At 4/22/13 04:28 PM, darknessdweller wrote:
Hai everyone. There's some major trends in B/P I wanted to talk about...(etc)
As the current caretaker of NGLogs, I have had the opportunity to track general user activity and volume since late 2006. You are correct - in 2008 it was Newgrounds best year. Blam / Protect ratios were about 1:2.; there were over 120 submissions a day; and the site was very active.
In 2008, NGLogs averaged over 4000 log requests per month, with over 300+ active users. Some logged daily, some weekly, some randomly - but it was humming. (check out the graph)
Since then, for the following 5 years, activity steadily declined, almost linearly. Now, in early 2013, activity at NGLogs has dropped down to it's lowest in years.
Now, I will admit I haven't fixed all the quirks in it, but from a statistical view, it does the job well.
Going beyond the obvious drop in usage, and digging around the data, I've discovered that:
a) The number of flashes being submitted to the portal on a daily basis have dropped 40+% since 2008's max
Perfect example: Clock day 2008 had over 1,200 submissions. 2009 was 900+. 2010 saw 400. 2011 barely hit 200. And 2012 was almost a non-event
b) More of the "older" accounts have stopped logging. Most of the logs are done by lower-level users who have just started and are trying to build up stats.
c) The Blam/Protect ratio is now hovering around 1:20, maybe worse
I have an idea of what has transpired: All of the creative users in 2008 were younger, and had time to not only create flashes, but spend time voting on them, socializing, and spreading the word. As time progressed, many of them graduated, went to university, got jobs - real life got in the way.
Add in a recession and some economic issues, and now all of these artists spend less time on the portal. The submission volume (and overall quality) start to drop. The various crews start to break up and go their separate ways.
The new users that come on board seem to be following the general course of this generation: "what's in it for me? How can I get immediate gratification?". Seeing that users are graded on total points, and that passing something is generally easier than blamming it, the newer users just pass what they can. Oh, some do vote fairly - but people's version of fair can vary greatly.
In addition, we are constantly battling "shovelware" and "ripoff" accounts - users that don't create original work, but submit copies of other work to either promote other products and sites, or to garner points and attention for themselves.
Overall, it's an aging problem. The users of 2008, 5 years later, have mostly grown up and moved on. Those who've come in are more self-centered (not ALL of them, but a good portion). High school kids are more interested in posting their daily lives on facebook and twitter, living life vicariously through social media. They want to be entertained, and they entertain eachother by sharing inane portions of their day (@GeekGurl2010: Just passed a waffle thru my nose. LOL)
Tom, Wade and everyone else here want this site to flourish and grow - and the only way to do that, IMHO, is to make it more attractive to real flash and audio artists. People need incentive to take time from their day to be creative, and right now, time is money...so that's where we go.
It's my thought that Newgrounds should hold 4 contests a year (every three months) in a few different categories (games, stories, experimental, etc); judging would be done by Newgrounds staff and hand-selected users (NOT the general populace); the top winners and runners-up would win a reward (in the form of a VISA gift card, amount TBD). At the end of the year, a final "best of the year" judging is done, and the "NEWGIES" (Newground's version of the Grammy's) award would go to the best entry in each category (with another prize) - and those users would be showcased on Newgrounds homepage for the following year, until the next annual judging.
Yes, it does involve some cash outflow, but sometimes you have to invest in something to get something back. When word gets out that Newgrounds is attracting new artists and rewarding the best for their work, you'll get more submissions and hopefully more quality.
But the second part of this is to revamp the voting system. We've kicked around a lot of ideas, and I'll skip regurgitating them here - but the voting process has to be redone to help keep fairness in the process.
Sorry about MY long rant, but you did bring up a lot of points in your post. It's true - it all becomes visible here in the BP 51+ list. So now that we see the symptoms - how do we clean up the cause?
