Newgrounds
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Newgrounds is a website headquartered in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, USA and created in 1995 that primarily hosts Adobe Flash animated films and games. The site was created and is owned by Tom Fulp, who still oversees every aspect and regularly produces in-house content. Newgrounds is distinguished from other Flash websites by its sophisticated and impartial automated submission/rating system.
Newgrounds allows its users to submit their own flash movies, games, and music, and view submissions from other users. Over the years Newgrounds has grown significantly, and must rely on the cooperation of its visitors. Visitors are encouraged to review the submissions. A rating system produces lists that direct visitors to the most popular flash movies and allows the site designers to easily locate any material that might be considered for deletion or promotion. The site has over 1 million registered members and over 350,000 flash submissions as of December 2006. Of those, around 90,000 still exist as a result of the auto delete system known as "blamming"[1][2].
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[edit] Voting system
The automated portal system has a simple voting system. One can vote from a scale of 0 to 5 on a submission. The system sends low-scoring submissions to the "obituaries", which is a collection of all blammed entries. An Entry is blammed when its score is below a certain threshold based on how many votes have been cast (with the required average score increasing with more votes). After a certain number of votes have been cast, if the submission hasn't hit the "blam" threshold, it is permanently kept on the website (unless if removed by an administrator, or if the author chooses to delete it). The deleting system was added recently to Newgrounds. If a submission meets a certain criterion (the submission has less than 400 votes, the submission hasn't been been featured in any collections or on the front page, and the submission hasn't won any awards), it may be deleted. Submissions with more than 200 votes (or which meet the other criteria) can still be deleted, but not by the author of the submission.
[edit] Experience and levels
There are two ways of increasing the worth of one's vote (known as "Voting Power"). The primary method is to gain "levels" by accumulating "experience points" (also known as "Grounds Gold"). Members may gain 10 experience points per day by voting on 5 different flash movies or games in the Flash Portal. The other method of increasing one's Voting Power is done through the acquiring of Blam and Protection points (see below). There are 30 levels within Newgrounds with progressively increasing requirements in terms of experience. The level requirements and range of levels 1 through 8 remain the same: 50 experience points to reach the next level. The requirement for level 30 is equivalent to the experience points of the user (or users, in the event of a tie) with the highest amount of experience. Levels 9 through 30 expand to even out the experience point differential between 9 and 30. Because they are variable, their requirements and range cannot be accurately given. To illustrate a user's level, an icon of a weapon is shown on each member's profile and below their names on each of their BBS posts (see here for both the icons and experience requirements for each level). Levels influence one's voting power in the Portal and to indicate amount of experience. Thus higher levels do often command respect. Certain levels also unlock secret flash and options. These secrets are not allowed to be discussed at all, as stated by the rules. There are reports from Tom Fulp that there will be 60 levels now, but he is not sure when the new levels will be intergrated.
[edit] Blam/protect system
The other method of gaining voting power is by accumulating "blams" and "saves" (also called "protects"). This system is often referred to as the "blam/protect" system. Existing primarily to encourage voters to vote on movies under judgement (thereby streamlining the process), users are given points based on whether or not their votes on flash under judgement reflect the flash's ultimate fate. Thus, if a user votes a two or higher on a flash that survives, the user is awarded a "save" or "protect point" and if a user votes a zero or 1 on a flash that is removed, the user is awarded a "blam point." Votes which are contrary to the flash's outcome award no points. While blams and saves are tallied independently, only their total is relevant to one's "rank," a title given to a user on their profile which also determines by what percentage their voting power is increased. For example, a "civilian" (a user with less than 100 combined blams and saves) receives no bonus to his or her voting power, however, an "Elite Guard Supreme Commander" (a user with more than 30,000 combined blams and saves) receives a 60% bonus. Each rank is also accompanied by another icon, a badge/insignia, however, unlike the level icon, this icon is only visible on a user's profile. See here for a more detailed explanation and a link to a list of ranks, icons, and statistics. In order to prevent group think and attempts to game the system, a submission's score and reviews are not shown while it is under judgement. Also, users who uniformly vote zero or five on flash under judgement are often detected and punished by having their accounts erased. On the portal's page, movies that are about to be blammed are highlighted in red, but due to the efficiency of the system, the red highlight is rarely seen, although some users see them at least 4-5 times a day.
[edit] Portal awards
When a movie or game is submitted to the Flash Portal, it has the chance to win any of the following awards:
- Daily Feature: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the day.
- Daily 2nd/3rd/4th/5th Place: Lesser awards given to high-scoring submissions each day.
- Weekly Users' Choice: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the week.
- Weekly 2nd/3rd/4th/5th Place: Lesser awards given to high-scoring submissions each week.
- Review Crew Pick: This award is given to the submission with the best "overall" score in reviews.
- Underdog of the Week: (Often referred to as UOTW) This award is given to the submission with the biggest discrepancy between the review score and the popular vote.
- Turd of the Week: (Frequently referred to as TOTW) This award is given to the submission with the lowest score that manages to pass judgement that week.
- Though UOTW and TOTW are seemingly bad awards, it's a reward none the less, the flash is the advitised on the flash portal page, this can make and break the animation or game but suprisingly despite its bad start they do fairly well.
Other awards:
- King of The Portal: (Frequently referred to as KOTP) This award is given to the user with the most portal awards during the previous month. Only the Daily Feature, 2nd, and 3rd Place awards count towards becoming KOTP, with each award being worth 3, 2, and 1 point respectively. Whichever user that accumulates the most points during the month will be awarded KOTP. The terminology King of the Portal is also often referred to as being held by StrawberryClock[3]. However, this should not be confused with the monthly award.
- Best of the Month: Since February 2005, the 2000 active highest-ranked (based on experience points) Newgrounds users, as well as moderators and nominees, have been able to vote for the best five submissions of the month (later updated to five movies and five games). Any submission that wins at least one of the first five awards above or is selected to appear on the front page within the month is eligible. Each of the ten winners is sent a check of $250 and usually another prize that changes from month to month and is often supplied by sponsors.
[edit] Front page icons
On April 19, 2001 the first front page icon for a user-submitted Flash game was posted under the heading "Tom and Wade Recommend:". The game that was posted was Taipan 3000 by Psycho_Goldfish, a remake of a popular Apple II game called Taipan.
Over the years, as Newgrounds received more and more quality submissions the "Tom and Wade recommend" section grew from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 4 to 6 icons. There are currently 20 icons on the front page. The rate at which these icons was updated also increased, from weeks to days, eventually leading to the removal of the "Tom and Wade recommend" heading and becoming a staple of the front page, making it easy for new users to the site to find quality content.
Originally the icons were created by Newgrounds admins, as were the short text descriptions (The same process used for the collections pages), but this proved to be extremely time consuming and soon users were given the ability to attach their own icons with their submissions, and write their own brief descriptions.
In January 2005 the front page archive was launched, keeping a month-by-month list of Flash content that was deemed to be worthy of display on the Newgrounds front page.
On July 26, 2005, the Icon Helpers system was launched for Newgrounds volunteers to make and submit icons for older Flash content that was lacking an icon, making the integration to automated collections pages much more effective.
