Woah, woah! Lots of replies for a feature we didn't think would be that controversial! I see lots of different opinions, mostly positive. We're glad the community has taken a liking to the change we are adding to our review site. I want to outline a few things that both Klazen and I have agreed upon, and that we believe gives the community the most transparency and insight into our decision making. I will try to address everyone's concerns/issues raised one-by-one. Here we go!
1.) We are a community site. Yes, we boast reviews and ratings as the flagship for delicious-fruit. Yes, we moderate these reviews and ratings with the utmost transparency, announcing every policy change on both these forums and on del-fruit itself. However, we are dedicated to the community and encourage it to grow and flourish. To achieve this, we sometimes add new features that we believe benefit the community. As we have added many features to the reviews/ratings section, we wanted to try something a little different. Do not think of Delicious-Fruit as a "review only" site. We want it to be a site that you not only check for reviews, but a site you check for community happenings. We believe "Wannabe of the Month" is a great start.
2.) This is not a "big-streamer" only event. We are looking for the best representations of the Wannabes in every stream. We do not look at view counts. Nor follower count. Nor social media followers/subscribers. We don't care if you're a Twitch Partner. We don't worry about webcams, on-screen chat, or even correct 4:3 scaling (but you really should Kappa). We are looking for community members that are great representatives of the community that are also active on Twitch.tv. This is not to say that everyone who doesn't stream on Twitch isn't a good representation, rather, we are looking to highlight those that we believe exemplify what the community should strive towards. Sunbla was chosen out of a pool of active streamers that we wanted to highlight. We have a nice list of streamers that could've taken the spotlight just as randomly as Sunbla. I encourage all of you to congratulate Sunbla on being the 1st "Wannabe of the Month", and help anyone who may be new to his channel integrate themselves into the community. He is, hopefully, just one of many Wannabes you watch!
3.) Regarding weekly switching rather than monthly - I personally do not like the weekly idea. My dislike is two-fold: I do not believe a week is long enough for a "majority" of site visitors to see, and I believe we will have to "recycle" Wannabes at a much quicker pace if we do a weekly switch, rather than monthly. There are only so many active streamers before we would either have to choose an inactive streamer (no-no), or one that has already been chosen (not as exciting). Also, based on how many unique daily visitors we have to the site, I believe it is more beneficial to keep the streamer up for a month rather than a week. Although I can't pinpoint the actual amount of non-bot visitors to the site, based on what I can read, we have roughly the same group of people checking del-fruit on a daily (or near-daily) basis, while it takes a longer time for more uniques to check within a week, two week, or month period. That being said, I think a week is too short and a month is just about the right time. In fact, I believe a 3-week period is probably ideal, however, this is a very ugly time frame to use, so we use a month instead.
TL;DR: Math fun
4.) Stream content - We don't care if you love needles. Avoidances. Adventure. Some weird medley mix. We don't care what you're streaming. We're not prioritizing speedrunners over avoidance players. We're not prioritizing medleys over needle. This plays mostly back to point #1.
5.) We do appreciate your feedback. When Klazen/myself read these posts, we do take it seriously. We discuss every point, bit by bit. We are willing to change things if the community has an overwhelming opinion towards a change that we can agree with to some extent. All in all, we want to help the community. Although I am speaking on behalf of Klazen, I can honestly say that we have tried very hard to keep activity and involvement high in the community, ranging from FGM to Bingo to all of Klazen's meme sites to Del-Fruit itself, and more. We are always looking for something new and fresh to do, and so the "Wannabe of the Month" is our newest addition! If you ever have a suggestion for Del-Fruit (whether it is review-related or not!) please let us know! We already have a few future ideas in mind that we intend on implementing at some point, and we'll make sure everyone stays updated so you never miss a beat.
Thank you for supporting Del-Fruit, and we hope we can continue to create new, fun, and innovative ways to show off our community!
-TJ&Klazen