My earlier statements were referring to the visibility of RP groups in "the community", not the relevance/engageability of RP groups to the (greater) community. It was not my intention to derail the thread in that direction.
My statements referred to groups that do have at least some relevance/engageability, yet are labelled as not having those characteristics, if that was not clear. This can decrease their visibility to (semi-)private channels.
I don't see things happening in space really increasing that visibility too much (apart from those CCP or IGS advertised ones) by itself. Well, I guess it would for random passers-by, but not for someone actively looking for RP. I'm pretty sure that I don't know about 99% of the stuff that goes around in space RP-wise, and what I do know is usually because it's mentioned in a channel. Even just spotting known RP-ers in local is somewhat of a rarity for me unless Ché visits clubs/events, or even if he visits clubs, thanks to interbus/holo (No offense, I use interbus/holo now and then.)