Prolific Contributor
A Prolific Contributor is a contributor who has submitted a large number of contributions. The exact number of contributions required depends on the field of contribution. On July 18th, 2006, CJayC increased the quota for prolific status and expanded the categories. A day later, he decreased the requirements for the FAQ category from 5MB to 4MB. After a bug was found on July 20th in the prolific lists concerning codes the limits were raised to keep the list competitive. As of October 2008, the Prolific Contributor list is no longer on the site.
The current requirements are as follows:
- FAQs: 30+ General FAQs and/or 4.0 megabytes of FAQs
- Images: 30+ Image files
- Reviews: Over 0.75 megabytes of reviews
- Codes: 75+ games and/or 500 game codes
- Save Games: 50 or more
- Game Data: 75 or more
- Top 10 Lists: 5 or more
When a contributor has enough material accepted by GameFAQs, they are listed in a special page reserved for prolific contributors. However, there is no extrinsic distinction between a prolific contributor and a regular contributor, rendering it an honourary title to commemorate their feat.
The goal of becoming a prolific contributor has led some contributors to become "KB whores". These contributors tend to pay little to no attention to quality and attempt to submit as much material as possible to raise their total file size in order to be listed as a prolific contributor. Some techniques used include multiple guides with similar content, intentionally adding fillers or repeating large bodies of general text in every submitted guide (for example, a FAQ author may write numerous in-depth guides for one game, but each guide would contain a large portion of general questions and information that is copied into each guide, resulting in an otherwise 20KB file turning into a 100KB file). Such methods are taboo amongst the regular contributor community.
Prolific privileges
Originally, prolific contributors were purely honourary in title. However, with the 2006 Redesign and the imminent introduction of Premium Accounts, CJayC pushed for free Premium Accounts for prolific contributors, with Prolific Contributors receiving ad-free access during the interim. After Premium Accounts were dropped, Prolific Contributors retained ad-free access. Prolific Contributors before the requirement changes on July 18th 2006 kept their ad-free access.
Removal
In October 2008, the Prolific Contributors list was replaced with "Top Contributors".[1]
External Links
- Prolific Contributors - Top Contributors page, formerly the Prolific Contributors list
