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Nearly one month after creating the original thread, I have finally turned it all into a usable spreadsheet and sorted through the responses enough to have information to share.

Before doing so, I would like to make sure credit is given to those who deserve it:

• ShiJo helped with some of the most boring, repetitive stuff in the survey, as well as helped me figure out how to do it quicker.
• Muffinlicious helped with the boring, repetitive stuff as well. Seriously, these two combined did like half the filling up of the spreadsheet that couldn't be done simply and quickly. I can't thank them enough.
• Doeoeod provided a list of questions that the final version survey would be based on, and helped spread the survey to commentators before it was frontpaged.

And I'd like to give a big thank you to the administrators for frontpaging the survey. Removing duplicate and spam responses, there were 391 responses. If it weren't for this, the survey would've peaked at around 150 responses. Thank you so, so much. It saved me so much work and gave me a much better sample size.

Without further ado, here's what I wish to share with you all. Of course, feel free to examine the data yourself in the spreadsheet linked above to get more information. I also may be able to answer questions you might have which aren't answered in these posts.

Demographics

The whole reason we made this survey was to find out what the users of KYM really wanted for the site, and where they really weren't happy. As such, people who use comments and images more often than forums are more in line with the average user. The fact of the matter is, the forums are really small compared to the rest of the site. A rough calculation made a few weeks ago said that there are 15 comments to 1 forum post. So, I would want to focus on those users.

I have found that a good compromise between difficulty and returns in reaching this goal is comparing responses 1-150 and 151-391. Around 150, the survey was frontpaged. As such, the demographics dramatically shift towards a more "average" KYM user.

For this reason, I will be focusing on the views of the post-150 group, with notes on overall responses and pre-150 responses here and there.

General Information

Unsurprisingly, the post-frontpage results have a much higher concentration of respondents without an account. Only 63% of the post-frontpage respondents say they have an account. On the other hand, 95% of the pre-frontpage responses do.

What is surprising, however, is that the visiting frequency is exactly the same – 4.7 out of 5. Most respondents gave a 4 or a 5 when 5 was once a day or more. This suggests that these results are going to primarily target frequent KYM users, both those with an account, and those without.

Site Satisfaction

Overall, respondents didn't really dislike the site. That's the good news. The bad news is, overall, respondents weren't particularly enthusiastic either. The lowest score for any of the sections of the site questioned about was 2.9 out of 5, and that's with a subgroup that only 50 respondents large. (That section was the video gallery, by the way.) The highest score was 4.0 out of 5, for the image galleries among the post-150 group.

Interesting, despite there seemingly being more complaints about moderators and admins from the comments and image sections, the pre-150 group is overall more negative about them both than the post-150 group. Both of them are somewhat middling, decently above 3.0 scores for both groups. The highest one is the administrators, hitting 3.6 among the post-150 group.

Most of the other satisfaction ratings are similar – middling, not bad, but not super awesome. They also follow the trends you would expect – the post-150 group likes the comments, images, and frontpage more, while the pre-150 group likes the forums more.

The one particularly interesting thing I see is that the post-frontpage group has less qualms with the site interface – a comfortable 3.7 as compared to pre-150's 3.3.

Common Issues

There were four issues asked about, along with an open "Other" section for users to input whatever they believed was an issue but wasn't mentioned. Unsurprisingly, the four issues brought up – separation of forum and comments, tone of the comments section, image gallery tagging system, and clarity of the rules – were selected often. Concerningly often, actually.

For the "Other" section, a few things were brought up regularly. The most common one, suggested by about 3% of the respondents, is that the moderators have issues – whether it's from locking galleries unfairly, being overly strict, or under-enforcing rules, issues with the moderators was the most commonly brought up thing in the "Other" section.

The next most often thing appears to be about ads. We've known ads were an issue for quite some time, so there was actually an entire part of the survey dedicated to that. I'll go into those numbers in a second.

After that comes issues with the administrators, followed by dislike of two new additions to the site – trending images below comments, and the "Trending Gallery" pop-up.

Ads

This one is getting its own sub-section.

The long story short: People don't like KYM's ads. Surprise, surprise. However, a more interesting finding is that the pre-150 group (which, remember, is much more focused on the forums) dislikes it even more than the post-150 group (and, due to mathematics, respondents overall). They still dislike it though.

I believe it should be very concerning that nearly 75% of post-150 respondents (the more representative group) use adblock, and that over half think the ads are bad.

Suggestions

For simplicities sake, I will keep this part short. There were numerous suggestions submitted, and going into detail would take forever. I will point out the highlights, however. Feel free to check the link near the top of the thread to check out the suggestions for yourself.

Many people want things like editable comments – that's possibly the top suggestion.

There are many complaints of political bias, as well as complaints of politicism (that's a word, trust me) in general. One respondent did a great summary of the general idea behind this complaint:

Otherwise, there's been a noticeable trend of KYM's front-page slowly moving away from examining the more distinct Internet (sub)culture(s), towards reporting on America-centric pop-culture that is loosely related to the Internet (e.g.: a real-world event which, while newsworthy, just happened to be discussed on Twitter/Facebook), which I feel isn't a good trend to continue. There's also a lot of hashtag/controversy fatigue among the userbase, which the aforementioned trend probably contributes a lot to. "Sponsored Content" and slipping ads into the image galleries also have to be some of the most slimy and embarrassing additions to the site I've ever encountered. No user, registered or otherwise, should EVER have to worry about advertisements disguised as true content.

I've been a user for a long time, and I feel that KYM has lost its way in recent years. I think what would help is to make a distinction between culture that arises from within the Internet and spreads out from there, vs culture that has wholly external origins and is fed into the Internet. I think the most memorable memes and well-received entries, the ones that people most like to see on KYM, are the ones that give a feeling of "this came from the Internet"; pieces of culture with distinctly Internet origins. The internet as a mere tool or extension of pre-existing cultures is nowhere near as interesting or captivating as the Internet that is the source and home of brand new culture the world has yet to see, that is born of the whole world, yet takes on an identity of its own. That's what originally drew me to KYM, to learn about and celebrate a new appreciation of this culture that seemingly appeared out of the ether. And I've stuck with KYM in hopes of seeing that sense of appreciation returned and maintained.

Past these, the only other thing I noticed come up many times is adding more kinds of spoilers – for example, instead of just spoiler and nsfw, they'd like one for long images and leaks as well.

Conclusion

KYM has problems. That, we are all aware. But, despite the gloom and doom talk I hear every now and then, it seems alive enough. Quantcast says that KYM's views have held fairly steady, and are even up a bit from this time last year. Satisfaction rates, while not stellar, are by no means bad. When asked for what they want, one of the most common suggestions (if not the most common) seems to be a basic site feature that many other websites have.

We (forum users) seem to be more negative about the site as well, apparently having lower satisfaction rates in many areas, and more often saying that X is an issue. I would suggest we all keep this in mind, as well as the fact that the forums are but a tiny part of the site. The administrators don't have a strong reason to give updates here when they could be working on highly popular parts of the site, like the image galleries, or the entries. (Sorry, karma overhaul ideas.)

If I was to be asked right now what KYM should put effort into, I would say that based on this information they should try for:

• Editable comments
• More politically neutral material
• Less political material
• Better ads
• and better moderation.

Thank you all for reading, and thank you to all who participated in the survey!

I can understand people who want the site to be less political and less hashtaggy but the political bias thing I can't see. It's just so tin-foily I could copy-paste my comment here I posted somewhere else about it but it's so BS to me. It's almost shameful so many people feel there's a heavy bias in the actual administration in the site where none exists.

Aside from that, holy shit, 10/10 this is the greatest survey ever. You put a lot of factors and effort into this I can't really commend you enough for it. The charts are the cherry on top.

Nice to see this went somewhere. Hopefully it'll help set a path for improvement in the future.
Also why are the commenters so much more positive than we are

I hope that this will FINALLY convince the higher-ups to do something about those ads.

This is literally the only major change

the political bias thing I can’t see

Maybe it doesn't actually have political bias, but if the administrators are trying to avoid accusations of bias they don't seem to be doing too well. For example, maybe the idea that Clinton had many people killed for political reasons is a fringe theory, but many vocal users on KYM seem to at least think it's possible. Calling it a fringe theory doesn't help with accusations of political bias.

Maybe this is part of a plan they have that I just don't know about, and it is the right choice. Maybe it's there to drive discussion and thus ad revenue. I don't know what they do for a job. I can only speak from what I know, and what I know suggests what I have said.

Also why are the commenters so much more positive than we are

This is entirely speculation, but here's my guess. The comments, for one thing, seem a bit more homogenous. In nearly every debate thread you see a clash of at least two points of view. So, agreeing more may lead to more positivity.

For another, the comments are full of all sorts of talk. Joking, controversy, politics, lewd, and you can easily avoid any group pretty well. The forums, on the other hand, are much smaller and close together. You go to the forums main page, and it has all the sections neatly and shortly lined out for you to see. The "Fun!" section is directly above the section for talk about site issues, site improvements, and announcements.

Lastly, and tying into the other two, finding people you agree with and sticking to them is pretty easy. Roleplayers find roleplayers, alt-righters find alt-righters, lewdposters find lewdposters. On the forums, it's small enough and close enough that everyone tends to find everyone. even users who hang out in one section most of the time (such as Lisa in General) tend to occasionally post in other sections (she's posted in all 3 of the other sections as well). It'd be an odd day when an alt-righter debates politics with a roleplayer.

Basically, what I'm suggesting is that there is higher polarization in the comments, a higher "live and let live" kind of view. This might be wrong – again, just speculation – but it's a possibility.

I hope that this will FINALLY convince the higher-ups to do something about those ads.

If this won't convince them, I'm not sure anything will. We've complained about it for months, and now we have data suggesting visitors overall really don't like them. While they have improved some, (screw those horrible, horrible, gross-out ads) including on mobile according to some reports, they're still not good.

Aside from that, holy shit, 10/10 this is the greatest survey ever. You put a lot of factors and effort into this I can’t really commend you enough for it. The charts are the cherry on top.

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it :)

This is all very good. Cheers to everyone that organized and worked on this to address the site and community.

The most common one, suggested by about 3% of the respondents, is that the moderators have issues – whether it’s from locking galleries unfairly, being overly strict, or under-enforcing rules, issues with the moderators was the most commonly brought up thing in the “Other” section.

Mod communication and announcements are an interesting case. We can all agree there are helpful mods that care and do their work fine. And there are mods that are rather abrasive.

Not suggesting mods should explain and justify all their actions, but perhaps a more clearer and accessible format to see certain actions would be appreciated.

For example, locking of some popular RR threads could be announced in some board outside of RR. Then we could avoid the banter and rash remarks and responses that come with it.

This isn't a huge issue, I'm just looking for an easier way to see what mods are doing and why they are doing so, without having to dig through pages to find said reasoning in the middle of a thread many users may miss.

For example, locking of some popular RR threads could be announced in some board outside of RR. Then we could avoid the banter and rash remarks and responses that come with it.

I'll bring this up in the council. We're working on a list of things to specifically present to the administrators and moderators for discussion. This isn't quite the end. This is the point where other people take the data gathered and try to make sense of it with me, so we can figure out what to do.

Ten heads are better than one, right?

Shoutout to the folks who wanted Riff-Raff deleted for wasting good suggestion space.

goddammit my phone posted this unfinished

I meant to say "This is literally the only major change I really care for"

From that based complaint in the OP posts:

I think what would help is to make a distinction between culture that arises from within the Internet and spreads out from there, vs culture that has wholly external origins and is fed into the Internet. I think the most memorable memes and well-received entries, the ones that people most like to see on KYM, are the ones that give a feeling of “this came from the Internet”; pieces of culture with distinctly Internet origins. The internet as a mere tool or extension of pre-existing cultures is nowhere near as interesting or captivating as the Internet that is the source and home of brand new culture the world has yet to see, that is born of the whole world, yet takes on an identity of its own.

For starters, I do agree with this one. I hardly even check the political entries, and am much MUCH more attracted to the internet-unique pieces you can only really document on KYM.

But that's why KYM's database is also community driven and anyone can make an entry.

The staff is a 3 man squad for writing (and 1 coder), so their resources are limited and they are far from omnipresent on the web. They have limited insight on what can be considered notable in even the big fandoms and what are everyday occurances.

Back with Amanda we had Tumblr well covered because she was very Tumblr-savy. The old ancient staff put a lot of focus on 4chan culture, as back then that was still the big meme machine and thus well covered. Neither which the current staff is really savy in. Then there are mods, but we mostly know a ton about vidya and anime.

Which is where the community comes in the picture. When a big meme is on the rise in a fandom or anywhere we might not have scouts checking around, don't think "I wonder when/if they'll make an entry for this". If you are a user, you can make that entry. Throw in a good summary, fill up the gallery, and thus notify us of its presence.

Yes I want more internet unique entries, like many of us, but in order to see that happen we need help from you people out there who know what's going on in the areas we are unfamiliar with. Be the change you want to see. Once the entries are there, we know what to look for and what to frontpage.