Poll of the Day > At the current rate of user loss, GameFAQs will be dead in a few short years.

(+) Yeah! (+)

FrothySolutions posted...

But if everything is going down, the board activity, the poll results, everything, that means overall site usage is down. That's how site activity is measured. Not just for GameFAQs, but every site.

And I don't need to know who's not voting in the poll, I just need to know that people are voting in the poll. To know that, when people stop voting in the poll, that means less people are around to vote in the poll. A few people per board saying "Well I just skip the poll" doesn't mean everyone who didn't vote skipped the poll. It's just not likely.

Sure... If all those things are connected. But the problem is they aren't. You can't say site usage is going down just because how any vote in the poll is going down. Think about how people here have said they use to vote in the poll regularly and stopped. Who knows how many people have done that. Maybe 10% of the users, or 50%. You don't know. One reason the poll numbers could have gone down is because a big chunk of people who use to vote don't vote anymore. But all, or almost all, of those users could still be active on the site. You wouldn't know because you're basing your assumption on something that doesn't matter.

You DO need to know who's voting in the poll. Not the exact users, but the percentage. You're whole assumption relies on that. You said that for X amount of people voting in the poll, Y amount does not. X amount is obviously the number you can find by checking the poll count. How do you figure out Y amount, though. You obviously don't know how many people are not voting. So, Y amount is just a number you're pulling out of you ass. And that means you can't have actual data as you aren't even trying to actually find out how much the site is going down. It's just a baseless assumption. And it's not just a few people on this board. Like I said, go to a bunch of other communities boards and ask them. You can see that it's not just a handful here or there. And for someone pretending to look at facts, you''re doing a shitty job. If everyone in this topic so far has said they forget to do the poll or don't do it anymore, it starts to look like a pattern. Most likely, most people on this board also forget to do it, or don't do it. If you have a room with 100 people, and out of the first 50, 4 out of 5 people say they don't vote in the poll more often than they do, they anyone with a brain making a guess would say it's likely that, by the end, 80 out 100 people will say they don't vote in the poll more often than they do. You would say, well that's just a handful. And assume more people do vote in the poll more often that not because thats you guess. Also, a small handful can be called a sample size sometimes. So, theres that, as well So, the point is, you don't know whether a few people skipped the poll, or over half the site. Without that information, you don't really have a leg to stand on. Just like you don't know how many people actually go to the front page, or whether they skipped the front page entirely...
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Most active gaming boards I'm seeing are:
PS4, Switch board, XBONE
Fire Emblem Heroes for Android
SSBU, PKMN Sword, FE Three Houses for Switch

Rest of the gaming boards haven't even got get a full page today. For consoles, most people play stuff for a few weeks after release and shelve the game. PC has a bunch of mmos to generate board activity but those have Steam and dedicated forums.

LinkPizza posted...

Sure... If all those things are connected. But the problem is they aren't. You can't say site usage is going down just because how any vote in the poll is going down. Think about how people here have said they use to vote in the poll regularly and stopped. Who knows how many people have done that. Maybe 10% of the users, or 50%. You don't know. One reason the poll numbers could have gone down is because a big chunk of people who use to vote don't vote anymore. But all, or almost all, of those users could still be active on the site. You wouldn't know because you're basing your assumption on something that doesn't matter.

That's not what you said. You said even if the poll results are going down, and board usage is going down, and everything else is going down, that somehow doesn't mean overall site usage is going down.

LinkPizza posted...

You DO need to know who's voting in the poll. Not the exact users, but the percentage. You're whole assumption relies on that. You said that for X amount of people voting in the poll, Y amount does not. X amount is obviously the number you can find by checking the poll count. How do you figure out Y amount, though. You obviously don't know how many people are not voting. So, Y amount is just a number you're pulling out of you ass. And that means you can't have actual data as you aren't even trying to actually find out how much the site is going down. It's just a baseless assumption. And it's not just a few people on this board. Like I said, go to a bunch of other communities boards and ask them. You can see that it's not just a handful here or there. And for someone pretending to look at facts, you''re doing a shitty job. If everyone in this topic so far has said they forget to do the poll or don't do it anymore, it starts to look like a pattern. Most likely, most people on this board also forget to do it, or don't do it. If you have a room with 100 people, and out of the first 50, 4 out of 5 people say they don't vote in the poll more often than they do, they anyone with a brain making a guess would say it's likely that, by the end, 80 out 100 people will say they don't vote in the poll more often than they do. You would say, well that's just a handful. And assume more people do vote in the poll more often that not because thats you guess. Also, a small handful can be called a sample size sometimes. So, theres that, as well So, the point is, you don't know whether a few people skipped the poll, or over half the site. Without that information, you don't really have a leg to stand on. Just like you don't know how many people actually go to the front page, or whether they skipped the front page entirely...

I already said, going board to board asking people is still a handful of people. Not reflective of how many people as a whole use the site. I don't need to count every individual hit on the site to know that it's more than can reliably be polled on even the most active of boards here. I don't need exact numbers to know that it's "a lot."

FrothySolutions posted...

That's not what you said. You said even if the poll results are going down, and board usage is going down, and everything else is going down, that somehow doesn't mean overall site usage is going down.

I said, from the beginning, that not everything is connected. For example, I said multiple times that the poll voters going down does not mean the user are necessarily going down. They CAN be connected, but it doesn't have to be. Which makes it a bad metric to count users. Which many people have also said.

FrothySolutions posted...

I already said, going board to board asking people is still a handful of people. Not reflective of how many people as a whole use the site. I don't need to count every individual hit on the site to know that it's more than can reliably be polled on even the most active of boards here. I don't need exact numbers to know that it's "a lot."

Going board to board is better than guessing based on what you want it to be, though. And doing that also gets you a sample size. Tbh, it sounds like the reason you don't want to ask is because you know you have the possibility of being wrong. And while sample sizes aren't always right they are a way to gauge certain things in research. And when people do research, lots of them include sample sizes. You don't need to count every user. But counting some is better than puling a random number out of your ass because it matches what you want it to match. If you want people to actually listen to what you have to say or believe you, at least do more than make up numbers to fit your research.
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LinkPizza posted...

I said, from the beginning, that not everything is connected. For example, I said multiple times that the poll voters going down does not mean the user are necessarily going down. They CAN be connected, but it doesn't have to be. Which makes it a bad metric to count users. Which many people have also said.

But when front page metrics are down, and we see that the rest of the site is also down, that's when we say "The metrics show that overall site usage is down." That's how site activity measuring works.

LinkPizza posted...

Going board to board is better than guessing based on what you want it to be, though. And doing that also gets you a sample size. Tbh, it sounds like the reason you don't want to ask is because you know you have the possibility of being wrong. And while sample sizes aren't always right they are a way to gauge certain things in research. And when people do research, lots of them include sample sizes. You don't need to count every user. But counting some is better than puling a random number out of your ass because it matches what you want it to match. If you want people to actually listen to what you have to say or believe you, at least do more than make up numbers to fit your research.

A handful of people isn't good for anything. If I don't need them, I shouldn't go looking for them. But if I do need them, I need a significant amount of them. And going around to the boards wouldn't get me that. It would get me what I have here, the suggestion that the polls will be barren, but everything else on the site will be as active as it ever was. It's not likely. And if I could sample enough people, we would see what the likely truth is. But I don't need to sample enough people.

Many of the people that used GameFAQs for its actual original purpose, which was for game guides are no longer needing to do so due to games becoming streamlined in terms of difficulty. As long as those guides remain on the site, I don't see any reason why the site will not remain active.

FrothySolutions posted...

But when front page metrics are down, and we see that the rest of the site is also down, that's when we say "The metrics show that overall site usage is down." That's how site activity measuring works.

Do we, though? Where does it show that? The front page metric could be down because it's possible people don't go to the front page when using the site. It doesn't mean that users has decreased. They have decreased, but you can't tell that from how many users visit the front page. I don't remember the last time I even used the front page to get to this board. For all you know, other poster on other boards are like that...

FrothySolutions posted...

A handful of people isn't good for anything. If I don't need them, I shouldn't go looking for them. But if I do need them, I need a significant amount of them. And going around to the boards wouldn't get me that. It would get me what I have here, the suggestion that the polls will be barren, but everything else on the site will be as active as it ever was. It's not likely. And if I could sample enough people, we would see what the likely truth is. But I don't need to sample enough people.

Hence why I told you to go ask other boards. A sample size is only about 10% or so. So, you could easily get enough for a sample size. And a handful of people is good enough if everyone has said the same thing. You don't need the percentages to actual calculate the value of Y. Or, are you admitting that Y is just any number as long as it makes you seem right? And going around the boards could easily get you that answer. You don't want to because the answer would most likely go against your "research". And nobody thinks the site is as active as it was before. But nobody is basing that off the poll, either... And like I said, a sample size is about 10%. An easy amount to get if you really think the polls are a good way to measure the site... Which it isn't...
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