The term "ghosting a convention" is when a person attends and hangs around, but has not paid the organizers to do so. It’s seen as a major faux pas in the furry fandom due to the amount of time, effort and money their fellow fans put forth in order to put on the events.

Those who support the festivities through their patronage, therefore, should be praised for putting their time and money forth to support their gathering of choice. For the relationship between convention and attendee is symbiotic.

Instead, certain events seem to have started to shun the precedent of sharing how many furs attended their celebrations. Like a tree falling in the forest, the con did occur; but if you look back years from now, there will be no hard evidence of how many gathered. In essence, it is the attendees who have been ghosted.

Which is why I am writing this piece today, concerning a worrisome trend that a handful of events seem to have taken - including some of the largest events in our fandom. Conventions, as of late, have been trying to push away from publicly putting forth their attendance counts.

Update 5/24: An updated tentative count was released by BLFC in the comments below.
Update 6/16: FWA has provided their counts with the video of closing ceremonies in comments below.
Update 6/16: AnthOhio, which took place in late May after the article was written, has as of today not released attendance numbers on any internet media platform. They did release charity numbers of $13,000 raised.

The 2014 Ursa Major Awards, for the Best Anthropomorphic Literature and Art of the calendar year in eleven categories, were announced and presented at an awards ceremony at the Morphicon 2015 convention, in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, May 1 from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. EST.

The Ursa Major Awards are a popular-vote award. 2,851 ballots were cast in eleven categories between March 15 and April 15, 2015. Not everyone voted in all categories, although there were fewer single-category votes than usual. All voters were required to state what country they were voting from, and about 90 countries were named. Some, such as Care-A-Lot, were obviously fictitious, but those that appeared to be genuine by e-mail domain names included Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Taiwan (Republic of China), Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The most votes came from the United States, followed by Taiwan (the Republic of China).

Winners and runners-up after the break:

Fursuiter and fan organizer PandaGuy (Jon Albers) died Sunday at age 44, after congestive heart failure accompanied by diabetes. [tip: Antimon]

PandaGuy was an ardent fursuiter, acting out the eponymous PandaGuy (created in 1996, rebuilt twice), Amiri Lion, Bamboozle the panda/coon, Boris Bear, Arkune Raccoon, and Big/Little Jabari.

Despite suffering from heart failure previously in 2004, PandaGuy threw himself into organizing PandaGuy's Picnic, held annually to 2005. He was a guest of honor for Mephit Fur Meet 12 in 2008.

Furry icons on social media sites went dark on April 5, 2019, following a tweet from Dogbomb that he would be passing on soon. Known for his German Shepherd fursona, Tony Barrett had modelled his character in honor of Rodger, a canine companion he'd lost, who had been with him for 14 years.

Dogbomb's wardrobe consisted of a Hawaiian-style lei, which is why some of the recent icons have been placing the flowery necklace against a black background, a design put forth by The Forgess, pictured here.

It stands out as a beacon, as Tony had been in his life.

Update 4/8: Fixed statement where Lei art was falsely credited to Trinity. Thanks to BlindWolf8 for the correction.