That is an interesting statistic. I would like to see one based on image favorites or downloads by rating to see what rating get the most attention on this site.

I guess the image fav data has been kept a bit of a secret, just so there's no "competition" who gathers the most eyes here. It would be interesting nonetheless. =)
But yeah, even just separating the numbers per rating would be fun to see. There is that feel that even though there's plenty of general submissions here, it's the adult stuff that gathers the views. Or maybe it's just me... ^^;

I updated the description a bit too, I think you got the first comment in before I got it all written down.

Who gathers the most eyes is on the FA Ranking page here: http://superwailingbonus.com/farank/?page=1 But as an artist regardless of ranking it would be interesting to see from a site perspective how much porn is downloaded over the G rated material.

*pokes around the system* Now this is interesting... remember those Internet Map thingies they used to draw some years back, showing how things route together? I wonder if something like that could be adapted to social networks...
Yes, we need more useless stats. =)

I have a bit of a story.

I have some friends up north, right? I visit them when I get the chance. Now, two of the computers are set up in what could be the dining room (nerds), so I get to watch over their shoulder while they WoW and stuff. I watched as one of them, let's call him Wolf, was going through recent FA submissions. He was as huge big-time watcher type person. He had installed this gesture system for Firefox so he could browse even faster. Watching him go through his submissions is a terrifying experience. He has them open in a huge series of tabs, and then gestures them closed after looking at each image for about half a second.

After I saw this the first time, I realized that popularity on FA meant nothing, nothing, NOTHING. Why even bother to upload, except as a host? There are too many artists, all producing too much work. It isn't like it was ten years ago, because the whole pyramid has been raised out of the sand and into the sky: there are even more people just getting into the great art now, and the ones that were all mediocre back then are rather quite skilled now.

If you want your work to get attention, yeesh, there's not really much that you can do anymore. Try to do something completely and totally different, I guess, but that has it's drawbacks, too: people in the fandom seem to really appreciate a few set of approaches, and everything else, the avant-guarde so to put it, flies under the radar totally.  Wookie's link up there pretty solidly confirms that.

That browsing system does sound familiar... I click open multiple tabs, and use the mouse scroll rocker switch to go through'em.
I guess it's more going through a random set of images, and trying to find something that evokes an emotional response, than enjoying each item for their artistic values. Though there are always some odd finds that end up favorited, something exceptional in the setting, composition, technique... or it's just plain beautiful.
Though recently I've been going through others' favorite lists, since my watch list is rather small, so I at least have some kind of chance to survive the flood. =)

Popularity... I don't know if that's a proper word for it, how it works on FA. It's like "Friends" list on Livejournal, the definition of the word gets blurred. There's plenty of skill here, though I'd bet majority of them doesn't gain that "popularity". And some people are popular just because they've got a nice set of commissions presented here. Though, they're just popular.

I guess there's some methods for gaining a bit of attention, the front page effect used to work somewhat decently at some point. My only pic with balls is three times the average views, and got second most favs too. So I'd think the system can be gamed a bit to gain some foothold here, if one wants it. And I think people have tried that too, making aliases just to see if it works?
I don't know if it would have anything to do with artistry anymore, but well... =)

Love seeing stats like this.

Really pwns the idiots who think FA is nothing but Fat macro 6 year old foxdragons having gay sex..

*nodnods* It seems there's plenty more of that, except that sex part.

Now. that's interesting. I wonder what happened in the sixth month there? Deletions spike and submissions drop at the same time.

Might have been some sort of spam attack, or server glitch resulting to loss of data. Ride was a bit bumpy in the beginning.