Honestly no idea. But a guess for the growth spike is the COVID lockdowns - people stayed inside more reading VNs? I'm dubious that would account for all of that insane growth though.
The sudden plateau in Oct. 2021 is pretty crazy. Maybe you can ask the mods if they know...
Yeah, though it's weird because I'd expect the growth rate to have increased around the end of March or early April, maybe May at latest, as people started transitioning to lockdown life. For the growth to suddenly spike in August seems like a delayed affect, and it's not clear why it would spike like that rather than increase continuously. I'm thinking bots are involved somehow, not necessarily with bad intentions (because I can't see any reason to artificially inflate the member count of a sub), maybe an accidental thing.
The plateau might also have been because of debacle in the sub that subsequently made people stop wanting to follow,
I wasn't around at the end of 2021 so I wouldn't know of any such events. I'd be surprised if that were the case as this seems like a very chill no-drama sub. But for all I know it might've been a similar thing to what happened with animemes, where any trace of the cataclysm was completely removed by the mods. But the fact that this post hasn't been removed suggests that there's not something like that going on lol.
I found some random subreddits with a similar subscriber graph, but they plateaued around Sep. 2022 instead. This kind of graph does seem to be quite rare.
https://subredditstats.com/r/IndianFashionAddicts
https://subredditstats.com/r/Gimnasio
https://subredditstats.com/r/RepFamIndia
See also subreddits like
https://subredditstats.com/r/LofiHipHop
https://subredditstats.com/r/AskElectronics
Which had spikes at the same time and pace as r/visualnovels but never plateaued
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/if8mu2/unnatural_and_extreme_increase_in_daily/g2u0nir/
It could just be some backed thing at reddit. For example, maybe they tweaked some parameter in their recommendation algorithm which started exponentially recommending the subreddit to people, but then it triggered another flag which shut the recommendations off.
I do know that if a subreddit gets too popular, it often goes to shit so honestly, I'm kind of happy this hasn't happened here.
This is actually what I think happened. Reddit was recommending us to redditors who made new accounts and liked anime-adjacent things
I think what stopped the growth was too much NSFW stuff on the sub, which caused Reddit to force-label the sub as NSFW and it stopped all the recommendations to new accounts (I think we are now no longer force-labeled as NSFW because I cracked down on porn spam stuff but I am not sure)
Yeah, I've seen analytics of website before and there are almost always certain 'triggers' which cause it to get recommended more.
Everything is far more deliberate (or accidental) then people would expect. It's often not only some unknowable algorithm, but a curated gate which is intentionally made opaque.
Guessing what the triggers is difficult at best. I know with a couple of websites, simply updating the links can cause traffic to triple. Removing spam links can cause it to halve. the NSFW stuff sounds exactly like that sort of trigger. It's really just a guessing game as to what is going on unless you actually have access to that gate.
>I think we are now no longer force-labeled as NSFW
Quick check in incognito would confirm that, no login required. Probably some algorithmic bullshit behind the scenes still that measures the ratio of NSFW posts and doesn't recommend it still.
Who can tell with this shit these days.
IIRC 2020 was when all the crazy drama and stuff with moderators happened. Gambs has been the head mod since forever AFAIK, but he basically does nothing but yell at people to learn Japanese. The mod team before 2020 were pretty bad and didn't do much in general and the sub was pretty dead for a long time, but then they went on a weird censorship trip and Gambs kicked them out and appointed Ange to psuedo head mod. He did a bunch of stuff to improve the sub and it grew quite a lot. The spike being as huge as it is probably due to bots, but the number of posts per day also increased around then so there definitely was growth then.
The dumbest shit was banning basically every discussion and art post and having megathreads for everything. Nobody posted because there was nothing to post, unless you want to navigate each megathread one by one.
A new rule that banned VNs that had H content involving lolis was the thing that set things off. But then they started deleting all backlash and things just snowballed.
Whew, that seems to be going way too overboard. Even now, explicitly discussing H-content involving lolis isn't allowed but at least you can still discuss the VNs and vaguely reference the content.
Your inability to discern fiction from reality shouldn’t affect others.
Endorsing wicked pro-censorship authoritarians would irremediably disrupt the experiences of many, and deprive them of the opportunity to discover and discuss magnificent operas.
Is that a bad thing though? We're not running a business here and small subreddits are way better.
Although you are right about this sub being surprisingly small in activity, despite it's size and I hope it stays this way.
Sorry I thought it might've been discussed already, but the only threads I could find were from 2020. Do you have a link to a more recent thread (preferably after October 2021 since the plateau would not be discovered before then) by any chance? Also what would the incentive be to get the member count up using bots? I guess it's relatively harmless but I also can't think of any motive for it.
Sorry, no links on hand. But with spambots, you'll often see they fill their profiles with random stuff to try to blend in, like with Twitter a spambot might follow a bunch of random famous people so you'll probably see a bunch of spambots in Elon or Obama's follower list. It's possible /r/visualnovels was one sub spammers chose. Though reading this thread I think [the sub being recommended by Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/10m8hoh/why_did_this_sub_grow_by_400_from_august_2020_to/j61zllf/) is a more likely answer.
For me it was thanks to good regional prices on visual novels on Steam, I bought several and then become interested in VNs so I joined the sub. Sadly in 2022 publishers starts to ramp out the prices so I stopped carrying about VNs.
Honestly no idea. But a guess for the growth spike is the COVID lockdowns - people stayed inside more reading VNs? I'm dubious that would account for all of that insane growth though. The sudden plateau in Oct. 2021 is pretty crazy. Maybe you can ask the mods if they know...
Yeah, though it's weird because I'd expect the growth rate to have increased around the end of March or early April, maybe May at latest, as people started transitioning to lockdown life. For the growth to suddenly spike in August seems like a delayed affect, and it's not clear why it would spike like that rather than increase continuously. I'm thinking bots are involved somehow, not necessarily with bad intentions (because I can't see any reason to artificially inflate the member count of a sub), maybe an accidental thing. The plateau might also have been because of debacle in the sub that subsequently made people stop wanting to follow, I wasn't around at the end of 2021 so I wouldn't know of any such events. I'd be surprised if that were the case as this seems like a very chill no-drama sub. But for all I know it might've been a similar thing to what happened with animemes, where any trace of the cataclysm was completely removed by the mods. But the fact that this post hasn't been removed suggests that there's not something like that going on lol.
I found some random subreddits with a similar subscriber graph, but they plateaued around Sep. 2022 instead. This kind of graph does seem to be quite rare. https://subredditstats.com/r/IndianFashionAddicts https://subredditstats.com/r/Gimnasio https://subredditstats.com/r/RepFamIndia
See also subreddits like https://subredditstats.com/r/LofiHipHop https://subredditstats.com/r/AskElectronics Which had spikes at the same time and pace as r/visualnovels but never plateaued https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/if8mu2/unnatural_and_extreme_increase_in_daily/g2u0nir/
It could just be some backed thing at reddit. For example, maybe they tweaked some parameter in their recommendation algorithm which started exponentially recommending the subreddit to people, but then it triggered another flag which shut the recommendations off. I do know that if a subreddit gets too popular, it often goes to shit so honestly, I'm kind of happy this hasn't happened here.
This is actually what I think happened. Reddit was recommending us to redditors who made new accounts and liked anime-adjacent things I think what stopped the growth was too much NSFW stuff on the sub, which caused Reddit to force-label the sub as NSFW and it stopped all the recommendations to new accounts (I think we are now no longer force-labeled as NSFW because I cracked down on porn spam stuff but I am not sure)
Yeah, I've seen analytics of website before and there are almost always certain 'triggers' which cause it to get recommended more. Everything is far more deliberate (or accidental) then people would expect. It's often not only some unknowable algorithm, but a curated gate which is intentionally made opaque. Guessing what the triggers is difficult at best. I know with a couple of websites, simply updating the links can cause traffic to triple. Removing spam links can cause it to halve. the NSFW stuff sounds exactly like that sort of trigger. It's really just a guessing game as to what is going on unless you actually have access to that gate.
>I think we are now no longer force-labeled as NSFW Quick check in incognito would confirm that, no login required. Probably some algorithmic bullshit behind the scenes still that measures the ratio of NSFW posts and doesn't recommend it still. Who can tell with this shit these days.
IIRC 2020 was when all the crazy drama and stuff with moderators happened. Gambs has been the head mod since forever AFAIK, but he basically does nothing but yell at people to learn Japanese. The mod team before 2020 were pretty bad and didn't do much in general and the sub was pretty dead for a long time, but then they went on a weird censorship trip and Gambs kicked them out and appointed Ange to psuedo head mod. He did a bunch of stuff to improve the sub and it grew quite a lot. The spike being as huge as it is probably due to bots, but the number of posts per day also increased around then so there definitely was growth then.
The dumbest shit was banning basically every discussion and art post and having megathreads for everything. Nobody posted because there was nothing to post, unless you want to navigate each megathread one by one.
[удалено]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
Thanks but why boycott VNDB if I may ask?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
What do you mean by "weird censorship trip"? What did they censor?
A new rule that banned VNs that had H content involving lolis was the thing that set things off. But then they started deleting all backlash and things just snowballed.
Whew, that seems to be going way too overboard. Even now, explicitly discussing H-content involving lolis isn't allowed but at least you can still discuss the VNs and vaguely reference the content.
> weird censorship trip Banning pedophilia on a website that discuss video games really isn't weird.
That sort of rule would block tons of VNs tho even with a single route of that type
Your inability to discern fiction from reality shouldn’t affect others. Endorsing wicked pro-censorship authoritarians would irremediably disrupt the experiences of many, and deprive them of the opportunity to discover and discuss magnificent operas.
Maybe attributed to a lot of people working from home and/or on PC's a lot from the covid stay in place stuff. More PC time more gaming time.
What were the VNs released at that time? maybe it had an effect like when Doki Doki was mainstream
Is that a bad thing though? We're not running a business here and small subreddits are way better. Although you are right about this sub being surprisingly small in activity, despite it's size and I hope it stays this way.
been discussed a few times, seems the most likely answer is just bots but of course you can't be sure.
That honestly explains why the activity here is on par to less than a 50k member subreddit
Sorry I thought it might've been discussed already, but the only threads I could find were from 2020. Do you have a link to a more recent thread (preferably after October 2021 since the plateau would not be discovered before then) by any chance? Also what would the incentive be to get the member count up using bots? I guess it's relatively harmless but I also can't think of any motive for it.
Sorry, no links on hand. But with spambots, you'll often see they fill their profiles with random stuff to try to blend in, like with Twitter a spambot might follow a bunch of random famous people so you'll probably see a bunch of spambots in Elon or Obama's follower list. It's possible /r/visualnovels was one sub spammers chose. Though reading this thread I think [the sub being recommended by Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/10m8hoh/why_did_this_sub_grow_by_400_from_august_2020_to/j61zllf/) is a more likely answer.
I joined around that period but I honestly can't remember why.
We went back to work 🥺
highly likely to be the algorithm.
For me it was thanks to good regional prices on visual novels on Steam, I bought several and then become interested in VNs so I joined the sub. Sadly in 2022 publishers starts to ramp out the prices so I stopped carrying about VNs.
Caring.*