That's true only with the realm of The Forums. I mean. This is the Internet, not Television. It's really very simple to gauge the success-level of anything we publish. I was being funny when I said we track everything - but we track enough. You don't get your badges because we have legions of interns somehow watching you while you poke around the site. We know, because we track what everyone watches. That's how we know what content you guys like. It's not a complicated process.BonsaiK said:It means that if that content genuinely IS crap, then the reaction is the same as if the content is a really genuinely good idea.
So, people could bloat this to a 45 page thread full of nothing but piss and vinegar. But at the end of the day, if a piece of content has a gazillion viewers every week - well, the proof is in the pudding. And don't imagine that the reverse isn't also true. We've had beautifully crafted content on here that was and is critically acclaimed - but almost no one watched it. We give it a home, but we know it's not a direction to travel in the future.
Heck, we could get the most abusive, insulting, over-the-top angry game reviewer on here who does nothing but insult games, the industry and our readers every week. And if he gets enough of a following then... ... Oh, wait. Right.
The point is that these forums are a good way to get input and criticism, but they are not at all an accurate method of measuring how popular anything is. That information resides in the logs - safe from subjectivity.