I've had to make some choices in how to handle data normalization that is going to affect upcoming stats. In particular, there are a lot of cases where there are multiple variations of a squad name.
Over the past 15+ years of data, there are 244 unique squad names used. Out of this, 32 were generated by me as virtual squad names to distinguish a single squad that was split to fly both sides (some Allies, some Axis). Most of the variations appear to be reformed squads.
There are two variations of reformed squads that I can see. One is where the squad creator has disappeared and didn't set permissions for someone else to take over squad membership maintenance. The squad was either disbanded when the account was dropped or the members left the squad and joined a new one. Most likely it was the latter case and the new squad had to choose a variation of the squad name to preserve uniqueness. I think there may even be a case where a squad reformed in mid-frame (two variations of a squad name showing in the logs and weird landing without taking off timed events shown).
The second type of reformed squad is a squad split. In this case, one or more members drop or are kicked from a squad and decide to form a variation of the squad as a new faction.
Of the 244 squads, 107 or about 44% appear to be reformed squads. This is based on manually comparing squad names. A more thorough analysis would be to look at what squads pilots are associated with over time, but for now, I'm going to assume I've chosen right.
For future stats, I do not plan to merge squad variations down to one. Technically, they are different, either through change in leadership or faction or virtual existence as a collection of members. For the most part, I don't think this will matter a lot, except when looking at squad and member longevity.
If anyone cares about this, speak up.
