GameFAQs Contests
Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1190
charmander6000 posted... Prediction time It doesn't look like a contest is going to be announced today. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
On
8/24/2015, we will be having a re-run of the "Which of the three
current consoles do you now own?" poll. This was one of only 2 polls
all year to break 30000 votes, although it broke 30000 votes at a time
when vote totals were slightly higher on average than they are right
now. It's not likely that this re-run will also break 30000 votes. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
bump --- l_l |
It's weird that almost a third of voters don't own a current gen system. It's still early, but I don't see the number dropping drastically. --- BOP Results: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB9%20BOP.xls Congrats to raytan for winning the Guru Contest |
2346
votes at the end of the first hour in this poll. That would put this
poll on track to finish between 23000 and 26000 votes, which is clearly a
huge step behind the same poll from only 6 months ago which barely
broke 30000 votes. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
-LusterSoldier- posted... 2346 votes at the end of the first hour in this poll. That would put this poll on track to finish between 23000 and 26000 votes, which is clearly a huge step behind the same poll from only 6 months ago which barely broke 30000 votes. This is just depressing now. I have to wonder just how much worse will the votals get? will there be a point in a year or two where we average something like 5k? the votals might actually be the reason SBAllen stops doing contest, not money. And I also have to say this is on Allen. It's his job to get people interested in the site and its features, including the PoTD and he is failing miserably at it. He also admitted a while ago that the site gets much less FAQs and Reviews than few years ago. So this lack of interest isn't limited to just the Poll. Eventually, this site will be known just for the boards/community. --- ... |
GameFAQs
was just too slow to change with the times. They didn't add Let's Plays
and Wikis until years after they got popular and when they did the
community never really supported them. However, increasing the vote totals will always be a low priority. Even if Let's Plays and Wikis took off we would probably see a decrease in vote totals. GameFAQs is a type of site where you don't need to go to the homepage, either through google searches or people bookmarking a specific page on the site. --- BOP Results: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB9%20BOP.xls Congrats to raytan for winning the Guru Contest |
Yesterday's
poll finished with 26035 votes, just barely breaking the upper limit of
26000 votes that I posted in my previous post. abdou posted... This is just depressing now. I have to wonder just how much worse will the votals get? will there be a point in a year or two where we average something like 5k? the votals might actually be the reason SBAllen stops doing contest, not money. And I also have to say this is on Allen. It's his job to get people interested in the site and its features, including the PoTD and he is failing miserably at it. He also admitted a while ago that the site gets much less FAQs and Reviews than few years ago. So this lack of interest isn't limited to just the Poll. Eventually, this site will be known just for the boards/community. I know at some point, the vote totals have to stop declining. I just don't know when that will happen. I would have to see consistent monthly vote totals for a period of 24 months (2 full years) before I can definitely say for sure that vote totals have hit rock bottom. Also, even the boards have been losing activity as well, so it isn't just the polls that are struggling. The biggest threat to this site isn't even the vote totals, but the loss in activity on the boards. Our total number of dedicated users that visit and use the boards on a regular basis has been declining over the past several years. This poses a serious long-term survival issue for GameFAQs because our declining number of users also means fewer users to submit FAQs for the site. And as we all know, it is the FAQs that generate a vast majority of our total traffic. Considering that our current FAQ writers are a subset of our current userbase (the group of people that vote in the polls), the average age of our FAQ writers should be increasing at the same rate as our entire userbase as a whole. This is a bad thing for the long-term survival of GameFAQs since you can't count on our current group of FAQ writers to still be writing FAQs in 10 years or 20 years from now. At some point in the future, some of our current FAQ writers will call it quits when it comes to writing FAQs. Thus, there is a high demand to bring in younger people to fill in the void of older writers who will eventually quit writing FAQs. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
But young people are the ones using the FAQs. Without them, they'll never be able to beat games to be able to write about them. --- Hey man, LlamaGuy did encrypt the passwords. With what? ROT-13? -CJayC |
Considering that our current FAQ writers are a subset of our current userbase (the group of people that vote in the polls), the average age of our FAQ writers should be increasing at the same rate as our entire userbase as a whole. This is a bad thing for the long-term survival of GameFAQs since you can't count on our current group of FAQ writers to still be writing FAQs in 10 years or 20 years from now. At some point in the future, some of our current FAQ writers will call it quits when it comes to writing FAQs. Thus, there is a high demand to bring in younger people to fill in the void of older writers who will eventually quit writing FAQs. This is a very good point that SBAllen seems to not get. He is doing some sort of revenue-sharing program for FAQ writers where they get real money for the hits their FAQs generate. He is trying to encourage current authors to keep writing but what he doesn't get is that this site needs some new blood. Our userbase keeps getting older and many of us are moving on. Activity across the board is declining. Whenever this issue is brought to Allen, he says how people now use Google to get to where they want and leave right after. He needs to find a way to make new visitors stick around and participate in activities (poll, boards, FAQs etc) or else this site will die, because we are obviously constantly losing old users and this is affecting everything, from the poll to FAQs. --- ... |
abdou posted... This is a very good point that SBAllen seems to not get. He is doing some sort of revenue-sharing program for FAQ writers where they get real money for the hits their FAQs generate. He is trying to encourage current authors to keep writing but what he doesn't get is that this site needs some new blood. Our userbase keeps getting older and many of us are moving on. Activity across the board is declining. I hope this revenue-sharing program will lure new FAQ writers, but the existence of this program has to be extremely visible to anyone who visits the site for the first time. If it's not immediately visible to someone visiting GameFAQs for the first time, we won't get too many people signing up for an account to submit FAQs so they can join the revenue-sharing program. And yeah, the massive increase in new visitors coming off Google and bypassing the homepage has very far-reaching and damaging effects on the site beyond just the lower vote totals. It affects other aspects of the site as well. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! (edited 8/25/2015 6:35:32 PM)report |
Hey, make sure to track the trends for this poll! /s |
I guess I will track this, but I don't expect anything interesting to come out of this poll. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
im reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally surprised by today's result, ridiculously disappointing, 50+ % , seriously?! --- l_l (edited 8/25/2015 9:06:38 PM)report |
2344
votes at the end of the first hour in today's poll. That is very
similar to the number of votes we had at the end of the first hour in
the "3 console ownership" poll from only 2 days ago. However, I don't
expect today's poll to get as many votes as that poll. Today's poll
should finish between 23000 and 25000 votes. Also, I discovered that I did track poll updates for the same poll that happened back in 2012. I finally got around to creating poll updates and trend charts for the 2012 poll, although I won't be posting that until after today's poll ends. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
Poll updates and trend charts for yesterday's poll: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sgoT5Dqa3NHIv34DwZ37F-kp5waaHco4MDRDEpNZOdI/pub?gid=1341118502 The 2012 and 2015 polls both have very similar trends, but I will only be focusing on the trends from the 2015 poll. Since the "I have no idea" option dominated this poll, I will focus on that option first. "I have no idea" had a strong board vote and Power Hour. It continued to remain strong during the night vote. Then it dropped off during the early morning vote and performed worst during the late morning vote. It performed slightly better during the ASV when compared to the late morning vote. Once the ASV ended, it dropped off slightly during the SNV. "O" performed worst during the board vote, Power Hour, and night vote. It had a fairly average morning vote and performed best during the ASV and then dropped off slightly during the SNV. "A" performed worst during the board vote and Power Hour. It had an average night vote, ASV, and SNV while performing best during the morning vote as a whole. "B" had a strong board vote, but ultimately ended up having an average Power Hour. It performed very average during the night vote and morning vote. It performed worst during the ASV and best during the SNV. "AB" is the closest option to having consistent trends in this poll. It performed worst during the board vote and Power Hour. The night vote was only slightly above average, while the late morning vote and ASV were only slightly above average. This poll didn't show any interesting trends, so it was pretty much a dud if you wanted to see strange or extreme trends. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
Huh, Gamefaqs sent me a message threatening to take away my username with spaces if I don't log in every month. --- September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013 NEVER FORGET. |
I have seen some users who had spaces in their usernames and then one day suddenly had underscores it's a fate worse than death. Log in! --- ... |
So much for a contest announcement before September huh --- http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr345/Rakaputra/B8%20Girls%202012/pjbas.png LongLiveraytan |
I
might be too pessimistic but I think he will announce it in November
around this site's anniversary and the contest will start sometime early
2016. --- ... |
If it isn't announced in the next two weeks you are probably right. --- BOP Results: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB9%20BOP.xls Congrats to raytan for winning the Guru Contest |
pjbasis posted... So much for a contest announcement before September huh The only hope for a contest announcement before September would be next Monday, which would be the last day of August. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
That's true. --- http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr345/Rakaputra/B8%20Girls%202012/pjbas.png LongLiveraytan |
Bump --- No amount of rallying would let me beat raytan7585. Congrats to raytan7585 for winning the CB9 Guru Contest! |
It
would make more sense to me if we got the first contest match on the
anniversary than the nominations. Which would mean, they should start
very soon yes, but it could still happen. --- *2, *8,070,446 Kuroko no Basket *3, *6,495,240 Naruto |
It could happen if Allen goes back to the very short CJayC style nom periods. Or he skips noms altogether and he has another idea in mind. --- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJxwtAuWwAAbmea.jpg |
So hmm Last day of August hype? --- 3DS FC : 3411-1762-0066 |
Well,
we don't really need a whole month for the nomation period nor the
bracket predicting and it doesn't take forever to put up a bracket. --- *2, *8,070,446 Kuroko no Basket *3, *6,495,240 Naruto |
1 week for nominations and 3-4 weeks for bracket predicting. That puts the cut-off date for a 2015 contest at around mid-late September. --- BOP Results: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB9%20BOP.xls Congrats to raytan for winning the Guru Contest |
Best Game of 2010-2015 contest. He was just waiting for MGSV to become eligible --- http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr345/Rakaputra/B8%20Girls%202012/pjbas.png LongLiveraytan |
Does
anyone think the drop off in community involvement might be partly
because of the game boards becoming archived? I know that pretty much
every other major message board system archives posts, but on GameFAQS,
starting off as a n00b on a game board somewhere is how most people get
started, and archived posts (combined with a much more streamlined and
easy to use search function than on other message boards) kind of hamper
that by archiving all of the questions and comments that people would
initially sign up to make a topic about. Combined with a community that
is very hostile to repeated questions, I don't think this helped matters
any, even if there were other factors that contributed more. --- "What's the matter with bootblacking? We both like it very much!" This is Yesmar. Congrats to CBIX Guru Winner *Raytan*! (edited 8/31/2015 1:59:08 PM)report |
I don't think it helps, at any rate. It's killed off a lot of game boards. --- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJxwtAuWwAAbmea.jpg |
LOLContests posted... Combined with a community that is very hostile to repeated questions Are you talking about GameFAQs? This is like the only game site I've seen where people don't go "please use the search feature before making a topic, this very same question was answered 3 years ago in a different thread". --- Hey man, LlamaGuy did encrypt the passwords. With what? ROT-13? -CJayC |
Although
this is not directly related to the contests, I put in a feedback
ticket with a suggestion to allow people to vote in regular polls from
the results page. This wouldn't really boost vote totals, but when a
user links to the results page of the current poll on the message boards
and other people visit the link, they wouldn't need to search for the
poll if they wanted to vote. You might even get votes from people who
rarely vote in the polls. Voting in the poll from the results page is not a new idea, because we had this during the previous contest. However, I put in a suggestion to expand this to include all polls, not just the contest matches. I got a response from Allen that he might consider this idea. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! |
-hotdogturtle-- posted...
You're probably right. I haven't been on a game forum in ages, so I'm pretty much drawing on memories from a decade ago, plus other places online. My point still stands though! --- "What's the matter with bootblacking? We both like it very much!" This is Yesmar. Congrats to CBIX Guru Winner *Raytan*! |
Bump --- No amount of rallying would let me beat raytan7585. Congrats to raytan7585 for winning the CB9 Guru Contest! |
I
tracked the same poll that we had last year, in which the poll actually
ran for a total of 36 hours, 38 minutes. Of course, when I tracked the
same poll we had last year, I wasn't expecting it to go over 24 hours
in length. As with the same poll from last year, I am tracking today's poll as well. LOLContests posted... Does anyone think the drop off in community involvement might be partly because of the game boards becoming archived? I know that pretty much every other major message board system archives posts, but on GameFAQS, starting off as a n00b on a game board somewhere is how most people get started, and archived posts (combined with a much more streamlined and easy to use search function than on other message boards) kind of hamper that by archiving all of the questions and comments that people would initially sign up to make a topic about. Combined with a community that is very hostile to repeated questions, I don't think this helped matters any, even if there were other factors that contributed more. Topic archiving was first introduced in early 2008, during the height of our vote totals and board activity. It wasn't until after 2010 when vote totals and board activity started dropping off. If topic archiving was to blame for the drop off in board activity, it would have started at some point within 6 months after the introduction of topic archiving. So I don't think topic archiving is to blame here. --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! (edited 9/1/2015 9:36:44 PM)report |
Bump --- No amount of rallying would let me beat raytan7585. Congrats to raytan7585 for winning the CB9 Guru Contest! |
this poll would have made an amazing contest match lel --- l_l |
I always give this example as a 50/50 opinion thing The resulsts are just as expected --- 3DS FC : 3411-1762-0066 |
spooky96 posted... this poll would have made an amazing contest match lel Cait Sith vs Duck Hunt Dog. Who wins? --- "The people who play Final Fantasy 7 actually have lives and dont NEED polls" ~MajinUltima raytan: Champ without picking the champ |
I thought dogs would win comfortably (+55%) --- BOP Results: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB9%20BOP.xls Congrats to raytan for winning the Guru Contest |
charmander6000 posted... I thought dogs would win comfortably (+55%) Cats have seen surprisingly popular around nerds Guess it helps they have to do less effort and walking and give attention while still having a pet --- http://myvideogamelist.com/mylist/superange128 http://myanimelist.net/profile/superange http://vndb.org/u6633/votes |
red sox 777 posted... Huh, Gamefaqs sent me a message threatening to take away my username with spaces if I don't log in every month. the site has its priorities --- Donny: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter? Walter: No, Donny. These men are cowards. |
superange128 posted... charmander6000 posted...I thought dogs would win comfortably (+55%) cleaning the hairball/vomit and urine several times a week sucks big time. I do think I have the most despicable cat ever but still, cats make their owners work too. --- ... |
Bump --- No amount of rallying would let me beat raytan7585. Congrats to raytan7585 for winning the CB9 Guru Contest! |
Wow,
what a depressing stat topic. There isn't really anything Bacon can do
to save GameFAQs. I just hope that at the point they decide to stop
supporting the site, someone archives all of the old FAQs somewhere. I
know the younger generation would rather watch someone else play a video
game than play it themselves (something I still can't wrap my head
around) but us old timers can still make use of the text based guides. --- Game of the decade? More like Guru of the decade mirite? However, the Guru of the next decade so far is SuperNiceDog |
^lol what? If that were true the video game industry would be in trouble, but it only gets bigger and bigger --- http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr345/Rakaputra/B8%20Girls%202012/pjbas.png LongLiveraytan |
BlAcK TuRtLe posted... Wow, what a depressing stat topic. There isn't really anything Bacon can do to save GameFAQs. I just hope that at the point they decide to stop supporting the site, someone archives all of the old FAQs somewhere. I know the younger generation would rather watch someone else play a video game than play it themselves (something I still can't wrap my head around) but us old timers can still make use of the text based guides. I came up with an interesting theory that might somewhat explain why the boards are becoming less active over the past several years. GameFAQs is one of the few sites that uses the term "boards" to describe an online discussion platform. However, the term "forums" is far more commonly used on the internet to describe an online discussion platform. The very high prevalence of the term "forums" over "boards" is blamed solely on the fact that most forums on the internet are hosted on a pre-made forum package, such as phpBB, vBulletin, and IP.Board. There are other forum packages out there, but the 3 that I just named all use the term "forum". And since most forums on the internet are hosted on a pre-made forum package, this pretty much results in "forums" becoming the de-facto official term for an online discussion platform. GameFAQs is one of the few sites that does not use one of these forum packages, being entirely custom coded from the ground up. GameFAQs also established its forums nearly 16 years ago, before most of these forum packages even existed. Back then, there were very few options for a webmaster looking to set up their own forum and you generally had to code your own forum. Also, most webmasters do not have enough knowledge to code their own forum from scratch and also make sure their forum does not have any major site exploits or other security holes that would allow someone to attack your site. For this reason, webmasters will opt to use a pre-made forum package, which has been extensively battle tested over the years and would have far less security holes than trying to code your own forum. Today's younger generation of internet users are far more familiar with the term "forums", while the term "boards" sounds like a foreign language to them. So when someone visits GameFAQs for the first time, they might be far less likely to visit the forums because GameFAQs uses the term "boards" instead. I bet if GameFAQs started using the term "forums" over "boards", you would get a lot more traffic to the forums. It would be interesting if Bacon tested this theory out by setting up an alternative site layout where all references to the word "board" or "boards" were replaced with "forum" or "forums". Bacon could then run a short trial where people visiting the site for the first time would have a 50% chance of seeing one of 2 possible site layouts - one layout would have all references to the word "board" or "boards" being replaced with "forum" or "forums", while the other layout would be the normal layout you currently see right now. This would create 2 different groups of visitors and then Bacon could see which group of visitors are more likely to visit the forums and sign-up for an account. Although it would be very easy for Bacon to abandon the use of the term "boards" and switch over to "forums" instead, I would expect some opposition from our long-term users on this change. However, I can't imagine this change would generate the same level of complaints that we normally see with an actual site layout change (such as the 2006 and 2013 layout changes) since this is only replacing the term "boards" with "forums". --- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as raytan7585, Guru Champ! (edited 9/7/2015 12:15:55 AM)report |
I thought that "message boards" (and "bulletin boards") were used even before "forums" became more common. But let's be real here. You'd have to be some kind of idiot to find a "message board" and not be able to recognize what it means just by taking one look at the site, even if you've never seen that term in your life. "Hmm, this site has a series of 'threads' categorized into different games and subjects, just like every other forum I've ever been on. But where's the link to the forums? I can't find it, I'm leaving forever." --- Hey man, LlamaGuy did encrypt the passwords. With what? ROT-13? -CJayC (edited 9/7/2015 12:23:27 AM)report |
