>>6690>>6691Now seriously, how do we measure the praise/popularity of an image then?
The standard method that I can find which provides a reference/idea about how an image has performed is by using the method of reviews and ratings that shops and music sites deliver.
That is to say, you compare how the image has performed according to what the artist has drawn in the past and compare it to the previous works in terms of score. Applying this method requires to check the biggest websites in which there are plenty of votes so you can get a more reliable sample than you would get in other sites with fewer votes.
Basically, what one would do here is by just clicking on the artist´s tag, set the descending order according to the score and check how well received the image has been in comparison with the previous images of that same artist (just like you would do with the discography of any band in a music site).
Despite delivering more information, there are several problems that make this analysis pretty skewed:
-Most fans would use a booru (Philomena or Booru On Rails. Rarely ever I would see a user comparing ratings with the Danbooru system when it comes to MLP) . In this case, Derpibooru is the one that holds the biggest amount of votes that could give you a very clear idea about the performance of said images.
- Nonetheless, just by seeing the score of this booru DOES NOT provide the information that you would get from Deviantart or Twitter. This means that if you want to achieve a more plausible reference point about the output of any image, you also have to check the source links (implying that those have a good amount of likes/favorites)
-The division of the boorus has caused that the future images get less ratings (spreading the vote and thus, making said comparison even less realistic)
- The artist might have drawn certain pictures in the past that could receive a much higher rating if said artist had a high profile in the first place (or uploaded the content when there were fewer users checking that site). This implies a few deviations in which previous images might not have a fair score for establishing the comparison because of diverse circumstances
- Boorus deliver the scores but unlike Furaffinity/E621, they don´t display neither the number of downloads nor the number of visits.
Even by following this method of comparing among the works of an artist, it already carries a few problems on its own. Nonetheless, despite taking into account these deviations, relying on the numbers provides a much greater amount of information in comparison with the selection that comes from the EQD team.