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Newgrounds is a Website headquartered in Glenside, Pennsylvania , USA and created in 1995 that primarily hosts Adobe Flash Animated Films and Game s. The site was created and is owned by '''Tom Fulp''' (born April 30 , 1978 ), who still oversees every aspect and regularly produces in-house content. Newgrounds is distinguished from other Flash websites by its sophisticated and impartial Automated Submission/rating System . Newgrounds allows its users to submit their own flash movies, games, and music, and view submissions from other users. Over the years Newgrounds has grown significantly, by relying on the cooperation of its visitors. Newgrounds ranks in the top 600 sites on the Internet according to the website produces lists that direct visitors to the most popular flash movies and allows the site designers or users to easily locate any submission based on a number of factors, including score or Portal Awards . The site has over 1.2 million registered membershttp://www.newgrounds.com/rankings/ and over 390,000 flash submissions submitted as of June 2007. Of those, around 100,000 have survived the auto-delete system known as "blamming."http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/stats.html On 16th July 2007, Newgrounds underwent a total redesign which changed the site while keeping it aesthetically similar. VOTING SYSTEM The automated portal system has a simple voting system in which a user can vote from a scale of 0 to 5 on a submission. The system deletes low-scoring submissions and sends their reviews and stats to the " Obituaries ", which is a list of ''blammed'' entries since March 14 , 2001 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip.php?id=17915. An entry is blammed when its score is below a certain threshold based on how many votes have been cast (with the required average score increasing with more votes). After 200 votes have been cast, and if the submission retains a score above the "blam" threshold (has a score of 1.6 or greater after 200 votes), it is "saved" or "protected" and thus permanently kept on the website (unless it is removed by an administrator, or if the author chooses to delete it). Authors have recently been given the power to manually delete their submissions (rather than wait for an administrator to do so) if their flash meets the following criteria:
See Also: Newgrounds#Portal awards
Experience and levels Any unregistered user can vote on new submissions, but the power of one's vote can be increased by registering at Newgrounds. Once registering, one's vote is automatically increased. After that, as a member there are two ways of increasing the worth of one's vote (known as "Voting Power"). The primary method is to gain " Experience Points " (also known as "Grounds Gold"). Members may gain 10 experience points per day by voting on 5 different flash movies or games in the Flash Portal. Another way of increasing one's Voting Power is done through the acquiring of Blam and Protection points (see below). There are 60 levels, all of which are static in their experience requirements. This is different from the previous system with 30 levels, where a sliding scale based of the highest level user affected the experience requirements. To illustrate a user's level, an icon of a weapon is shown on each member's userpage and below their names on each of their Forum posts (see here for both the icons and experience requirements for each level). Levels influence one's voting power in the Portal and indicate amount of experience. Thus higher levels do often command respect. Certain amounts of experience also unlock secret flash and options, although this has often been overlooked. Blam/protect system The other method of gaining voting power is by accumulating "blams" and "saves" (also called "protects"). This system is often referred to as the "blam/protect" system. Existing primarily to encourage voters to vote on movies under judgment (thereby streamlining the process), users are given points based on whether or not their votes on flash under judgment reflect the flash's ultimate fate. Thus, if a user votes a two or higher on a flash that survives, the user is awarded a "save" or "protect point" and if a user votes a zero or 1 on a flash that is removed, the user is awarded a "blam point." Votes which are contrary to the flash's outcome award no points. In order to prevent Groupthink and attempts to game the system, a submission's score and reviews are not shown while it is under judgement. While blams and saves are tallied independently, only their total is relevant to one's "rank," a title given to a user on their profile which also determines by what percentage their voting power is increased. For example, a "civilian" (a user with less than 100 combined blams and saves) receives no bonus to his or her voting power, however, an "Elite Guard Supreme Commander" (a user with more than 30,000 combined blams and saves) receives a 60% bonus. Each rank is also accompanied by another icon, a badge/insignia, however, unlike the level icon, this icon is only visible on a user's profile. See here for a more detailed explanation and a link to a list of ranks, icons, and statistics. PORTAL AWARDS When a movie or game is submitted to the Flash Portal, it has the chance to win any of the following awards:
Other awards:
FRONT PAGE ICONS On game called Taipan! . Over the years, as Newgrounds received more and more quality submissions the "Tom and Wade recommend" section grew from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 4 to 6 icons. There are currently 20 icons on the front page. The rate at which these icons was updated also increased, from weeks to days, eventually leading to the removal of the "Tom and Wade recommend" heading and becoming a staple of the front page, making it easy for new users to the site to find quality content. Originally the icons were created by Newgrounds admins, as were the short text descriptions (The same process used for the collections pages), but this proved to be extremely time consuming and soon users were given the ability to attach their own icons with their submissions, and write their own brief descriptions. In January 2005 the front page archive was launched, keeping a month-by-month list of Flash content that was deemed to be worthy of display on the Newgrounds front page. On July 26 , 2005 , the Icon Helpers system was launched for Newgrounds volunteers to make and submit icons for older Flash content that was lacking an icon, making the integration to automated collections pages much more effective. NEWGROUNDS BBS (BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEM) The NG BBS consists of multiple forums. Some are all-access, where all users are welcome to read, post and reply. Some are reply-only, where one cannot start a new topic, but only read and reply to existing ones. Other forums are private, for use by moderators. Categories
AUDIO PORTAL The Newgrounds Audio Portal is a place where amateur artists can submit all types of music. When you submit your first song an admin will have to review it before it gets listed. All the music is free to use (under a Creative Commons license). IN THE MEDIA
SEE ALSO
REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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