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With the contest being announced and not minding some good compitition, especially if it makes census results more accurate, I wanted to start this thread listing some tips for becoming a top contributor. I'm not really a major message board kind of guy so I probably won't be updating my info that much but I'll check back once in awhile. As being the top registered contributor I felt I should get the ball rolling, but if you feel like contributing please post your own tips.

Keep in mind I am writing my the following tips with those that are familiar with CensusPlus. If you are not familiar with it I suggest that you check out the FAQ section and before downloading it and registering on this site. Perhaps you will be the top contributor and get a lot of tickets for the September Contest.

Gendril's Tips - updated August 10, 2006

1. Take a full census in the morning and in the evening. You capture a wider variety of characters if you spread out the times in which you submit.
2. Without a doubt try and take a census during the peak play time hours. I always get credit for a lot of updates during this time. You can check when a servers peak times are here.
3. Submit your census results very shortly after taking them. Even if it's a small update at least you will have captured an update of players that have leveled and get credit for it.
4. If you are only taking a census of one realm create characters on additional realms. Blizzard allows you to create up to 50 characters on one account.
5. Make sure to create characters on realms that don't have many updates. You can check out that information on the Most Wanted section of the website. The less people submit to a certain realm the more chance you have at being credited for an update I find.
6. On PvE servers create characters on both the Alliance and Horde side and take a census for each.
7. On PvP servers create a character on the side that has the least amount of updates.

That's it for now. If this thread gets too long I will add other submissions to my own and give credit where credit is due. I hope this helps....


From Eyeball-Dragonmaw:

1. New or newer servers
-With new servers everyone is joining guilds, making guilds, leveling quick, etc. You should get tons of updates. If I personally was still doing the contest I would be running census on the 2-3 new servers this patch every hour. There are some other newer servers that still only have 10-20 level 60's and is great for updates.

2. High Population Servers
-These can sometimes net a pretty good return on investment. With more players you are able to capture alot more chars, and possible updates. The problem with high population servers is the time it takes to do a census. I know a few times I did some servers with around 3k online, and when 2.5k of them are night elves, and level 60 it takes forever.

3. Most Wanted Servers
-These can be good intially, but if everyone jumps on them than the return value dwindles quite rapidly.

4. Lower Population Servers
-These are good for fast updates, and are easier to do multiple times a day because of that.

5. Server Transfers
-This is huge. Any high pop server allowing people to transfer to a low pop server. This is like getting free updates. This is great the first week or two of the transfers when you census the servers that are being transferred too.

6. Census Times
-I am still up in the air on this. Of course prime time gives you a range of more characters, but off-peak times gives you a better chance of finding new updates from people playing in other time zones, countries, etc.

7. Frequent submissions
-This will help alot. If you take census's all day long, but only submit after you are all done you are losing valuable updates possibly. The more you upload the better odds that someone else didn't just send an update in before you, and it makes this database come to a screeching halt with big uploads.

8. Best Days/Times
-To capture the most players I have found Monday nights, and Tuesday nights return the most results. This is basically due to lots of people trying to get last minute honor farming in before calculations, and Tuesday is good because everyone logs on to see if there was a patch, or to check out there updated pvp ranks etc.

All very excellent suggestions!

I've found actually you get more "updates" in the morning hours since a lot fewer census are done at that time... which just so happens to be when I am playing Also if you look at all the servers activity ratios... the morning hours have 0 entries on most servers.

I hear what you are saying heartless and I would agree that I get more "New Entries" at those times, but receive much more "Update Entries" during the peak times by far.

Of course I've been knocked out of the Top Spot. Not surprised on that. Was surprised that it took so long. I'll start making more submissions in the new month.

How does that work with hourly submissions being over-written automatically? Currently for me that's not a problem as I only submit daily, but I was thinking of making an effort to do multiple submissions from multiple servers.

If you submit after your first census and then change servers and submit again, don't you lose all the previous submission?

So at most you can have 24 submissions a day.

Of course I'm assuming you can have multiple census taken before one submission. not sure how all this works.

Yes, you can take multiple snapshots from multiple servers before uploading. You don't have to upload after each server!

I have a bunch of other tips I've figured out that would help as well, but I'd rather not share too much until after the contest is over. Suffice to say, if you think hard enough you'll figure it out. However, some of the tips are just good ol' fashioned labour. "It takes a little time, sometimes" is a song lyric that I think applies to this contest.

Also, one thing I was wondering is how often are you allowed to submit data to the website? Will the system not take data from you if you submit too often for instance?

Once per hour is all it will accept. If you submit more often than that, then your previous submission will be overwritten by your last.

Thanks! That clarifies a lot for me.

If I log in and take a census.. then play for an hour or so.. then take ANOTHER census before I log out.. does that overwrite the first census or do they all stack up?

That is a great way to do it and, no, you won't lose any info doing it that way!

I just started getting into submitting alot because of the contest. I have a few tips up my sleeve that I will reveal after the contest. I doubt I will win because I would rather be pvping, than spending 5 hours a night taking census for 50 realms. I guess we will see what happens. It only takes one ticket to win

The ^ post is mine. Sorry didn't know it would let me post without being logged in.

Actually I only take up about 1h 30m each day now to get about 10,000 updates worth. Initially it was taking me about 4 hours each day to get that many, but I've made a few optimizations to my technique and it works great!

Yesterday I took a bit of a break because yeah, even 1h 30m each day for 30 days can get to be a lot.

Well since I switched workshifts I've not had nearly any submissions.

I usually did them while I talked on the phone with my woman each night... not like I could actually play during the conversations -_-


Now I just set it to auto take it every 30 minutes while I play

Oh and a good tip... Alliance has more than Horde on most servers

...but it also means that more than likely 10 other people are submitting too...so higher pop isnt always the answer.

Here are a few tips that netted me huge updates:

1. New or newer servers
-With new servers everyone is joining guilds, making guilds, leveling quick, etc. You should get tons of updates. If I personally was still doing the contest I would be running census on the 2-3 new servers this patch every hour. There are some other newer servers that still only have 10-20 level 60's and is great for updates.

2. High Population Servers
-These can sometimes net a pretty good return on investment. With more players you are able to capture alot more chars, and possible updates. The problem with high population servers is the time it takes to do a census. I know a few times I did some servers with around 3k online, and when 2.5k of them are night elves, and level 60 it takes forever.

3. Most Wanted Servers
-These can be good intially, but if everyone jumps on them than the return value dwindles quite rapidly.

4. Lower Population Servers
-These are good for fast updates, and are easier to do multiple times a day because of that.

5. Server Transfers
-This is huge. Any high pop server allowing people to transfer to a low pop server. This is like getting free updates. This is great the first week or two of the transfers when you census the servers that are being transferred too.

6. Census Times
-I am still up in the air on this. Of course prime time gives you a range of more characters, but off-peak times gives you a better chance of finding new updates from people playing in other time zones, countries, etc.

7. Frequent submissions
-This will help alot. If you take census's all day long, but only submit after you are all done you are losing valuable updates possibly. The more you upload the better odds that someone else didn't just send an update in before you, and it makes this database come to a screeching halt with big uploads.

8. Best Days/Times
-To capture the most players I have found Monday nights, and Tuesday nights return the most results. This is basically due to lots of people trying to get last minute honor farming in before calculations, and Tuesday is good because everyone logs on to see if there was a patch, or to check out there updated pvp ranks etc.

Rollie wrote:Yes, you can take multiple snapshots from multiple servers before uploading. You don't have to upload after each server!

.. now you tell me...

I followed the eyeballs tip (about the low pop) and did 3000 updates in an hour, not to bad. to bad i onyl got to do it twice Poop on school and work