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Make KYM Great Again: A Survey

Last posted Aug 07, 2016 at 01:04PM EDT. Added Jul 24, 2016 at 06:40PM EDT
43 posts from 16 users

The survey is closed, and the results out!

We all admit it, there are places KYM could be better. However, we've never really had a strong feel for what people really wanted, where people thought the site was weak, and where they thought it was strong. To remedy this, this survey was created.

Only a few questions are required, and it's not very long. Please fill it out as best you can, and the information will be used to try to help make KYM great again.


Take The Survey


Note: The cover artwork of KYM-tan courtesy of KYM community artist MedleyManiac.

Last edited Aug 19, 2016 at 10:53PM EDT

Just a quick note: To keep from people filling it out several times over, it requires you log into your Google account. I cannot see who you are. I do not know who filled out any of the forms. All logging in does is help deter people from spamming the results. It is entirely safe to log in to fill this out.

Good day mememod Rivers;

As representative and sole member of KYM's unofficial Memesite Survey Watchdog group (founded July 2016) I have several questions regarding this attempted regreatification of Know Your Meme by its moderators:

  • how will you ensure that grievances held by our users are fairly sampled? This current methodology is sure to only capture feedback from a sufficiently motivated part of the forum-going community, which has a noted anti-comments bias.
  • by what means will you enforce regreatification? "The mods will take a look at it" is not particularly reassuring. What will you do in the very likely case that detailed feedback turns out to be too little and/or too discordant to confidently act upon? Will there be follow-up surveys to solicit more suggestions in regards to poorly-rated areas of the site?
  • How will you handle the inevitable suggestions of things outside of your control as a group of glorified volunteers working for mostly disengaged administrators?
how will you ensure that grievances held by our users are fairly sampled? This current methodology is sure to only capture feedback from a sufficiently motivated part of the forum-going community, which has a noted anti-comments bias.

This current methodology which I never elaborated on? I have sent PMs and commented on a number of user's walls, and plan to PM more to help get larger samples of comment-focused users.

Via the required section "Which section(s) of the site do you contribute to / use the most?", I am able to learn of the exact bias. Add in the fact that due to fancy mod powers by some fellow moderators, we can estimate that forum activity is somewhere around 5% of the site commenting activity, with comments making up the rest. If I have a large enough sample of commentators, and I believe I will, I simply weight the results to give the "true" nature of the results.

Unfortunately, an issue I cannot think of a reasonable way to get around is the number of accounts that only lurk, and those that make an account, do one thing, and then leave, never coming back. Depending on how many clicks they give KYM, they may or may not be significant to the issue at hand.

However, as I said, I don't think there's a reasonable way to get around this. Thus, I believe my methodology is, at worst workable, at best excellent for the aforementioned limitations. Furthermore, the users whom are most affected by site issues are those that stick around longer and do more.

by what means will you enforce regreatification? “The mods will take a look at it” is not particularly reassuring.

I cannot promise anything. However, the admins job is to keep KYM running and, ideally, get as much revenue as they can without being utter and total sellouts, ruining the purpose of the site. Improving the site necessarily helps towards this goal. It would, likely, decrease the number of users who leave KYM, and encourage more traffic.

As moderators, admins are a bit more likely to listen up and talk to us. The moderator-admin rift is still a bit of a thing, but it's not like they'll never ever respond to us. A list of places people want things improved is likely to draw their attention.

What will you do in the very likely case that detailed feedback turns out to be too little and/or too discordant to confidently act upon?

In the case of too little, I don't think that'll be an issue. I'm seeing wonderful results in a short period of time already, and I can PM more users to get a larger sample size (this was approved my a number of other moderators already, so unless a large number comes up saying they disagree or the admins step in saying to stop it, I can do this for quite a while).

In the case of discordant feedback – I'm not seeing much of that thus far. A couple ideas have already been mentioned several times over.

Will there be follow-up surveys to solicit more suggestions in regards to poorly-rated areas of the site?

I do not have plans to do so, but that does not mean there will be none. My current plan doesn't include it, but if it works to even a small degree I would be motivated to look into doing more.

How will you handle the inevitable suggestions of things outside of your control as a group of glorified volunteers working for mostly disengaged administrators?

Something along the lines of telling people "sorry, you're out of luck."

We aren't demigods. If you expected to go into this poll and have all everything you didn't like about the site fixed, you need to re-evaluate.

I believe the admins will have motivation to listen to the results, and there are areas moderators alone can potentially work on. The entire thing isn't in vain because some suggestions might not end up being responded to.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 12:49AM EDT

How are you selecting the sample of comments section users to contact? Are you taking steps to ensure that your samples are sufficiently representative of every major demographic on the site?

Why have you not mentioned in your OP, or on the survey, that your conceived definition of regreatification is the increased generation of pageclicks and/or ad revenue? Surely the motivation behind this survey should be given exposure as a matter of priority.

Might it, in your opinion, have been a good idea to at least preemptively gauge the thoughts of the admins before attempting something that will almost inevitably either require their (unreliable) assistance, or prompt their intervention? That is, of course, not obligatory, but it would have been a sensible precaution, would it not?

What are your plans for sharing the results of the survey with users?

How are you selecting the sample of comments section users to contact? Are you taking steps to ensure that your samples are sufficiently representative of every major demographic on the site?

'Sample' implies exclusion. The very basis of this survey is to get as many people as possible to take it.

That being said, we should probably ask the admins to front page this thread or something.


Why have you not mentioned in your OP, or on the survey, that your conceived definition of regreatification is the increased generation of pageclicks and/or ad revenue? Surely the motivation behind this survey should be given exposure as a matter of priority.

So long as the user's desires are heard that the site becomes more accessible to the general public, I couldn't imagine the intentions would matter all too much.


Might it, in your opinion, have been a good idea to at least preemptively gauge the thoughts of the admins before attempting something that will almost inevitably either require their (unreliable) assistance, or prompt their intervention? That is, of course, not obligatory, but it would have been a sensible precaution, would it not?

Much like gauging the need for an extra database mod before getting the powers? I'd say it's approach is much of the same. Talk to the admins as you go along and hope for the best.


What are your plans for sharing the results of the survey with users?

If only she had a thread somewhere meant for this survey.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 01:46PM EDT

On mobile so I can't blockquote everything to make sure I answered all your questions but I'll try my best.

I'm sampling simply based off of users who comment a lot. These are the ones most affected by site issues, so it's not all bad. However, a frontpage would help a lot. Not sure if I'll get it, but we'll see.

I'm not going for the end all of demographically accurate polls, given I don't exactly have a team to sort through the data with me. Instead, I'm using simple divisions – image, forum, comments, entries, that kind – to help measure. These are the most efficient since we can get easily data to figure out how to weight everything. Going for more separate groups like lewdposters, alt-righters, etc would require a survey just to start the survey.

You misunderstood me. My goal is not greater clicks. However, that is likely a positive effect if some of the ideas presented are carried out. It's a win win scenario I'm presenting – the site gets upgraded and they get more revenue, hopefully by addressing simple concerns and desires of the userbase.

Bob's response for the admin thing I think is acceptable, but let me also put it this way. I believe they'd have reason to listen – and at this point it's feeling odd to talk about them like this, like they're an impartial god waiting for an offering. But the idea applies, this could be good for them.

I plan to share the full data alongside my analysis of it when the survey dies down. I'll squeeze all I can out of it, then stop accepting responses, analyze it, and release.

"If only he had a thread somewhere meant specifically for this survey."

That too. Also, *she

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 01:37PM EDT

Looking at your responses; Bob was right on the IRC – you are smarter than him. Hahaha.

Since you apparently pitched this idea to multiple people, there's nothing stopping you from getting help. I don't know who you've PM'ed but judging from your wall comments thus far you've been mostly targetting frequent commentators on entries. It seems that it would be reasonable to a least expand your efforts to, say, frequent uploaders and commentators on the major image galleries, if you haven't done so already.

Also, isn't there quite a significant difference between generating clicks and improving users' experiences on a site like KYM? The vast, vast majority of visitors never make an account; such is the nature of sites run like encyclopedias. What would be an example of improvements that cater to both audiences?

she

Oh, all right. That wasn't so hard.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 03:00PM EDT
Looking at your responses; Bob was right on the IRC – you are smarter than him. Hahaha.

And yet, both equally superior to yourself. Hahaha.


But I digress. A lot of your questions and suggestions have already been brought up and answered in the IRC (by myself, no less).

I'll just let Rivers elaborate since this IS her project.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 03:08PM EDT
It seems that it would be reasonable to a least expand your efforts to, say, frequent uploaders and commentators on the major image galleries, if you haven’t done so already.

Advice taken, and I plan to work on that.

Also, isn’t there quite a significant difference between generating clicks and improving users’ experiences on a site like KYM? The vast, vast majority of visitors never make an account; such is the nature of sites run like encyclopedias.

There's a difference, but logic leads me to believe they are connected. The better the site is, the more likely you are to make an account and/or visit more often, right? If there are easy ways to make the site more appealing, well, why wouldn't you want to do that? And if there are highly in-demand features that can be reasonably done, isn't that something you'd want to know about? And if the site keeps improving, aren't you more likely to stay an active user instead of leaving?

RandomMan, your post is too plain about its intentions and should be at least thinly disguised as a contribution to the thread, please work on that. Bob, if you're going to continue your pitiful attempts to be relevant to the conversation, at least do it with the practiced grace of RandomMan.

Rivers, your remark about "highly in-demand features" is reminiscent of the exact purpose of the "Suggest Ideas" board. What do you offer that it doesn't? What gives you the confidence to assert that you will achieve what it hasn't?

Particle Mare wrote:

RandomMan, your post is too plain about its intentions and should be at least thinly disguised as a contribution to the thread, please work on that. Bob, if you're going to continue your pitiful attempts to be relevant to the conversation, at least do it with the practiced grace of RandomMan.

Rivers, your remark about "highly in-demand features" is reminiscent of the exact purpose of the "Suggest Ideas" board. What do you offer that it doesn't? What gives you the confidence to assert that you will achieve what it hasn't?

Mare, if you're just here to try and undermine folks, keep it in the comfort zone of that Skype group.

What do you offer that it doesn’t? What gives you the confidence to assert that you will achieve what it hasn’t?

Well, for one thing, honest suggestions won't be mocked and parodied in riff-raff.

Confidentiality will be kept for all the users – there's no "who are you" section, but some of the open answer areas have calling cards that identify who wrote what. These bits will not be released, so no one has to worry about their answers being open for anyone to see and judge them on ("How could you possibly like the admins that much?" "Your idea sucks." "Frontpage is great, get over yourself."). In retrospect, I should've mentioned that when I said "the full data will be released", since that's not technically true. However, I will not remove any important details. A suggestion worded in a way that clearly indicates a user will be reworded slightly so the meaning is kept but the user is obscured.


There's also the whole thing about forums not even being known by many commentators. This is represented by one of the responses I got, saying they didn't even know KYM had a forum. How is SI going to be anything resembling representative when it's only known to a fraction of the userbase, and used by even less?

Random, it does not seem intuitive to believe that the comfortableness of a particular location has any bearing on its utility or ethicality in the pursuit of undermining others. Besides, if I wanted to undermine this thread, I may have, for instance, parodied it in Riff-Raff as certain people have done with other threads recently. I assure you that I am only asking questions for the sake of quality control.

Rivers, your perspective is interesting, yet I feel a similar result would have been produced by simply launching an effort to get more commentators to use the forums and ergo SI (there was one a rather long time ago but it did not seem to have great retention). The only fundamental difference you offer is anonymity, but your reasoning in support of it is dubious; it would imply that the biggest obstacle to the success of SI is the attitude of the site's users (no doubt you clearly take some issue with Riff-Raff), which raises the question of why you aren't campaigning for a friendlier userbase instead of attempting to launch SI 2.0.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 07:57PM EDT

"The survey is a way for users less familiar with the site, the forums in particular, to both voice any complaints or suggestions they have, while allowing the mods and admins to get a general idea of how the userbase feels about the site. The comment-forum gap doesnt drag in users without accounts, or the people who browse on mobile throughout the day, or the smaller social circles within KYM. The community on KYM isn’t perfect, but ‘fixing’ the userbase wont ultimately fix KYM.If the community was the only standing issue KYM faced, we wouldn’t be here.There are deep and inherent flaws to the site that we’re trying to identify and correct; this survey is one way to do so." – Doeoeod

There's a reason this isn't "KYM Suggestion Box", PM – it's not. The data collected by this will allow us to get a cross section of what each area of the site feels.

I would think if you took the survey, you'd notice the fact that only one section is devoted to suggestions. There's 2 areas where an "other" option is present for you to type into, but one of those is about which parts of the site you use.

You're forming a negative opinion on something you seemingly know nothing about. This was discussed with a number of mods and users, and most of them seem to disagree with your line of thinking. They understand the ideas and motivation behind it. Feel free to join the IRC and discuss this with us so you can get caught up.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 08:40PM EDT

Oh, don't get me wrong; you've made your intentions very clear and I have, in case you've forgotten, acknowledged them. I was under the impression that the two of us were discussing a particular part of the survey, not its entirety. I see now that we weren't on the same page; that is no reason to get aggressive my bad, you edited that part out.

Ignoring the rest of your remarks on the grounds of them being made in misunderstanding, the only "deep and inherent" flaw of the site that comes to mind is its crumbling and stagnant code architecture, a problem that has been brought up countless times – by, yes, suggest ideas and report problems – to no avail. Whether other suggestions will bring fresh ideas outside of the scope of SI or RP is a result I await eagerly. If the only "new" idea that couldn't have been taken seriously on SI is the comments section being rated poorly and suggestions along the lines of "/pol//RPers/ponies/controversial entries get out reee", I will cordially invite myself to have the last laugh.

Buuut I'm speculating. Best of luck to your surveying career. No further questions, your Honour.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 09:56PM EDT
that is no reason to get aggressive my bad, you edited that part out.

Yeah, sorry. I realized I stepped over the line there. I apologize.

Last edited Jul 25, 2016 at 10:22PM EDT

The very problem with trying to get commenters to take part in the forums is that we've already tried that… three times.

It wasn't successful any of those times.

I think we should take Rivers' approach.


As for your response? I have to apologize for being tardy, I was out doing things more important than wasting time on your desert snark (I was out watching a movie). But I believe I have already made myself relevant to the thread by pointing out that many of your questions were irrelevant, having already been asked by myself.

If relevance is irrelevant, then I can't possibly see where you hope to gain with its discussion.

Last edited Jul 26, 2016 at 01:29AM EDT

Particle Mare wrote:

But I believe

If you're going to waste your own time anyway, don't waste mine as well with these obviously self-defeating remarks!

>"Don't waste my time"
>Continues willingly posting in a thread wasting her time

HolyCrapItsBob wrote:

>"Don't waste my time"
>Continues willingly posting in a thread wasting her time

Come to think of it

If you didn't want to waste time, why would you be on KYM?

(Also, way to miss the point again, but that's just too banal to mention at this point)

Last edited Jul 27, 2016 at 06:29PM EDT

Particle Mare wrote:

Come to think of it

If you didn't want to waste time, why would you be on KYM?

(Also, way to miss the point again, but that's just too banal to mention at this point)

I'm mostly just speaking on behalf of everyone who's wondering why you would think anyone cares how you feel.

I'm well aware what your point was, I just didn't see a reason Rivers (or anyone, for that matter) should care.

Your ego seems to tell you we should though.

HolyCrapItsBob wrote:

I'm mostly just speaking on behalf of everyone who's wondering why you would think anyone cares how you feel.

I'm well aware what your point was, I just didn't see a reason Rivers (or anyone, for that matter) should care.

Your ego seems to tell you we should though.

Bob has deluded himself convincingly into the position of shining white knight of this meme survey thread's honour. I can only imagine that this is either because his ego demands it, or he has nothing more interesting to do with his time. Knowing him, it is almost certainly both.

Good call, I say fill that survey to your hearts content, we just might be able to get stuff done!


Can you guys take it elsewhere your posts are barely relevant to this thread anymore, thanks

Particle Mare wrote:

Bob has deluded himself convincingly into the position of shining white knight of this meme survey thread's honour. I can only imagine that this is either because his ego demands it, or he has nothing more interesting to do with his time. Knowing him, it is almost certainly both.

Oh no, I'm only messing with you because Rivers is rather annoyed with your incessant line of questioning but isn't crass enough to tell you to go away herself.

This has nothing to do with my ego, it has everything to do with yours and how it's impeding on other users on the site (in this case, a mod).

You feel free to keep believing you're better than everyone else though. I'm sure your skype lapdogs will be sure to keep riding your e-penis (not the whole chat, just the ones you know I'm talking about).


Now then, as ShiJo said, get off the thread. My part is done here.

Last edited Jul 27, 2016 at 06:47PM EDT

Don't get so vain, Bob. You entirely lack the interpersonal awareness to mess with anyone. Hell, you can't even finish a post without spilling yor Skype salt everywhere!

Anyway, I just did the survey.

Mod Edit from Bob: And yet, never even mentioned skype until then. However, you can't go a single post without stroking your ego, Mare.

Also, I'm technically not posting off topic anymore, whereas you are. Congrats on breaking rules there, ace mod.

Mod Edit from Yours Truly: Editing now, are we? Innovating new ways to be an asshole seems to be your only marketable ability, Bob. smh

Mod Edit from Bob 2: It's a great way to get my point across without having this thread get off-topic. And warping your perception of reality so that you can stroke your own ego seems to be yours. At least I'm honest with myself in regards to my faults, fam.

Last edited Jul 27, 2016 at 07:40PM EDT

I didn't plan on releasing any information early, but I'd like to give a special shoutout to the guy who said that the only part of the site he used was "Your Momma". You are a blessing to this world.

Last edited Jul 29, 2016 at 04:12PM EDT

Thank you, everyone who took the survey! I am closing the survey now to simplify getting all the responses into a spreadsheet, and to make sure no one is submitting responses that won't be acknowledged.

In total, there were 395 responses! That far outdid all my expectations, and should be plenty enough for all intended purposes.

With spreadsheet magic, and some help, hopefully the full results will be out soon.

Again, thank you to everyone who took the survey, and thank you very much administrators for frontpaging the survey! It would have stopped at about 150 responses if you hadn't.

So, it appears we've hit a bit of a bump in the road.

Google Forms appears to not be exactly built for as many responses as it got.(?) I'm not sure, but it's glitching up a bit. I have, on record, me recording that responses 115 and 116 said one thing. However, checking now, Google Forms is giving me an entirely different thing.

It can auto-export a spreadsheet, but that one is an absolute disaster. However, that spreadsheet is consistent and doesn't glitch up. So, I'm having to translate from that spreadsheet over to a new one, which will take longer than before.

I will continue working on getting this done. It just… might take a while. I'm hoping to finish it before one month passes since I made this thread.

Skeletor-sm

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