I think its a good start, nice work. Can you animate the transition? Use some jQuery man, jQuery! I heard all the cool kids are using jQuery.


jQuery.

Oh, and *doublepromote is available again (to Gold Star members and above).

Why you insist on having crap videos take up the front page is beyond me.

This is a tough crowd.

I think the link in the top is almost hidden and confusing since it's above the video.

I think this idea scales better than the 3-panel one and in that sense it also scales better than the old promote, but I'm not convinced a full on opened video is great. Especially, like @campionidelmondo says, it could be an utterly crap video that's being promoted ad naseum that's taking up a lot of space on the front page, right in everyone's face.

Come on guys, nobody *promotes bad videos.

Who would go on the internet and just make stuff up?

Only published, queued, or discarded videos, published Sift Talk posts, and published blog posts may be promoted - ignoring promote request by KnivesOut.

I agree with gwiz that the "next promoted video" is only obvious if you're actively looking for it -- but this is definitely a pretty huge step above the three panel system, and maybe even a step above the classic system (this will be especially true if you make the other promoted videos a bit more obvious).

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I think this is the kind of thing that we all have to live with for a week or so to really see how it fits in. We're not averse to change.

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This is a good point. More than any other community I know, we're putting things in your hands. The ironic, shitty video promote becomes a lot less funny in this scenario.

VideoSift is completely what you make it. Makes me wonder if we'll ever need something like a *demote invocation.

-edit-
-edit-
I care way to much about this shit. I need to get a life.

I had always thought a three or four panel that had the ability to forward to another set of vids was a decent idea.

I don't like the massive screen thumb myself, but a set of "medium" sized images would be acceptable.

If it had the mouse over setting to get the videos info then BOOM. Things are perfect in the promote world.

@dag

First thing I thought of when I seen the big thumbnail on the front page was that someone would sift a titty video and in the thumb it would be titties and then if they did not nsfw it you have TITTIES ON THE FRONT PAGE as a welcome to videosift ! WATCH our titty video !

**edit**

Or if you have something like " fuck the jews" as a funny segue title and that is plastered in big letters.

I could go on.

Let's see where we are after a week. If everyone still dislikes this version, we'll try changing it so the video doesn't start out expanded.

For now we'll work on adjusting the panel title and the "next video" link.

WE ARE MOVING FORWARD !

Oh, man, thank you. THANK YOU. Much much better!

I share the concern over the size of the thumbnail. Seems a little overkill -- hard to tell there any other vids to scroll down to. For the casual dropper-by, they might think it is just that one.

And the demote idea.... I am struggling with that. Don't like the idea of content police. Having said that, there have been times, as @BoneRemake noted, that some pretty sketchy material has been prominently displayed right up front. Maybe have it be like the ban thing? Takes two Sifters to demote back? Plus, that would mean it takes more power points to remove than it does to put it there to start with (unless it was a self promote.) I believe demoting is best done sparingly, and if it is made more "expensive", that would raise the bar.

This is sooo much better. Thank you, thank you!

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I care that you care.

And I want to read your point of view, @eric3579.... You have terrific insights.

Is there a "last promoted vid" button I'm not seeing? Because once you're on vid 2, there's no going back to 1, and 3 has nowhere to go.

The old way was best.

Agree with this, it's not really a rotator if it only goes one way.

Seriously @lucky760 just steal the javascript behind Steam's rotator.

Call it "code reuse" if it lets you sleep at night.

@Shepppard @KnivesOut

Modified the "rotator" so it will truly rotate once you reach the end of the list.

I've got an interesting idea: have a separate tab for watched videos, and a separate tab for unwatched videos. This way, you could have easier and more prominent access to the videos you haven't seen, a nifty place to find videos you had seen (this would awesome!), and you wouldn't have so many videos cluttering a page.
Then just increase the number of videos allowed on a page, and go back to the old version of promote viewing.

..yeah, cycling through videos already watched would get more seen as well-Nice added feature ...as Mr. Fisk says, "This would awesome!" ...*grunts and scratches at ground

Not really digging not being able to minimize the video. It's just there in my face and I can't get rid of it.

Good point. The minimize link is available again.

I still believe you should be able to see all currently promoted videos at the same time in some form. For example, as a row of mini-thumbs below for example.

At the very least it should say how many promoted videos there are "1 of 5" etc.

There's room for improvement. The important thing is to give people their moneys worth for their spent power point.

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How about a "Promoted" menu item in the main drop down?

So, uh, dunno where to post this, but are comments coming for IE10? It's annoying to switch browsers just for one of my (favourite) sites... I basically end up going without comments, but I'm really missing them!

IMO that would completely kill promotes.

@dag what i'm not understanding is WHY the change? If i understood the reasoning behind it, it may be easier to get on board. I assume you have your reasons. As it is now it seems like you're trying to replace something that IMO was working wonderfully, and everyone seemed to like, with something inferior. I keep thinking if it ain't broke don't fix it.

@eric3579, especially since power points have been cut off at the knees, so there won't be as many PPs available to promote. (I got the impression dag and lucky didn't like lots of promotes, didn't like new people shooting up in the ranks, didn't like how successful Sifters generated more success for themselves, wanted the Sift community to be more uniform with no big outliers. With power points no longer accumulating, there won't be lots of promoting, right?)

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Sure, happy to provide my view on it - and hopefully this won't piss too many people off.

First off - when you say it was working wonderfully - I would have to ask, for who? Although Lucky and I see eye-to-eye with the community most of the time - there are some things in which we have a different perspective.

That's because, although VideoSift is a community first, it's also an engine. An engine for creating good content that people want to view. By "people" I mean The vast holi poli of the Interwebs. I've mentioned it before, but 95% of our viewers are not Sifters.

I'm going to be frank and say that this is the dirty little secret of VideoSift. We rely on those people to pay the bills. We rely on this silent 95%, who don't have a voice here, but still come here every day to load the front page and see what's new and good as voted by the excellent curators here.

Promote is a good tool, but it concentrates the power of taste maker in a very small minority of all Sifters. When the silent majority comes to the front page and sees a bunch of promotes by 2 or 3 people taking up most of the front page - it devalues all of the other hard working content, much of it from new or less connected Sifters.

I'm not against promote. I just want it to be a tool that is balanced and used effectively. Especially to surface unusual or under-appreciated content.

TLDR: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one or the few - and I have been and will always be, your friend Jim Eric.

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Sort of. I don't think we have a big problem with super stars who put in the work. But we also want to make sure that Sifters who may be less well known, but are posting excellent content aren't excluded or pushed off the front page.

Sometimes I think there is a Promote Club that has developed on the Sift. The first rule of the Promote Club is don't talk about the Promote Club - am I right?

@dag Thanks for the reply. I really do appreciate it. If it's in the best interest of VideoSift then it's in my best interest also. I'm onboard

I agree with @eric3579, in that hiding promoted items in a drop down menu would kill the promote system.

I also agree with @dag in that it's important to not overload random visitors with the promoted sifts of a few.

I liked the old promote system, but I also hated it. I liked it when there were just one or two active promotes (better exposure), but hated it when it went to 9-10 promotes (your video got lost amongst the others AND the promoted videos then took up a huge amount of the front page = ugh).

What needs to remain is the exposure of a promoted video (to some degree), the value of spending that power point (i.e. not being "wasted" if three other videos are promoted straight after), and that it remains attractive to want to promote stuff to spend your power points (rather than hoard them).

The issue I have with both new systems is that they can hide your promoted videos and therefore don't represent good value for your power point.

I have an idea for a way to present promoted videos that I'll try and mock up in photoshop tonight. It should take up less real estate than the new version, while also keeping some exposure for all the currently active promotes. Hopefully it'll provide another direction to discuss at the very least...

I get this. I think I have gotten it since the changes were first implemented.

It is why I have been on board with the rotating Promote feature. I was even on board with limiting Promotes to three at a time. I just had a major issue with the mechanics of the original "fix" -- it took much work to be a responsible promoter, if you cared about your fellow Sifters getting value for their promote.

And I noticed how, if I had a string of successes, I would get more views on my vids -- because folks knew I tended to post good stuff. When I posted stuff that was more ... particular... to me, my success rate would go down. Which was fine -- I post what I like. This is just an observation that success breeds success.

So I get it.

I also know how hooked I got on the Sift quickly because of the rewards for doing well. Moving up in the ranks, getting my next star level, my first Golden One!

I wonder if by limiting the power points like you have, and so drastically, you aren't shooting yourself in the foot. Where are your new stars going to come from? Will they get hooked? Have you instead winnowed down your stars to those who have been here for a long time, and now can promote at will?

I think that Talent Scout badge is a great idea -- give incentive to all Sifters to look at the unsifted vids.

I think limiting Promoted vids to three is also just fine -- just do it automatically with software, rather than that horrible convoluted thing that was so deuced difficult to use by a responsible Sifter (meaning, a Sifter would have to 1-identify a vid they wanted to promote 2-go to the front page and open the oldest vid 3-scroll thru ALL the comments, looking for the LAST promote 4-decide if it had been there long enough.

I am so glad that promote system is gone.

I appreciate the reasons for limiting the number of promotes on the front page (although there being 9-10 promotes really didn't happen that much.) I think limiting to three is just fine.

But I think you are focusing on the wrong thing. You say there is a promote club. It has been here for forever. Since my first days here, I have gotten messages, asking to do the promote trade. It has indeed happened a lot more in the past few months as folks have finally "gotten" it -- promote someone else, it costs 1 PP. Promote yourself, it costs 2 PP. So trade promotes, at a cost of 1 PP.

To fix this, all you have to do is get rid of the incentive to trade. Make all promotes cost 2 PPs.

That does two things -- makes it more expensive to promote, so promotes go down. And gets rid of the incentive to trade promotes, which makes the promotes go down. Add that to limiting promotes through software changes to a max of three, go back to the old look, and bob's your uncle. "Problem" solved. Yeah?

Related to this... If you stay with the limited power points, it will be interesting to see if you get folks hooked on sifting again. As I have said in other places, we are like rats in a lab experiment, pushing the bar to get our pellets. Some of us are already hooked. Will there be new folks lured in? Time will tell.

@dag.... just went for a little walk, and had an epiphany....

1 PP to promote Silver Star and below

2PP to promote gold and above, and to self promote.

That should solve the promote trade "problem." And has the added benefit of helping new people and give them a warm fuzzy feeling for being involved in this very cool place.

I like the new format. Other than a few tiny nitpics (1. some of the text seems too small, 2. the description boxes that pop up on the channel selection screen are annoying, 3. the scaleable text elements sometimes look bunched when you reduce your screen size and 4. I wish you could make video titles sightly longer) it's a huge improvement.

So here's my *rough* mockup of something that I think could work...

http://i.imgur.com/85T5i.jpg

Mini-thumbnails would be displayed for all currently active promotes (upto the sensible limit of 10). Clicking on the mini-thumbnails would make the area above swap to that video's larger thumb and details, and as you can see there is a 'tab' to highlight which mini-thumb you currently have selected.

Maybe the 'tab' could automatically cycle through the promoted videos until the user interacts with it?

The mini-thumb bar could not appear at all if only 1 video is currently promoted.

Maybe the other 9 unselected mini-thumbs could be darker to help highlight the selected one? (bit of javascript magic maybe, I dunno?)

Maybe hovering over a mini-thumb will instantly make it selected and the larger top part change to it, so you could scroll through them by simply hovering your mouse over them?

Maybe hovering over a mini-thumb, could bring up a small mouse-tip that has the title of the video...

Anyway, just ideas, and another possible implementation to discuss. The key to this one is that promoted videos are all visible... no wasted power points. And also, a fixed amount of real estate dedicated to promoted videos.

Wow, @Hybrid. I honestly like that. Simple, no animated transition or some other fussiness. Nice and simple, easy to comprehend, and not intrusive.

Yay promote club! *promote

Only published, queued, or discarded videos, published Sift Talk posts, and published blog posts may be promoted - ignoring promote request by gwiz665.

I want each post to use a nice and simple box background like your promote example - the pattern in the background makes everything terrible to read, especially talk posts.

I can honestly say that I have been involved in the development of Government policies that have had less thinking applied than this.

I don't even know if I'm being complimentary or insulting, and to whom.

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It's pretty cool.

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We could be shooting ourselves in the foot. I don't claim to have the magic formula for what makes an online community both engaging for its members and a great content distribution platform.

And ... even though we've been here almost 7 years now - I don't take for granted that we'll be a thriving community forever. Online communities definitely die - sometimes in bed quietly - but sometimes they are murdered.

Hey ! where did it go ?

Did the cheese get too expensive from all the whine you were receiving ?

DUDE! LALALALALA I"M NOT LISTENING! You cant say that shit out loud. It gave me anxiety when i read it. Don't you know i'm fragile.

Oh it is working...

I claim complicity in both the life and death of the Videosift.

Voting for this poll ended with the majority of users voting It kind of blows, but it's better than the 3-panel deal.

FYI, in its current form, a promoted video will start out collapsed if it is flagged NSFW.

So, when I vote for a promoted vid in the middle of watching it, it boots me out and I have to start over again.

Not the end of the world. I'll eventually learn to wait. And it is rather annoying. All those things at once.

I change my mind. I like the old one OR show all the videos as thumbnails.

Having lived with this for awhile, I am liking it just fine.

Works like a charm, as far as I am concerned.