At 8/21/13 08:53 PM, EVanimations wrote: Where can I find this discussion?

It was on Gerkinman's big post a while back; Tom, PsychoGoldfish, and a heap of well-known others posted their thoughts. Here's one of the relevant things Tom said if you don't feel like digging through the mountain of posts (though a good deal of them, like FelixColgrave's, are worth the read):

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.

When I joined NG back in 2011, just before the redesign, the judgement process seemed to be working pretty well - it would take just a few hours for something to pass judgement. So I think the redesign definitely has something to do with it.

A possible semi-fix for the judgement problem might be a scouting system, like the audio/art portals, where scouted users don't have to go through judgement at all, but everyone else does. Just an idea.

Something else that came to my mind:

Personally, I think it was wrong to get rid of the Turd of the Week award. Surely, many users made awful submissions on purpose to get it. On the other hand, it gave spam groups an incentive to aim to win this award as often as possible. Even the legendary flash B that started the rise of the Clock Crew won it. Ever since the award was deleted, spam group activity has dwindled down significantly, and there is no denial that they are an important part of Newgrounds history. I think their almost complete departure (almost no Clock Crew flashes get submitted anymore out of Clock Day) also took away many potential voters.

To me it seems like Newgrounds wants to present itself better than it is and loses its original charm in the process. The UJ flashes get hidden by design, awful flashes get no crap awards anymore. I think that is something that made Newgrounds stand out, that every flash, no matter how crappy it was, had the same chances of being shown on the site and getting some kind of recognition once it passed, be it negative or positive.

Now any flash with the slightest potential gets fished out of the UJ pool and put on the frontpage as fast as possible and the rest stuff is hidden behind Newgrounds back, in a way.