The Newgrounds Portal is completely broken

Driven, if nothing else.

Age 38, Male

Motion Artist and In

Northern Rivers NSW

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The Newgrounds Portal is completely broken

Posted by Gerkinman - May 20th, 2013

Ill just get this out of the way, this is in no way a "i hate newgrounds" post or a complaint on the direction the site has been heading, but lately I have started to notice some really negative trends taking place on the site.

There are a lot of these issues, but this blog is mainly to do with how the portal currently works. As many as you have most likely noticed the portal is constantly under judgement which is leading to some huge issues. I have had some animations of mine take up to 48 hours to get out of judgement, which means that I am ineligible for a daily place. While getting a daily place used to be quite exciting and meant a bit of exposure, it is now the only means of getting people to even see your work. It used to be once your animation got out of judgement that people could see wether your work was in the blue or in the green in the portal and regardless of score you would get at least a couple of thousand hits. NOW with it taking so long to get through judgement, by the time its cleared most people tend to be lucky to have broken 500 hits and then the viewing stops as the work just disappears into the portal never to be seen again. I understand that this was what the latest and greatest pages were designed for but it doesn't seem like anybody is willing to venture further then the front page. I've been observing this trend not only on my own submissions but the submissions of others and the average number of views something tends to get once it gets out of judgement IF it doesn't get a daily place is lucky to break the 50 - 100 view mark. Of course those who already have an established fan base get their work through judgement in a matter of hours (an example would be Harry Patridge's latest cartoon which was submitted hours after my own and came through judgement almost a day before mine) but for those who dont have a large established fan base, or those who are trying to build a fan base it creates a handy cap that is almost impossible to be broken. And honestly, its frustrating and disheartening enough for me to stop recommending animators who are just starting out to post their content here.

At first I thought the issue stemmed from a lack of people visiting the site, but then I saw the numbers people like Spazkids animations brought in while on the front page and realised the REAL problem is the lack of incentive for people to go through to the portal and vote on new submissions.

I dont have any solutions for this problem, although I wish I did, and I know you people on the staff at Newgrounds are more aware of these issues then anyone. BUT by that same token, the fact this has gone on so long without being corrected makes me wonder what the point of this site is and who they want submitting things, because at the moment, its clear that the site isn't interested in catering to upcoming and new talent to the levels it needs to in order to keep new blood joining into the future.

Thoughts anyone?

Also I released a new cartoon last week, here it is if you didn't see it when it was released.

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LeafLock 2013-05-20 01:06:48

I think the staff are already doing as much as they can to improve the situation without implementing some sort of portal mod system. They already lay out an incentive of $100 a month to a random voter (though i think this number could be increased to one a week), and if they automated the system, or had mods approve flash, it wouldn't be newgrounds anymore. I feel your pain though, and all I can say is just keep posting to promote awareness of the problem. Get people interested.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 01:06:48

Most days only one submission ends up getting blammed, it almost really negates the need for the blaming system.

Twisted4000 2013-05-20 01:16:37

I feel your pain. I remember those days back when I got excited for getting a daily award, but now it's pretty much a necessity to getting any exposure at all, not a bonus things. But regardless of what's going down with this one website, keep moving forward is all I can really say.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 01:16:37 (Updated 2013-05-20 01:17:31)

Oh nothing is going to stop me creating content, its just finding a reason to keep posting my animations here thats becoming harder.

freakworld10 2013-05-20 01:20:56

I think thats actually the purpose of the under submission folder on the front page (but i doesnt seem to work). I guess nowadays most people are too fed up by such sites as youtube that instantly give you videos you like on your front page, and Newgrounds is one of the last sites to have a more traditional portal (also more complicated to prevent spam). Oh well but (like LeafLock) I also want the site to stay the way it is. As long as you check out the new submissions page every few days (as a viewer) it isnt really a problem. But I agree with it being stupid for animators though. Now you can just hope that there are enough hardcore voters who watch every submission in the portal and (if it is good enough) makes the 1-5th place or something.

Wow thats a lot of text.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 01:20:56

Yeah, the issue isnt with the idea of a portal itself, I still think the portal is a great idea. It just doesn't seem to be getting enough traffic into it to sustain it properly. They need to either lower the number of votes something needs by half or more and make it 100 submissions long as opposed to 50 before it will function anything like it used to.

MindChamber 2013-05-20 01:36:05

1) reduce the judgement limit to half, NG doesnt get spammed anymore, so we dont need long judgment times.
2) stretch that incoming table on the classic portal down. bring up the number of incomimg submissions to a 100
3) have a tab option in featured picks for games and movies to be swapable to incomimg.
4) get rid of Pbots top picks, stretch incoming to cover that new space, and highlight pbots picks a different color.
5) add more incentives for voters, besides that 100, like credits or specific medals, etc.

K im done. let me know when youve coded all that.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 01:36:05

I will forward this to god so he can code it in.

Tropicana 2013-05-20 04:11:28

Sadly I cant quit my day job to create cartoons.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 04:11:28

Amen to that brother.

AeronMusic 2013-05-20 04:56:32

I really agree with your post. Its clearly the same for the audioportal. But yeah, you have so many retards there voting 0 and there goes your work. I dont know whats wrong with people these days.... I hoped on a feature in the audioportal for some more song on the frontpage, like 10 random songs of the week or something. So more people will listen to your songs.
+1 for your post.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 04:56:32

The site just seems to lack direction in general anymore, I dont know what the deal is.

I-smel 2013-05-20 06:45:47

I assumed the lack of voting on new cartoons was less people coming to the site aswel, but actually now I do wonder if it's down to the re-design.

That's super interesting. Makes ya wonder if the solution is to drive people toward unseen cartoons, or to revamp to a new system that suits the new direction of traffic... Is the way it worked before the RIGHT way, and is it still relevant?

I think I don't know enough about why people use this stuff to actually make a smart decision about it, but boy I sure hope someone out there does, and puts a serious design hat one.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 06:45:47

Yeah I really wonder how much tracking has been built into the redesign so they can see where traffic is going exactly. Would be interesting to see.

I-smel 2013-05-20 07:06:19

Maybe there's just so much generated content on the internet now that people don't wanna dive into unranked movies any more. I mean what does everyone do on porn sites? fuckin straight to Top Rated; and no person on earth is checking out youtube videos by Most Recent. It's 2013 and I have a billion other things to do on the internet, so checkin out some guy's first game is a really niche hobby.

Maybe Newgrounds should accept that there isn't the same culture of people playing everything that comes in any more, and remove the "Unrated" label. So instead of having a Stage-1 to progress through, games and movies are just uploaded, and exist forever in a complete state.
You could argue that new, unseen content wouldn't get any exposure, but we're already there, right? At least removing the Under Judgement label would make it stop looking like it's broken.

I dunno, I'm just throwin an idea out there. It does seem to rub against one of the good things about Newrounds, which is that brand new ametuers can get seen and get reviews, but how useful is that feedback, and is that culture still here, and can Newgrounds survive focusing on that side of the site instead of focusing on delivering entertainment to content consumers?
It's fucking big questions, someone needs to take a straight week to just figure out Newgrounds.

Also on porn sites: the "Videos Being Watched" tab is a cool and useful feature, I'm just sayin.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 07:06:19

You bring up some brilliant points, I really hope some of the staff read your comment and take some of these ideas on board. Really clever. Sorry I dont have anything smarter to say, I just think you hit the nail on the head as they say.

Asandir 2013-05-20 07:06:39

There are indeed not enough votes. I even started to recast my votes on flashes, the highest I counted was voting on something 5 times before it finally passed. Right now, decreasing the needed amount of votes could help to make the judgement process faster.
I saw your flash and I liked it - I can also understand that it becomes frustrating when stuff takes several days to pass and doesn't get many views - that flashes from almost a whole week compete for daily awards is a huge problem, since it puts down new animators with great stuff.
To be honest, there are so many broken things about the flash portal (icons don't work either, and that's the case since 2 months I think) and there doesn't seem to be a fix around the corner - and sometimes I fear that it would be too less, too late :/

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 07:06:39 (Updated 2013-05-20 07:48:33)

Yeah, I kind of felt like Newgrounds was finally starting to pick up steam again after the redesign but then everything just sort of broke and stopped working. Incredibly frustrating.

Im glad you liked my flash, I try to keep them varied.

Labraxadores 2013-05-20 07:42:07

A niche little idea I had was throwing in the front page a little selection of recent submissions which gets updated as they are submitted. There, it would all be a game of attractiveness and looks bringing people into viewing your movie. It definitely wouldn't solve the problem, but would help in mitigating it.

Also, grats on the super interesting post. It definitely made me think.

Now, about The Strongest Square, it was a good movie, but I'd say that the pacing was definitely too fast. Even throwing in some moments of stop motion or repeating a certain frame would work.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 07:42:07

Thanks for the feedback. There is a feed for animation on the front page but its all the way down the bottom and you have have to do quite a bit of scrolling. Not entirely convenient or showing that the site cares much about the content.

Also thanks for the feedback on strongest square, it was supposed to be fast paced, I consider each of my shorts to be an experiment to learn from. I just uploaded another short to Newgrounds today, you can check it out here.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/
view/618015

I-smel 2013-05-20 07:49:14

@Labraxadores There IS a feed of latest submission on the front page.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 07:49:14

Just allllllllllllllll the way at the bottom where nobody will see it.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 08:00:45

Currently 44 movies under judgement and 21 games. Pretty obvious where the traffic is going.

VicariousE 2013-05-20 08:11:17

Damn, the way you put it, the 'Classic" Portal, should BE the Front Page, maybe about halfway down?
After last years redesign, I couldn't believe the wasted space, especially along the bottom. Maybe if the movie/audio/game/art pods turned into bars, that would expand upon hovering (like the 7 top menu buttons, we could clear out the bottom half for classic portal type stuff... or even the classic portal itself!

A few of the old timers who are still here, say sidelining the Portal, which really did make NG, is killing this place. If anything (a simple fix): the new UJ pod on the left, should be right under the newspost :|

I'm very glad you wrote this post Mr. Gerkinman, I had no idea the problem was this severe.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 08:11:17

Its been here since the redesign but its the fact that its getting worse instead of being fixed that caused me to write this blog post.

VicariousE 2013-05-20 08:29:22

Having a constantly updated Favorites list (through Fanning people) doesn't help the UJ stuff either :|

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 08:29:22

I dont follow enough people for it to be a problem but I can definitely see how it would be.

LeafLock 2013-05-20 09:22:41

Well a lot of that boils down to people only voting 5 and 0. Mostly 5. How do you fix this? No idea. Just strive to vote based on content. :\

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 09:22:41

Yeah, its a tough one. I see a lot of low scoring stuff that I find more entertaining than the high scoring stuff at times. Its all so open to taste.

TheMAM 2013-05-20 09:34:04

I have noticed some pretty good animations getting only 700 views, which isn't really fair at all. However, I can't really be the one to talk. I'm basically a person of the inconsiderate audience your talking about. Few years ago, I'd look up submissions in the flash portal for some hidden gems and just Vote 5 on all of em (those were the days :P), but now ever since the redesign it doesn't really feel the same anymore. With the evolution of DeviantArt and Youtube, I find less reason to help this site out, and only seem to come here just to view a video or play a game I see on the front page. While perceiving the issue here, maybe the general audience does the same?

What really sucks though is people limiting their selves to people with NG history, such as Spazkid, RicePirate, HappyHarry, etc. For that, I'm an open person and do actually scout for artist with good talent and potential, but without their chance of exposure, it becomes quite the challenge. (Also, what the fuck? You've been here for how many years and only a few hundred views on your work? Seriously? Come on people!)

Bottom line is this site has become less of an art exposure site that it was intended to be and had become a place of recycling artists with history. Not that there is anything wrong with those artists, that is. We do enjoy their talent with what they do, but a little advertisement towards oncoming talent wouldn't do much harm. :/

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 09:34:04

That has always semi been the case I think. There are so many could do scenarios, its hard to know what would work and what wouldn't work.

S-K 2013-05-20 09:48:50

Welcome to the mainstream internet I'm afraid and I guess the newgrounds portal systems haven't caught up yet to deal with it. To slightly misquote Yahtzee Croshaw "we're throwing messages in a bottle into an ocean already full of them"

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 09:48:50 (Updated 2013-05-20 11:50:34)

I met him once, great guy.

TomFulp 2013-05-20 09:49:12

I-smel sums up a big thing that has been on my mind - whether the judgment process really is relevant anymore. The system was originally important because we were the only site on the web that allowed people to instantly upload movies and games, and there was gonna be a ton of abuse and storage limitations that required the help of the community to filter it.

Nowadays though, you can upload anywhere. People who don't create content can also get a lot more personal satisfaction by sharing things they like socially, by liking on Facebook or posting something on their Tumblr. People aren't getting that much satisfaction from anonymously helping a random game or movie through the judgment process of a website that doesn't have nearly the eyeballs of sites like YouTube.

And do artists really enjoy having the users decide whether their content stays or goes? You can upload your movie to YouTube and you have a guaranteed home, it's there on your page and if it sucks that's on you. Why spend extra time uploading your movie to a less popular site, where some people you don't know might decide it isn't good enough to exist? Why is that even anyone else's call anymore in this day and age of unlimited storage?

And would moving the Classic Portal to the front page of NG solve this? Nope! Of our top 10 submissions yesterday, only 2 were actually items featured on the front page. Our problem isn't just where we need to promote stuff, it's the reality that the majority of NG fans aren't constantly checking up on NG nowadays, they are doing a million other things on the Internet.

And to get to another root of the problem - look at every single one of your front page posts from this past year. They are all about your YouTube videos. How about you make a front page post on YouTube and promote all your activity on Newgrounds? Oh wait, YouTube doesn't let you do that?

Where is the link to Newgrounds alongside the Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links on your YouTube page? You chose not to link to NG but you did choose to use our front page to promote your YouTube videos and you aren't the only guy who does that, everyone is so excited about having Facebook / Twitter / YouTube followers but they never stop to think that MAYBE someday their NG followers could be more important than all that, and maybe they should send some people over to NG once in a while.

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 09:49:12

Hi Tom, always nice to see you take the time to post here, not because you run the site, but because in the end you are the one who knows what direction you want to take it.

I, like you agree with I-smel on this first point. The portal system was exactly what it needed to be when it was introduced, and it did exactly what it had to up until recently in my opinion. It was a relatively fair, if not flawed system, but it allowed a lot of great talent to be exposed and for quality work to be discovered even if it wasn't going to win a daily place.

What you say about how social media has affected the landscape is just as true. Once upon a time you decided what was on front page and thats where the views went. Now all it takes is one tweet of a youtube link from someone like Chris or Arin and that video is flooded with views. Then one of their friends retweets it and on it goes. Its also worth noting that thanks to the youtube app almost 50% of my youtube traffic is coming from mobile devices. Until Newgrounds becomes social media compliant in the same way its going to struggle to remotely compete.

Do artists really enjoy having users decide whether their content stays or go? No, I don't think they do, nor do I think there ever was a time when they did. Ironically, the sort of spam that was once blammed through the portal is now flourishing on youtube, I guess showing that content is key as opposed to quality, or maybe its just that tastes have changed.

Im also not suggesting moving the classic portal to the front page, I think its a silly idea. BUT the classic portal as it stands, with 44 animations in judgement and 21 games in judgement when it can only display 50 projects at once isn't a great solution either. I understand thats what the latest and greatest pages were for, and conceptually they were a great idea, but as you said, people are coming here every couple of days and just looking at the front page, rendering them rather useless.

As for my front page posts, your right, they do link to my youtube BUT thats not to say that if I could embed my Newgrounds video posts into my journal I wouldn't, in fact I would love to be able to embed my Newgrounds videos into my Newgrounds blog. I think it makes more sense to promote new content that way then it does for me to embed my youtube vids. BUT Newgrounds only allows me to embed a youtube/vimeo video OR paste in a link to my Newgrounds project, and if analytics have taught me anything its that people are too lazy to click links, so embedding videos from a site that allows it ends up becoming the smarter option. Im not interested in getting people to move from Newgrounds to Youtube to follow me, they can if they want but its not why I post the videos here. Its purely out of convenience. When you include the functionality to embed my Newgrounds content into my blog, you have my guarantee thats what ill do.

As for the last point, let me get this out of the way, I have been coming here for over 10 years now. Newgrounds has always felt like home to me. Even during the two years when I was hardly animating I was coming here on a daily basis. This is where I learnt to animate, this is where I made a large deal of the friends I have had over these years. You yourself frontpaged a number of my works over the years, and although I never gathered much of a fanbase out of that... I still appreciated you trying to put my work infront of people.

That said, im also on my way to 30 and I work as a professional animator and motion designer/film editor. Unlike a lot of animators who have found financial success making parodies and yelling into the mic, I have had to make myself come across as professional as possible over the last few years, which means keeping things relatively clean. I get to work a 40 hour week in an office and then come home to work another 40 hours on my own content that a handful of people will look at if im lucky. I have come to terms with this.

My youtube has some nasty content to be sure, and some unprofessional stuff at that, but most outlets view youtube pages as dumping ground, with Vimeo being my bread and butter for getting work. If I was to say I hadn't lost potential clients after saying I made stuff for Newgrounds id be lying. Newgrounds has a stigma as a home for little more then extreme violence and pornography, and while thats not the case anymore for the most part, that stigma from many years ago still hangs over the sites head. I spend a lot of time talking to people at festivals and in the industry of animation and gaming and the ones that do know of Newgrounds know of it as "that porn site" and unprofessional to the point of being a handicap. Do I think its true or accurate? Not at all, there is some great talent on this site in all areas, loads of great talent BUT thats not what my employers see. And when I do suggest Newgrounds to other animators (which I was doing for a while when the video player launched), wether they be 3d, stop motion or otherwise, they scoffed for the very same reason. If something like Newgrounds has the chance of stopping me getting a meal on my plate (fairly or otherwise), then I wont promote it.

I guess the final reason Youtube/Facebook/Twitter are so exciting is because it is so easy to interact with fans, friends or colleagues. I can stream myself animating on youtube and answer questions, I can talk directly into my audience in my vlogs and show them what I have coming up. I can answer questions instantly and at any time. Im not limited to waiting until my 7 day waiting period is up so I can make an update about something I released 5 days earlier. People have short attention spans and they want things now. I find it more exciting then annoying in a lot of ways because its a lot to keep track of, but we live in the age of social media and fan interaction which these other platforms allow but Newgrounds makes difficult. Im not saying its because you dont want to do these things or cant do these things, im sure theres a tonne of features you want to implement but cant because its a logistical nightmare.

Once again, im not saying any of this out of hate, if anything its concern and frustration. Newgrounds has made me who I am today, BUT the way things are currently are as depressing as they are frustrating. I see people hitting it big here and taking off never to post here again once they have a decent following elsewhere.

Im saying these things because im a content creator, I have been pouring my heart and soul into making things for this website for 10 years, I havent left when others have. Im saying these things because I have young kids coming to me asking for solutions to the fact nobody is seeing their work, which is fair enough when your young and starting out, but then Im looking at my own work and realising that I have the same problem and that makes me wonder, whats the incentive for posting here at all. The joy of animating for me and a lot of other people isn't success , high scores or a big fan base, its the simple pleasure of knowing people are seeing your work, and right now, thats not how it feels. Lastly im saying these things because I dont want to see this site and its legacy disappear in the future.

S-K 2013-05-20 10:10:57

I think reputation counts for a lot more on the web then it used to, case in point the whole youtube thing Tom mentioned, or the way that for some reason so many people are ok with sharing intimate details about themselves on websites like facebook. Even though time and time again facebook proves it doesn't care about user privacy, yet for some reason people are ok with it still?

It's not right but there's an excessive amount of trust going on by users now as if these systems are flawless, beyond corruption or other mallicious intent.

also inbefore some kind of lawsuit happens about youtube having a monopoly over web video content

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 10:10:57

Every single key stroke you put into facebook gets sold to marketing companies. $$$

S-K 2013-05-20 10:11:32

and I... have no idea why that just happened... sorry everybody D: delete plz

Gerkinman 2013-05-20 10:11:32

FIXD

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