NG log

The NG Log Header

NG Log is a website dedicated to Newgrounds users who are interested in their stats on Newgrounds. The site is unashamedly the home to many Newgrounds Statwhores. By logging in to this website and pressing the Get Stats button, the site will extract a list of the latest statistics, such as number of experience points and number of review replies. This operation puts them all together and enables the user to compare them with other users who log in to NG Log. the site was originally created by Casualty , but in May of 2009 was transferred to ByteSlinger. She has made some additions and improvements to the logging system, and it is rumored that she is working on a major rewrite to improve stat visibility and add reporting tools.

Why it Was Created

There is currently no direct way for a Newgrounds user to check their own stats within Newgrounds itself, other than the current values they see in their account. The designers of Newgrounds were more focused on the sharing and discussion of Flash and Audio content rather than the self-importance of user rankings and comparisons. Originally, these stats were manually kept by various dedicated users, who looked up information and kept track of it all on spreadsheets. Then, on a weekly or monthly basis, they would publish these stats in specific user forums for all to see.

In 2005 Casualty figured out a way for a program running on one server to access the pages on the Newgrounds server. When user pages were read in, the program would extract the vital information from the pages and convert it all to a statistical data record. Once it became a data record in a file on Casualty's server, he could then program any analysis or report that was needed. He put together all of this knowledge into one system called "NG Log", and became the first person to create a decent stat-management tool for Newgrounds.

In May of 2009, Casualty passed the care and maintenance of the site to ByteSlinger, who moved all of the programs and data to a different server hosted by WKR Concepts. Many programs were cleaned up and streamlined, reports and graphs were added, and the interface to Newgrounds was improved to make page loading faster and more reliable. As always, NG Logs is always under construction, since there is always "one more stat to manage and one more report to add"

However, after many years of the user statistics being externalized on various sites, it is now up for discussion as a possible improvement when "Newgrounds Mark III" is released. All of the information is available on the NG servers - but it would require additional storage to keep daily snapshots for all users, as well as some additional programming to create the user ranking lists and graphs currently provided by NG Logs. Should all of these stat tools be integrated into Newgrounds in the future, it would most likely mean the end of NG Logs.

Accuracy of Stats

While the stats provided are an up-to-the-second record of the users own stats, any comparison with other users is not very complete- some major users never come to NG and may not even be aware of it. If a User shows as having the highest vote on the NG Log list, that list is only of those people who log in to NG Log, not all of Newgrounds. Furthermore, it is only comparing the user with the latest Get Stats that other users have logged. This has not prevented many users from logging in hundreds of times to get their stats. Stats are more accurate on a weekly basis, because a user can log daily stats at different times of the day - making some days skewed high and others skewed low.

Popularity

As of Jan 2010, NG Log has over 4,400 registered users who have between them logged their stats over 132,000 times. Some users have logged their stats over a thousand times. However, to put this figure in perspective, there are well over 2 million registered users on Newgrounds; although the vast majority of them are inactive or rarely active and therefore do not impact the general standings of more active users, it is not known how many of the top/active users are not included in the stats.

Who Logs their Stats?

All sorts of different users log their stats, but looking at the Batting Average, very few high ranking authors log their stats, and out of those, all are Staff members. Many new users are logging stats to keep track of medal history, but most log stats to observe their recent activity, and based on their current paces, know when to expect the next "level" or "rank" up.

External Links

• NG Log
• NG Log suggestion thread