse Ratio of 9%. Take out any Nuke Requests or Title Edit Requests and fiddle with the numbers in any other way that makes you feel justified, but the bottom line is that the stuff in Node Heaven represents a waste of time for both you and for the Editors. I think one thing users overlook here is the reputation they get with the Editors over time. A high Node Lapse Ratio is an indication of a problem, and the Editors will try and help the user solve the problem . . . up to a point.

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