Hello everyone! I hope you are doing great. With this title I would like to give an easy beginner guide to those who would like to know a bit more about B/P and this curious world of blam and protection points. The guide might be updated if people give me more correct info since it's based on my personal experience and I still consider myself a beginner B/P grinder. Another reason why I decided to make this guide is that for some concepts such as B/P bonus there are not exhaustive explanations besides the usual wiki page or help/FAQ page which are pretty simple and don't go in depth. I will use my OC Xiang to show with images some stuff and because I like to make things silly XD

Ok, without any further ado let's begin.

UPDATE 31/03/2025: added a small tip about the importance of blams in speeding up the rank leveling-up process.

What is a blam?

Let's begin with the negative stuff or better with one of the things that characterize this system of judging movies and games that enter the Portal. It's so important to have become a verb itself in Newgrounds lingo: blam and to blam.

Basically blams are submissions that have been deleted from the Portal whether they are movies or games. From this derives the concept of blam point: a point earned for each deleted submission in the Portal, for example take a look at my statistics:

It means that I managed to get 162 submission deleted at the moment I'm writing this guide. Each deleted submission from the Portal turned into a blam point that my account gained.

If a user votes a 0-1.5 on a movie and it is subsequently deleted (see deletion qualifications below), the user receives one blam point. Movies and games are deleted if they fall below the listed score at the listed number of votes (if it gets a vote of 1.0 then 40 voters are enough to blam it):

40 votes: 1.0

50 votes: 1.5

60 votes: 2.0

If I recall well decades ago 100 votes were necessary to make something blammable. For those who have been on the site for years you will have noticed the change in the numbers required to blam a movie or game. I will quote what Tom said in the news of 6 December, 2024 Congrats Horizonauts & Site Updated!

Movie & Game Under Judgment Update

We made some tweaks to the Judgment process this week, reducing the max vote threshold to 60 and raising the blam threshold from < 1.75 to < 2.00. This means entries will finish judgment more quickly and get blammed (removed) more frequently.

What is a save?

Saves are the opposite of blams: they are submission that managed to stay in the Portal because they reached the minimum threshold to pass judgment. Every time you give a positive score and this gets summed to other peoples' positive votes, and the submission passes judgement you get a protection/save point. For example in my account I have 2,215 saves.

So every time you vote for a submission in UJ Portal section you award a point: blam point if it gets deleted, save point if it passes.

What is B/P bonus?

B/P bonus is an important tool that increases the voting power of a user, without it the voting power would be strictly based upon experience and increasing one's vote power would become more difficult. Basically it's a number that increases one's vote power. Thanks to this website you can check your stats, all of your stats, you can have a very in-depth, detailed view at your own profile and see yourself from a different and new perspective. Just insert your username and you will see everything related to your account, BP included:

https://www.wkrconcepts.com/nglogs/index.php?id=home

The total BP is given by the sum of blams and saves, so in my case 162 + 2,215= 2,377 this result gives a hint of the rank, here the full list:

So what is that percentage you see in B/P bonus? It's a number that takes your current vote power (5.99 in my case) and then adds an extra value of that amount to it, so for example:

5.99 X 0.16= 0.9584

5.99 + 0.9584= 6.9484

You can see that my vote base or vote power is 5.99 but with the 16% of B/P bonus it increases to 6.95, pretty cool huh?

pro-tip:

if you want to grind "faster" the bonus try to have an almost balanced number of blams and saves in order to speed up the process. I know finding blammable stuff may be difficult compared to past years, but in the long run it will help you level up the rank more smoothly than relying only on saves which are easier to get (I read that decades ago you could get a good chunk of blams in a day, even 80-100, now it's become more difficult. I can get almost 20 blams in a day if I am active almost an average of a hour). For example today I reached the rank of Private in a relative quick way thanks to my blams that summed to the save points instead of waiting to only reach 2,499 save points. So if you want to reach more blam points try to act like an active predator and hunt mainly for them for a while in order to reach a balanced number as much as possible.

Now that you know the basics of these concepts, let's go a bit in depth on how to vote with awareness and consciousness, so if you have the stat whore mentality (one who cares more about his/her/their NG profile stats more than the quality and honesty of the vote, this applies to every other NG stats though) then this guide is not for you.

Where to start?

Go to the Portal, once there you will see the list of movies and games ready to be judged by you:

(yes, you can see I've already voted on plenty of them minus the A-rated stuff simply because I'm not interested in that type of works)

Hunt for the red

This tip works only for the initial stages of your apprenticeship as a B/P grinder since you probably have to fully grasp what B/P is. I used it a lot when I was still a newbie in actively figuring out what was blam-worthy. When you see a movie/game highlighted in red, it means that the submission is about to be deleted from the Portal. Click immediately on it and give a low score, I personally zero vote it simply because it's the only case where I don't even take a look at it since it's already on the verge of deletion so why wasting my time watching or playing something that is already about to be deleted. It's like beating a dead horse. I initially used this method a lot because I didn't fully understand what blams and protection points were and I lacked experience and knowledge of what it's worthy of being blammed. So I used this cheap method to gain some blam points but I don't suggest to rely solely on it once you've gained enough experience to discern what to blam and what to protect.

Pros:

• cheap way to get a blam point in a passive way
• useful tool to grasp the core concept of blam point

Cons:

• very slow way to gain blam points in the long run especially if you are an active blam hunter
• not that useful once you are experienced enough to actively and proactively hunt for them

When to blam?

One of the things I love about NG when it comes to decide how to vote stuff is the lack of a prescriptive status quo. There is not a fixed rule that dictates one to always give a 0 vote under certain conditions except for those submissions that truly deserves a 0 vote. So what are usually 0-worthy submissions?

0 vote worthy submissions:

Extremely low effort animations, very short loop animations, effortless stickmen fights, effortless Madness animations, animation tests, Madness/stickmen animation tests, FNF short, loop animations, stolen stuff (in that case flag it with the appropriate type of report for the mod to review it), extremely effortless animations with no background, AI-generated stuff since it's not allowed here, everything that doesn't look effort or tutorial-educated, flashes and games with lots of bugs that need to be re-made (i.e. the game that doesn't even load or it's a black/white screen).

1 vote worthy submissions:

Here you find all submissions that still deserve a low vote but are not complete shit, usually low effort 30-45 seconds long movies unless they are good and in that case they get a higher vote from me, demos/previews that aren't any good and flashes (movies or games, doesn't matter) with lots of bugs but looks promising. In the past even good test animations got blammed easily than today because at that time people were more brutal at blamming stuff. I've found some very good test/project animations that, despite being shorter than 30-45 seconds, looked very good due to the presence of a background, fluid animation, funny elements and a short but effective plot in it. So don't take these traits as absolute, it's just a descriptive nature of what is blammable and what not. Nothing it's prescriptive here when we surpass the 0 vote.

2 vote worthy submissions:

This is the grey area between the blam and protect, now with the new threshold (2.0) things are deleted more easily and I admit thanks to this update my blams are gradually increasing along with the fact I've gained more experience at recognizing blam-worthy submissions. Now in this pool basically all 1 vote worthy submissions but slightly better fall into this category but they are not good enough to get a full 3 star vote.

(yes I blammed this video since it was an upload of a copyrighted animated series episode, another case to blam and give zero vote, zero tolerance for such type of acts and in this case I also flagged it as stolen material)

pro-tip:

when seeing a work check the title (if you find something like "animation test", "my first animation" go for a blam most of the time because a good 90% of the time they are effortless works), the description (notice if it has some suspicious elements that link to something that has been stolen, even in the case of copyrighted music that is linked in the description), the account who uploaded it (accounts with numbers are suspicious of stealing stuff, recently created accounts that usually don't read rules first are more likely to post rule-breaking stuff so blam-worthy stuff and flag-worthy stuff) and last but not least the video itself (look carefully if there are signatures that can help you to track the real origin of the video in case it's stolen or it's AI-generated, and trust me I could see some AI crap not only because it's was evident by the video itself but also because the signature had the logo of the AI-generated video tool).

When it comes to blams I usually blam and move on, but if you want to leave a review you can always hide your score and give a constructive review despite the low rating:

You can hide your score

To the save and beyond!

Everything that is 2.5 stars is something that I usually want for it to stay because I want to give the author a chance even though I don't think that anybody would actively seek this particular content out. It is one of the millions of forgettable submissions that nobody would miss if the servers got purged of them. Starting from 3 stars is usually the average of votes I give for UJ movies (for games I am less forgiving and I pretend higher standards simply because I see the videogame as the quintessential nature of art due to the combination of visual arts, music, animation and ofc game).

Aesthetically pleasing movies/games (even if there are flaws, I don't care), smoothly integrated works, good humour/parody/idea and everything that has the potential to get better in the future deserve this vote from me. Experimental movies have a higher chance to be protected by me because I love when people pushes their boundaries and comfort zones and in this case I don't even care about the aesthetic, the more surreal, the better^^

4 and 5 rates are for those submissions that make me say "wow, I enjoyed a lot this submission" both aesthetically, story-wise, animation techniques-wise and from the perspective of the message conveyed (whether it's humorous or serious). A detailed background, smooth animation, creativity, nice character design, the fun/entertainment inner value, and a well-written plot are all elements that enter in the territory of "Art". If I see that there is something promising for a 4.5/5.0 I give 4 star, if there is something still slightly missing I give a 4.5. But sometimes I give straight a very high rating when something moves me emotionally this strongly that I enjoyed the work a lot or I already know the creator for making very good quality works.

pro-tip:

If you want to maximize and optimize at the same time both the base voting power and the adjusted voting power through the B/P bonus whenever you start a new day on NG and want to vote things, go first to the UJ Portal section and start vote the first five submissions. This way you will increase your vote power aaaand will accumulate first blam and/or protection points.

Soooo where do the blammed submissions go?

Here:

This is the cemetery where all deleted submissions go and you can navigate through past submissions like I did it here. Notice the titles of some of them, sometimes even the title can guide you in blamming something because you immediately see that the person is doing it just for the sake of it or because he/she/they want to fill their gallery with something, thinking Newgrounds is Dumpgrounds or Testgrounds XD

Last advice:

I know that one is more than free to approach this site as one wishes, however I personally believe that if one really wants to nourish a creative community and creativity itself, and cares about the site as whole, it is important to take the time to look at the various submissions even if they require a lot of time as much as possible if one has the time. One is not obliged to watch and play all submissions and if one is too long (and by long I mean 1 hour), one can always select the type and length. It's also a way to pay respect to the person who made said submissions after noticing they are save-worthy ofc, for blammable stuff see points above. They spent time to make something and share part of their being, so it's the minimum that I take my time to interact with them, vote them and if I feel even to review them (I take my reviews very seriously, even more than my voting power).

Final thoughts:

Well, my guide ends here but as I said at the beginning if people correct me or give me further technical info about blams, saves and B/P bonus I am more than happy to update info with proper credits. After all this guide is meant for beginners like me and I shared my experiences that allowed me to extract these type of info since I wasn't fully satisfied with what I read in both forums and especially the help/FAQ section. Below you find the references from which I took a small part of my info and images. No need to give exposure to stolen stuff used as example of blatant blam-worthy submissions. Yes, I used Pico emoticon since he was the voting icon for flash movies/games Portal before the Tankman took the place and now.....

Enjoy the show!

References:

Expert's Guide to NG-DX

https://newgrounds.fandom.com/wiki/Blam_%26_Protect_Rank