User blog comment:Goldenshane/An Admin Blog (Everyone can comment, but please stay on track)/@comment-1874924-20101230044741

I'm a bit late to the party, but here are my thoughts:

I think the lack of interest in FQ is a symptom of a deeper problem. I don't normally follow Featured Character voting, so I can't speak to that, and Featured Image voting is usually fairly light; but Featured User and Featured Story don't have those excuses.

In recent months, I have noticed precipitous declines in interest (both voting and nominating) for Featured User and--especially--Featured Story. These have traditionally been considered the biggest prizes, but each ballot has only 7 candidates this month. I haven't been on the wiki a year yet, but I've been here long enough to see FS ballots with almost 30 nominees and FU ballots with 15 or more. Granted, those totals included a few nominees that didn't really belong on the ballot, but still...

I find the relative paucity of FS and FU nominees puzzling because it's always been an effective and accepted way to publicize stories. (The FQ page was the same way. I remember the time I nominated a quote from my first Fake Souls vignette. It didn't get any votes, but it triggered a wave of new Fake Souls chapters.)

Perhaps more troubling is the decline in voter interest. The Feature elections have never had a high participation rate among eligible voters, but it's fallen off terribly of late, especially in the FS voting. How many of you remember when FS and FU winners routinely had double-digit vote support? It hasn't been that long. In stark contrast is the recent pattern: Only one of the last four FS winners has had double-digit support, and the numbers have been steadily dropping. Last month, Endurance won FS honors with only 4 supporting votes, tying an uneviable record set by TD Isle at a time when the wiki community was much smaller than it is now. This month is a little better, with the current leader showing 6 votes and three others candidates tied with 4 votes each, but it's still a far cry from what we saw even 6 months ago.

This is a little more understandable with the FU voting, since most of the best-known users have already been Featured, leaving mostly second-tier people who aren't as well known. (Apologies in advance if that description offends anyone--that wasn't my intent.) Kenzen is a glaring exception, but it's now looking like his time may finally be at hand.

Part of the problem, especially with the FS ballotting, is that many users who used to vote regularly now vote rarely, if at all, and few have stepped up to replace them. Some of these former voters (e.g. Spenny, Bocaj, TDIRM) aren't voting because they're hardly on the wiki at all anymore; but others--a long and distinguished list that includes many of the wiki's big names--are still active but have largely stopped voting. Granted, a few former voters cast their support widely, and so didn't normally influence the outcome, but that's beside the point.

Another factor, I think, is how people time their votes. FS votes tend to come in much later in the month than FU votes. I suspect (as I have theorized elsewhere) that people may be casting their FU votes early in the month and forgetting that they haven't voted on any stories.

I wish I had an answer. I'd hate to see Featured Story and Featured User go the way of Featured Quote, but that seems to be the path we're heading down.