A couple of weeks ago I remarked on how happy I was to have reached 600 popular pictures on TLKFAA. One of the reasons this matters to me is that it’s not an inflated stat. Inflated stats occur when artists routinely fave their own pictures. Yes, you can do it, but I don’t like it. It’s good for enlarging the raw count of your popular pictures, but when you do that you lose a landmark-creator for yourself. I like the pop pics count because it provides me with feedback as to what people like and don’t like about my artwork.
How can you spot a TLKFAA artist who inflates their stats? [Note: this analysis is based off a limited sample, 
handpicked by yours truly.*] Well, the largest indicator is the number of “popular pictures” with only one fan. Once you’re up there in the number of pop pics, like I am, it’s reasonable for less than a third of your pics to have just the one fan. I’m just over 600 pics, and I would estimate 160-170 of those to have one fan. Inflaters, if they’re clever about their methods, won’t fave all of their pics, but a high number. When the percentage of 1-fanners is up there in the 40s, something’s off.
Another glaring indication of stat inflaters will be that a very high percentage of the pics they upload will be added to the list. This has relevance when the first indication, lots of 1-fan pics, is true (if not, then it might be this is just a very popular artist). It’s highly unlikely that one fan will like this one picture, and a different fan will like a completely separate picture, over 40% or more of one artist’s work. Statistical trends don’t really work that way. When these first two indicators are combined, it is probable that one person has done a mass faving of this artist’s work. There is a possibility that this person is not the artist, but I know of very few people who will go out and fave hundreds of pics by a single artist…it takes a lot of effort, and would probably be noticed if it kept happening. If 800 of a total 900 pictures are faved, with a large percentage of 1-fanners, Occam’s razor would point to self-inflation.
A final indication of statistical inflation by a TLKFAA fanartist is comparing the number of fans of their top popular pics (i.e. top ten). This should not be used on its own as proof of inflation. A fanartist may have 1000 popular pictures, but their top ten pics might have a range of 30-20 fans. If this is not inflation, then it’s telling – to me it illustrates that this fanartist’s skills in term of picture quality are probably not spectacular (also not a flattering conclusion). Even AnnieHyena, the most prolific Archive artist at over 4500 uploads, has a respectable 80-40 range, showing that her picture quality in terms of likability does not suffer. I have a 70-40 range if you leave off my outlying 150-fan pic.
Now, just because I’ve pointed out these indicators does not mean that you should go around shouting accusations at artists that they are stat inflaters. Do not do! It causes dramaz and does not reflect well on you. The point of this post is to show that there is more to the raw pop pic count than is blatantly apparent. I find the statistics fascinating and like to examine what they reflect and what they don’t. On a site like the Archive where there are many such stats to look at, I think it’s good for a LK fanartist to have a good grasp of what TLKFAA numbers illustrate. And please, note the disclaimer below and realize that this comes from my limited theory-rambling. It’s just observations I’ve made along the way as a TLKFAA fanartist.
* Disclaimer: These indicators are my own personal conclusions from studying a very select sample of TLKFAA fanartists with high upload counts and uploaded content similar to my own, mostly AotMs who draw a good amount of canon. They should not be taken as absolute truth, or applied Archive-wide. Canonless artists and those with less than 300 uploaded pics or so were not in my sampling.
Confessions of a Lion King Fanartist 