Will videos need to be associated with a collective to go into the queue?

Will videos be limited to one collective label? I ask because of the multi-channeled labeling we have been accustomed to . . .

For invites, what about a link that sifters can click on to notify an administrator the desire for an "invite."

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No, collective association is still optional to go into the main site queue.

Good question on the limit, we were thinking of limiting it to 3 Collective Channels per video.

It all sounds great, I sent you my ideas earlier via profile

I don't understand why admins wouldn't want others to just join automatically, but that's up to them. Of course, this brings something to my mind. We can't switch collectives at the moment, yet we can do *-nochannel invocations. With the merging of the two, is it possible that it could start to get messy?

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Channel invocations would probably go away, but the Collective admin would be able to grab a video, or kick a video from a collective.

What about the vintage channel? I never knew what to tag as vintage (is 60's music vintage? ). It always seemed a bit hard to define. Someone even put a "Reservoir Dogs" clip in the vintage channel.
What about Monty Python Clips for instance?
(I wouldn't classify those as vintage but perhaps someone else would)


In my mind everything before 1950 is automatically vintage, the rest being up for discussion.

Everyone's got their own definition of what vintage means. To me, vintage is anything before the 80's, but that's cuz I'm still in my teens. This would probably contrast with somebody who's 50 years old, and feels like the 80's were just yesterday. It's pretty much just up to you.

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Vintage is definitely in the mind of the Sifter. We specifically didn't want to name date ranges for this.

I would be worried that admins being able to grab people's videos for their own collectives could lead to arguments over what fits better. Three's a good number, and I don't wanna change it, but you never know when you're gonna find that "Cute evolution of musical politicians" video. What's to stop admins from *nocollective invoking videos and instead adding it to their own?

Dag, I think Karaidl just called you old or something man

Way to read in between the lines, bl. You nailed me. Most of my comments are just cheap shots at Dag.

well if collectives are replacing channels...does that mean all published sifts will be reassigned to a collective?

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I'm not getting old, but there a lot more unruly kids around than usual. I blame lack of birth control.

SG, not all videos belong to a channel or collective, so those will be unaffected.

Rofl *quality

Gold Star member bl968 has awarded dag one published post for this quality Sift Talk contribution.

Dag, I think SG was asking how already-published vids that are currently assigned to a channel(s) will be handled if channels go away. Will they simply lose the channel tags or be assimilated into a new collective?

As far as collectives now, I don't think they are much more than playlists with an icon. No real sense of of community, IMO. A collective comments or chat section would be really keen. I've also seen several videos that I didn't think really belonged in a particular collective. I like the collective voting idea. I think this would encourage more members of a particular collective to actively participate in it, and I think the power of a downvote would be better used there (as it should/would only effect addition to a collective and not overall votes for that video). Collective Overlords should also have *Smite powers for videos that don't fall within his/her carefully and completely worded and posted definition of what kinds of videos are appropriate for that particular collective. That said, (and I know how this will go over, but here goes), how do people feel about limiting the number of collectives you may join? It seems many join a collective just in case they find something that may "fit". Lots of dead weight in some collectives, including me, although I do try to support the collectives I've joined by checking the newest collective-queued vids there before heading out to the general population. Which reminds me... would be nice to have collective buttons on our profile pages so we can easiest flit amongst our respective sub-community brethren. Excuse my ignorance if there is already an easy way.

EDIT: Never mind the collective voting part. My "idea" wouldn't work too well unless you had two separate voting systems... one by collective members for admission into a collective, and one for overall up or down vote. Awkward. Matter of fact, just ignore me.

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I like the idea of limiting membership to 3 or 4 collectives Fletch - I'm dead weight in a lot of collectives too. This would mean that people would congregate more in the areas that they are really interested in. Of course it might mean that some collectives could be under served.

Yes, thanks Fletch. I was just wondering if the vids in channels would reassigned into collectives.
Another thought....Right now a founder that's offering up his/her collective will have it dissolved if no one takes it in 7 days? Perhaps collectives need more protection than that after they've reached a certain level of posts. A popular one should not have that problem, but who knows?

I'm against limiting collective memberships. If a sifter finds something good that fits a collective description, then that sifter should be able to participate. As a sifter who often finds things accidentally, I think I should have options. Only sifting for three or four is TOO RESTRICTIVE! I have more interests than JUST THREE OR FOUR subjects!

Yeah, dd, but you are a freak super-sifter, and not from this plane of the multiverse.

Anyway, just throwing things out there, thinking out loud. Maybe have it so anyone, even non-members, could submit vids to a collective, but it needs a minumum number of collective member upvotes to be added to that collective. Good for those who may only occasionally contribute, yet would rather invest the majority of their efforts/time into other collectives. Maybe a "submit to Blahblah collective" dropdown on the submission page that causes vid to appear on collective page as a "candidate" or something. Or maybe not? Why not just make everyone a member of every collective? Or maybe give Overlords the power to cull members who are inactive. Granted, some people may be active in many collectives and maybe a limit isn't so good. Should participation even be a requirement for inclusion to a collective?

One day the collectives will wage war with another... then we will see who the true heroes are. I'm looking at you, Obscure! DO NOT try to impose your facist regime on the likes of us parodiers!

I agree with DD, please do not limit the number of collectives we may join, I like it when I come across something on YouTube on accident and its like, "hey, this would go great in X...." even if I've never posted to that collective before it's nice to be able to file things appropriately, and give my support (no matter how small) to each and every one if possible.

I also like the idea of a collective admin being able to decide whether their collective is open membership or not... in some instances a collective might be better served if kept a private community, however, in the interest of filing again, if some collectives are open membership then that would encourage popular type sifts (I'm thinking Daily Show) to go in the right drawer.

One thing I have a question about: Am I to understand that videos will be able to be applied to multiple collectives? I may have read that wrong.

One other suggestion of the top of my head:
Many people have suggested in the past that there be a way to associate older posts with collectives, is that what you mean by a collective owner being able to 'grab' posts? If that is the intent then I think for these vids there should not be a limit as to how many collectives can grab an old post- that would cut down on the possibility of owners squabbling over posts. New posts should have a limit on collective associations, but old ones that have been around for a while are kind of like community property, and should be shared.

Conversely, you might also consider leaving it up to the original poster to designate a collective for an older post of theirs... like an *amnesty command or something... this would put that choice into the hands of the original sifter, thus avoiding problems from those who might not want their sifts grabbed. It would make us Collective owners work harder, but frankly, I like to have control over my sifts and where they are displayed and I'm sure others do as well.

Anyway, that's all I can think of at the moment and as I'm on my lunch break I don't have time to reflect further... look for more from me in a few hours, as y'all know, this is one of my distinct areas of siftinterest!

We were planning on limiting the number of collectives / channels a video can be in, but not the number that a user can be in. The thinking behind this is that we already have "channel creep" where a video gets placed into 9 different channels.

One other idea that Brian didn't mention in his sift talk post was that we were thinking about letting users specify a primary channel. The thumbnail next to the video would then be for that channel.

I made some comments here that I think are relevant.

I would like collective owners to be able to make claims for a sift, but allow the sifter to have the final say where it goes.

Dag,

You have to use this for content filtering. Channels are now used to group music / art etc. So you can find them, since the current tag system is totally useless.

You cannot limit people to 4 collectives, or what, all the music videos end up not in the music channels if I am not a member.

I think all collectives should allow anyone to submit a video to that collective. There have been many videos where I am not a usual member of a collective, but think they might like to include it. Well that video is screwed.

So one concepts is any non-members can submit to a collective. Or you can make collectives private and only allow collective members to submit. So like Sports might be public, but Niks Naks might be private collectives.

OR, collective owners should be able to manage included collective videos almost like a playlist. They should be able to go through the general queue and add relevant videos. Or exclude them if someone submitted it and it doesn't fit.

So in that case, you could view collectives as group playlists where any member of collective can submit to collective, and obviously they have a queue. But in addition, collective owner can include videos that are published and need to be in that collective.

If you do away with channels, then videos can ONLY be sorted by one collective attrribute, like either comedy OR politics, but not both. Or are you entertaining multi-collective attributes. So collectives are really becoming channels.

the default for all collectives should be open to all members until a founder decides to manage it more exclusively.

I second JD's comments.

yeah, JD has a point about the channels, and music is a good example, as they tend to be posted in many many different collectives.

@JAMES, I like those ideas, especially the primary collective one, I had wondered about the icons, the front page would start looking pretty cluttered if every post had four different collective banners.

I also agree with Rembar in that Collective owners should be able to make a claim on a video, but the vid's inclusion into a collective should ultimately be up to the original poster.

And I also second the idea for a 'invitation request' button on collectives, it would be a nice timesaver.

As far as everything else goes I like it, the collective talk boards, space for collective owners to post announcements, etc... very good guys, I'm looking forward to this.

One last thing that I'd like to state now: I can promise y'all here and now that the HorrorShow will never have ads!

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Good points JD et al. On second thought - I think you are right, limiting collective memberships would be a bad idea. The easiest option would be to make collectives open to everyone - how would that be?

Of course we might get some flack from some of the more *exclusive* collectives. (Obscure, I'm looking at you)

I definitely agree that if collectives are turning into channels that they should be open to everyone. Cool!

About claiming old videos: What if the original poster isn't around anymore? Could we set a 7 day limit for the original poster to respond and then ask an Admin to add it? Would the 'related playlist' feature still be available?

Open would be great! Have them show up as check boxes and they can select as many as they feel apply with gold stars able to edit the selections on a per video basis.

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The only problem with making Collectives completely open - is displaying them in the submit form. I'm seeing a day when we may have over 100 Collectives, checkboxes or a select menu would be ungainly.

We may need to dynamically display Colective suggestions based on title/tag choice.

You could give the person the ability to hide a collective on the collective page, or on their profile settings. If they select hide the collectives they are not interested in would no longer show up on the video submission form.

Show Hide
    x          x    Humanitarian Sift
                x    Obscure

I picked the Obscure collective at random, I would not hide their videos

If they uncheck show, it won't show those videos which are included in that collective, when the user views the sift front page.
If they check hide, it will not show that collective as a option on the video submission page.

Heh, I was i think the second member of obscure, and I still run half my obscure vids past farhad before associating them.

I don't like the idea of loosing general channels to describe Sifts - as the Collectives are either too wide or too specific. Plus a large amount of Sifts are never classified correctly within them anyway (if they're in one at all). I see this causing more friction between collectives in the future...everything else sounds good though!

Benjee could have a point. Sure, we have a music channel, but if we break everything down into collectives, then we wind up with a rock and roll, a hip hop, and a music collective. There's a lot more other kinds of music than that, and do I have to place something into the music collective if I've already put it in the rock collective?

It's like keywords you should pick whatever applies. But if not they said collective admins could grab a video for their collective so it will balance out in the end...

collectives should really remain distinct from channels.

channels are like tags, and should be more or less objective and comprehensive. they're a way of filing and organizing all the videos here -- click "animation" or "vintage" or "cute" and you get a fairly well-defined cross-section of the whole site.

but collectives should be more individual and subjective -- more like blogs (collective blogs). people should be able to get a sense of what fits the style of the collective and include anything that fits, even if the total list of videos would have lots of different characteristics (in terms of how many are "animation" or "cute" or "vintage", etc).

a lot of the best collectives cut across multiple channels, including arts, obscure, nick's nacks, and "did that just happen?". none of these will be usefully reduced to a single channel, nor will any channel be improved by filtering collective-associated posts out of the bigger pool.

for example, "obscure" doesn't map out well onto anything more easily defined, like "music" or "vintage". "obscure" won't be better if all the posts that could be "music" or "vintage" are removed, and "music" won't be a better filter if it excludes any relevant posts from "obscure", "rock & roll", "arts", "spanning time", "bravo", etc.

the reverse situation is also a problem. our "arts" collective includes playlists that are supposed to serve as reference points for submissions. these include the plastiquemonkey animation, timelapse, and stop-motion playlists. "animation" is a useful channel, because there's quite a bit of animation (of all sorts) on videosift. but the plastiquemonkey animation playlist has a definite focus: no simpsons, no family guy, lots of award-winning artsy animations.

so if you try to make "arts" the collective into "arts" the channel, what happens to the artsy animation? probably it ends up in "animation" the channel (maybe this is the future "matt groening and friends"?), where it's going to be lost among the simpsons clips. then "arts" the collective probably turns into "visual arts" (painting and sculpture etc), which the current collective description specifically aims to go beyond.

the only fair way to administer the collectives as channels will be with universal invitations and more-or-less objective criteria for inclusion (how could you exclude an animation from "animation"?). but that goes against the whole individual idea of collectives. having everyone on the site a member will make the word "collective" meaningless (and boring).

please leave the channels / collectives distinction alone. it's a useful difference. maybe add more channels, but let the collectives exist according to their own definitions, with their own members lists, however inclusive or exclusive.

as for the rest of it, anything you can add to increase discussion and voting within collectives, and give collective owners more control over what shows up on their video list would be a great improvement...

suggestion for collective memberships:

there should be no limit per poster. but any poster who hasn't at least submitted a video to a collective in the last 60 days should be automatically removed from it (but could rejoin at any time at the discretion of the collective owner). any videos previously submitted by that poster should remain associated with the collective.

I love the idea of a bb within each collective. Think of the great discussions/arguments in "All About Science" or "Religion ... It's the Opium of the People", (et al) that would take place if a persistent (read: won't expire off of top 15 list), centralized discussion forum existed for each collective. Collective owners could also easily post guidelines for submissions, welcome new members, etc. If VS continues to grow and has 30000 (or more ) members in a couple years down the road, the collectives could become a strong, attractive feature here. Smaller, more familiar communities within a larger VS city. I sorta imagine usenet with friends and videos. I don't know what effect that would have on each videos' comments section, though. Maybe each video submitted in a collective could generate it's own thread on the collective bb or something. Again, just thinking out loud. I reserve the right to think up and post stupid shit.

I agree with benjee and PM on channels (and most everything else she wrote). Keep 'em. I don't think there are enough, actually (science? religion? philosophy?...)

"having everyone on the site a member will make the word "collective" meaningless (and boring)."

Guess that depends on whether you view the videos or the members as the "collective". However, it could make it a nightmare for owners to ensure that submissions are on-topic and appropriate for their collective if everyone can post to whatever collective they wish. Then again, with a collective queue, owners will be able to smite with ease (which would force them to be the "bad guy"). On the other hand, it doesn't seem fair that amount of stewardship be imposed upon owners who had/have very specific ideas what they want their particular collective to be/include. Tired. Gonna shut up now.

I do like the idea of a *smite command... I've run across several instances, mostly in other collectives, where posts have been made that are either not related in any way or somewhat offensive to the definition of the collective.

And, I gotta admit, I would like to be able to *smite something.

Raven, you power hungry bastard, you.

I'd like a *nukefromorbit(it'stheonlywaytobesure) invocation though it may be a couple too many characters..

When I get my gold star what is going to stop me from creating a
GiveAwayYourTV collective (GAYTV)? The process for creating new collectives
should be more thouroughly moderated by other members.

Collectives should definitely be open. If I find a sports video why should I go through the trouble of signing up for a collective I may only use once? If I don't put the video in the sports collective I'm just making it harder for other users to find the video.