Monday, April 2, 2007

Casting Votes: The Battle for Popularity

Throughout my time At The O, I've noticed a lot o' sites host different contests. Writing contests, banner contests, wallpaper contest, to name a few. None more so than the Battle Royal tournaments. These tournaments consist of our favorite anime characters from all types and genres of anime, duking it out for a mythical crown and title of most adored anime character. While these are all well and good, not to mention entertaining; there seems to be a census of those that know what they are doing and those that don't. Those that do have set aside rules and take the time to craft a quality product. These are hallmarked by thumbnails of the character across from their opponent with their names prominently displayed under their grimacing mug-shots. The craftier MC's place well written commentary before and/or after the bouts have transpired along with the results. This adds to the entertainment value and over-all experience. Unfortunately, with every good there is a bad. these are the contests that are rigged to make the site owner's name sake win the title or even worse. How bad can these get? In one instance, I observed a site owner create a contest to see if they should do on their upcoming weekend. If you have to poll to decide whether or not you should play an RPG on your 360 or watch 12 hours of dot/hack something, you have got more prominent issues. Then there is the person who half-asses the contest just to get people to show up and hit the site. There is no real relevance to the contest; merely an ad campaign to see whether or not you like their newest layout or song. These are the same people that sign guest book with the obligatory "Please stop by my site and sign my guest book" only to never be heard from again. The way I see it is there are three types of site owners: Those that enjoy what they do and don't really care about getting into the top 500. Those that only care about cracking the top list and pimp their sites like Head-On pimps their head ache roll-on. Then there are those that fire off a few poetic ramblings about being misunderstood and tortured and only post once every six months. How these people get the most hits is beyond even the most scholarly member of The O. The moral of the story, my friends, is this: If you're going to do a contest, take your time to develop the idea and make sure it's going to work before you even mention it. Otherwise, when you call your shot, it'll amount to nothing more than a dribbler back to the pitcher. (Pardon the baseball analogy, after all, it is opening day.) Go around The O and scope out the work of others. See how they do it and make improvements and tweaks to it so that it becomes your own. When it's finished, see what improvement you can do to make it better. I can think of no better example than Lordsesshomaru. Check out his site for a quality resource. Anyway, that's all for now. I hope this was more educational than editorial rant. Later all, Grif

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