List of [Item] in SkyBlock: Clarification and Concerns

[GreenMiner33]

TL;DR AT THE BEGINNING

I think the poll on Leather Helmets had a low vote count because of multiple reasons. It might be the previous poll, the style of the poll and post, forums in general, or other factors.​

I made a re-poll for the same question, this time with the actual items mentioned :D​

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43, 44, 17, 22, 39, 21, 21, 20, 14, 8.
This sequence of ten numbers is relevant to the purpose of this entry and most surely the entire series.

Here's the results of the latest poll:

Just 8 voters. That seems like a bit low compared to the usual votes. I feel like this might be due to a variety of reasons ranging from making it an automatic winner to other potential reasons, though overall the low voter count still raises some concern. Anyway, I did some data collecting.

Here's a table of some statistics relating to the past ten lists:

#41​	#42​	#43​	#44​	#45​	#46​	#47​	#48​	#49​	#50​
43 voters​	44 voters​	17 voters​	13 voters​	22 voters​	39 voters​	21 voters​	20 voters​	14 voters​	8 voters​
9 days​	8 days (Internally -1 hour)​	6d + 22h (166 hours)​	8 days​	8 days​	10 days​	10 days​	6d + 22h (166 hours)​	7 days​	8 days​
6d 8h 48m​	15d 12h 54m​	5d 4h 9m​	14d 7m​	18d 23h 6m​	2d 23h 11m​	14d 6h 17m​	23h 30m​	7d 20h 2m​	19d 20h 36m​

Top = Voters
Middle = Duration of Poll
Bottom = Time between end of previous poll + release of episode

Something else of note: the orange column was for the episode posted 4 days before Halloween's Day, and the green column was for the episode posted on Christmas Day. Bold represents the highest value, underline represents the second-highest, and italic represent the lowest. I also checked the times (in GMT) although they seemed to have no correlation with the number of votes.

Something you may be able to notice is the highest AND the lowest voter counts in the past ten polls both had a poll with 8 days on it. Not shown in the data itself, but the 21 in the #46 poll, 20 in the #47 poll, and the 14 in the #48 poll do not entirely overlap. There are some that joined for later polls and some that only did earlier polls.

What are some of the possibilities to why this latest poll's turn-up rate had been so low?

1. Leather Helmet was picked, not voted​

Eager as I was, I decided on making Leather Helmets the grand Episode 50 milestone as a checkpoint of how far we have come. This completes the Leather Armor tetralogy (the name for a group of 4 literary works) and was overall the most recurring poll option with some of the highest non-winning votes in prior polls.

However, here's the thing: it's not a voted winner. This means that, by making Leather Helmets guaranteed to be a winner instead of regarding it with a poll, I have made a poll regarding something other than the next item list to be made. This may have discouraged some users from voting in the next list's poll.

In addition, Leather Helmets may be seen as sort of a let-down coming from the other Leather Armor pieces having hundreds (100-200) of different armor pieces that count as each. Leather Chestplates took nearly a half-month, Leather Boots took nearly a half-month, and Leather Leggings took nearly a month. Leather Helmet has just over a quarter of its predecesors' counts in items that use its texture... yet it also had a break of nearly a month.

2. Non-unanimous votes on the style​

List of Most Redstone Machine Items had a different poll regarding how the future of these polls should go:

• Directly stating the items to vote on
• Indirectly hinting at which items are related to the one hinted at
• Making it basically irrelevant unless you do some detective-level work to figure out a posssible connection

Out of these, the results were as follows:

2a. Improper vote usage​

"Polls indirectly hinting at items which the next list will be on" won by 50% of the vote. Although, something's off - only half of the voters wanted it? Why would this be a satisfactory conclusion? Especially with the (unannounced) removal of 1.12 support, I feel like this would not be an entirely-fair metric for determining which method to use. Perhaps I should have experimented more - maybe gave some examples of trying each of them a bit more. Currently, there has been a few examples so far that I have not explicitly pointed out:

• Example of poll option 1: Which of these items should have a list next?
  • This kind of poll was one of the most common styles I used.
• Example of poll option 2: What is your favorite Slayer-based ability?
  • Iron Boots (double jump), Diamond Sword (Crystal Attunement), Melons (Succulence), Hopper (Howl), Leather Leggings (enrage), Golden Sword (soulcry)
• Example of poll option 3: What do you think Bonzo would play the most of? (Trust me, this is related to the next items)
  • I also used this as a way of determining which room to put Bonzo in during The Catacombs: Chapter 15
• Sometimes there's even mixes of examples; some with the items being listed, and others with a hint towards what the items are.

Perhaps I should have made a follow-up poll about the voting, including more votes and perhaps a priority voting sort of system. (If too confusing, I could instead try a poll for which option is DISLIKED the most)

Of course, the formatting could be more than just the voted format's fault...

2b. Formatted in the wrong way​

There are several things I did to format the post incorrectly.

• I forgot to include the results from the previous poll.
  • The poll was going to be saved for the end, but I forgot to include it after calculating the total costs.
• The section with "in terms of inventory space" had some nested bullet points with more than one line's width.
  • In addition, the double-nested bullet point may be unnecessary, especially with the points having double lines.
  • Of course, some other posts also have this come up. It's just not as noticable there.
• The poll options for the items may be a bit too research-heavy on figuring out the solutions.
• Episode 50 (Leather Helmets list) was immediately followed by Update 9 for List of [Item] in SkyBlock.
  • ...which was then followed-up by a Shattered Locket RNG post the next day. I was really busy, wasn't I?
  • The last time an Update immediately followed an episode, the poll got 13 votes. The previous had 36 votes.
• I forgot to bold and make-yellow the Abbreviated Millions in the estimated cost for the Leather Helmets.
• I actually added a total cost for the Leather Helmets (since it was short enough).

3. hypixel did it​

I've overheard that a lot more people (especially on the forums) were just disappearing or quitting lately. Not sure if this holds true for the SkyBlock General Discussion section of the forums or not, although if it does that may be an indicator as to why the vote count suddenly dropped.

In addition, it was also the removal of 1.12 (and 1.17/1.18) that caused me to pretty much quit Hypixel on the spot. I made three posts which were around the midpoint of the poll in progress - SBOT, Housing, and Hypixel Server Discussion - relating to the version being dropped.

4. Other Reasons​

There are plenty of other ways to reason about this. It could be a natural decline of interest in the series. It could be the votes count spiking up when there is a holiday or when other mandatory activities are lessened (similarly to the spike in player counts during COVID to a lesser extent). It could be everyone quitting at just that moment of which the poll was open.

There are many things it could be, although it would most definitely need more research and/or replies with information on how such an occurrence must have come to be to truly narrow down the possibilies to only a few options. In the meantime, here's another poll! It's similar to the Leather Helmets one, except it's a lot less vague on what the options mean.



Consider this a simple re-count of the poll with more specific info. I've decided to make this recount because of the low voters count in the previous poll. By the way, it has been roughly 24 hours (1 day) worth of time since the previous poll ended.

This isn't the first time I made a clarification poll, of course.

(This is the "skip to the end" point)

​

 

[GreenMiner33]

For reference: List of Leather Helmets in SkyBlock

 

[GreenMiner33]

Going to bump this rq (sorry)

 

[celloturtle2022]

Going to bump this rq (sorry)

i am much utterly and unfathomably disappointed