It's been ages since we've had an update of this size and scope. Before I jump into describing all the goodies I'd like to pass out a few thanks to the people who made it possible.
We've completely overhauled the user interface for VideoSift, making it easier to get to the good stuff and travel among major areas of the site. These changes are the work of one Fabio Scavone, known to you all as Campionidelmondo. Like everyone who has ever worked on VideoSift- he came up through the community - with a major talent for front-end design that was undeniable. Because he is a Sifter - he knows how the Sift works and how to improve the way we interact with it. I'm very happy to anounce that Fabio is now on staff as the VideoSift UI Developer and already working on front-end changes for 4.1. Thank you Fabio for pouring your heart into this project.
A good user interface only works when it's sitting on good software that supports it. Rommel prodded and tweaked the amazing VaroCMS that is his brainchild- to support the UI changes and make the front-end seamlessly meld with the back. I'm very fortunate to have Lucky as a partner or else we would probably still be languishing in shades of military green. Thanks as usual to my comrade in Sift.
Next, thanks to all the alpha testers who ran the new site through its paces on our extremely weak development server- we'll be calling on your services again someday.
Thanks also to xxxovercastxxx for his wonderful new icons for star levels. *Ahem* more on those star levels in a minute ...
Somehow, between Germany (Fabio), California (Rommel) and Australia (me) - we formed a team- even though we were never all awake at the same time. For that reason we never managed to have an actual meeting. And that's why I'd like to finally thank an entity that probably doesn't get thanked much, but played a vital role in our project. Thanks Gmail. ;-)
Now on to the goodies.
Layout Features
Starting at the top of the screen- we've changed our logo. The old sifter was just not recognizable enough to most people. We've gone with something simple, but evocative of voting. It's source is also a vector image- so it lends well to other creations like t-shirts. (coming soon)
In the upper right hand corner, we've consolidated some site-wide icons. My favorite is the sun icon. Go ahead, click it - I'll wait ...
Ahh, sweet, sweet darkness. ;-) The other icons are self-explanatory and should be recognizable to most.
We've re-arranged the way the top tabs display information. We've done this based on our usage data - figuring out what items Sifters use most. Some things, like recent comments, were buried as a sub menu item- when really, it's one of the most used parts of the site. We've fixed that. It may take a while to get used to the new structure, but we think it will make it easier for most people to get to the menu items that are important.
Be sure to try out the "Recommended" sub menu item on the front page. This feature gives a selection of videos that may be interesting to you based on your personal voting history.
In the upper right again, there is the user control menu - from this dynamic menu you can login, logout, check your recent posts, jump to your profile or submit videos. The fly-out embed tester means you can quickly find out if what you are posting is a dupe without even leaving the page you're on. Pretty neat.
The video thumbnails have moved to the left of the window, and contain integrated buttons to perform a number of tasks related to posts. You can also tell at a glance if a post is in the dead pool or blocked.
We've also added a new Gallery View as an alternative to our standard vertical scroll listings. The Gallery view lets you see the front page in a more graphical way - grouping thumbnails together to view more content in a smaller area on the page.
Star Levels
On to a more contentious issue. We've nerfed member levels. When we first started VideoSift - we thought that surely no one would get beyond a gold star level. Now we have Sifters well on their way to 2,000 published posts. Blame us for poor planning, but the old structure had lots of level changes scrunched up towards the low point end, and then huge gaps between the higher levels. So, we've changed it thusly:
Powers have remained mostly the same for the new levels and can be reviewed here. Sorry if you feel like you have been demoted- we're definitely not trying to punish - but we want to make the rules about star levels as consistent and reasonable as possible.
New Hosts
We've added 5 news hosts to VideoSift that anyone can submit content from - they are:
Thanks go to KronosPoseiden - who was the source for these host additions.
New Invocations
We have a few new invocations. These first two are biggies and should help in building the community aspects of the Sift.
The first one you already know - *quality. It's part of our crowdsourced slogan "online video *quality control" . Until now, *quality only applied to Sift Talk posts. We're expanding it to include video posts as well - but it works in a different way. Instead of awarding a star point, a *quality invocation will give a new video a small boost in its "hotness" ranking - making it more likely to display at the top of the front page. It's a way to help new, worthy videos shine a bit more. *quality invocations require a silver star.
Our other new invocation is a doozy. *frontpage will send Sift Talk or blog posts to the very front page of the site, where they will hang around for a while before returning from whence they came. This should be used for things that we want to expose to the world to get a message out. Not to be used lightly, *frontpage requries a gold star and 3 power points.
In addition to these two major invocations, we've also added *notlong and *notbrief to undo mistaken *long and *brief invocations.
Custom Charter profiles and Channels
For those of you who don't like mucking with hex color values, we now have a neat color picker for charter members to customize their profiles.
Channels are a work in progress - we've done work to manually convert the styles of some channels like vintage and nature over to the new layout, but it's going to take a while for the rest. We're looking to bring in a color picker tool like the one used for profiles to let channel managers customize their channels in the same way. Bear with us while that comes online. Functionally, all channels should work just as before.
Other Changes
Here's something unique to most voting sites- we've enabled non-logged-in voting. That means that you can vote temporarily while not logged in- and then when you do log in eventually, all your votes are assigned to you. Temporary votes are only visible to the voter and don't become "real" until you sign-in or create an account (for new users).
We've added a "Newest Appreciated Comments" panel on the front page and video posts- it's a running, chronological list of comments that have just been upvoted.
We've improved our handling of Comedy Central videos- we now display their preview thumbnails and the videos may be resized to match bigger screens. No more tiny John Stewart vids for all you Daily Show addicts.
"Blocked" has been added as a submission option - no longer just an invocation. (Thanks Endall for catching this one.)
All charter members (as well as crowns) can have YouTube video avatars. This means their usual comment avatar images can be clicked and their video avatar will start playing.
New "Loose Width" and "Fixed Width" layout styles have replaced the resolution select list. "Loose" will always stretch the page to fit the width of your browser window. (Try them out at the bottom of the page.)
A new comment editor makes it easier to create bold, strikethrough, or italic text - and insert links.
Whew. So that's it. As I mentioned, 4.1 is already in the works- we'll have a brainstorming thread soon to get ideas for that. As this has been such a big change, you're bound to find bugs or issues with the way things work. Please use the 4.0 issues thread to let us know about anything you find. Lastly, I'd like to say a big thanks to all Sifters for making this place what it is. Did you know we're about to hit 1.7 million visitors a month? What a rush. And we owe everything to the community of this crazy place - including retaining the talented developers who have risen from the Sift ranks. Hugs and kisses to you all.
Edit: Whoops- forgot to mention that we've raised the queue escape limit to 15. Lets try it for a while and see how we go.
We've completely overhauled the user interface for VideoSift, making it easier to get to the good stuff and travel among major areas of the site. These changes are the work of one Fabio Scavone, known to you all as Campionidelmondo. Like everyone who has ever worked on VideoSift- he came up through the community - with a major talent for front-end design that was undeniable. Because he is a Sifter - he knows how the Sift works and how to improve the way we interact with it. I'm very happy to anounce that Fabio is now on staff as the VideoSift UI Developer and already working on front-end changes for 4.1. Thank you Fabio for pouring your heart into this project.
A good user interface only works when it's sitting on good software that supports it. Rommel prodded and tweaked the amazing VaroCMS that is his brainchild- to support the UI changes and make the front-end seamlessly meld with the back. I'm very fortunate to have Lucky as a partner or else we would probably still be languishing in shades of military green. Thanks as usual to my comrade in Sift.
Next, thanks to all the alpha testers who ran the new site through its paces on our extremely weak development server- we'll be calling on your services again someday.
Thanks also to xxxovercastxxx for his wonderful new icons for star levels. *Ahem* more on those star levels in a minute ...
Somehow, between Germany (Fabio), California (Rommel) and Australia (me) - we formed a team- even though we were never all awake at the same time. For that reason we never managed to have an actual meeting. And that's why I'd like to finally thank an entity that probably doesn't get thanked much, but played a vital role in our project. Thanks Gmail. ;-)
Now on to the goodies.
Layout Features
Starting at the top of the screen- we've changed our logo. The old sifter was just not recognizable enough to most people. We've gone with something simple, but evocative of voting. It's source is also a vector image- so it lends well to other creations like t-shirts. (coming soon)
In the upper right hand corner, we've consolidated some site-wide icons. My favorite is the sun icon. Go ahead, click it - I'll wait ...
Ahh, sweet, sweet darkness. ;-) The other icons are self-explanatory and should be recognizable to most.
We've re-arranged the way the top tabs display information. We've done this based on our usage data - figuring out what items Sifters use most. Some things, like recent comments, were buried as a sub menu item- when really, it's one of the most used parts of the site. We've fixed that. It may take a while to get used to the new structure, but we think it will make it easier for most people to get to the menu items that are important.
Be sure to try out the "Recommended" sub menu item on the front page. This feature gives a selection of videos that may be interesting to you based on your personal voting history.
In the upper right again, there is the user control menu - from this dynamic menu you can login, logout, check your recent posts, jump to your profile or submit videos. The fly-out embed tester means you can quickly find out if what you are posting is a dupe without even leaving the page you're on. Pretty neat.
The video thumbnails have moved to the left of the window, and contain integrated buttons to perform a number of tasks related to posts. You can also tell at a glance if a post is in the dead pool or blocked.
We've also added a new Gallery View as an alternative to our standard vertical scroll listings. The Gallery view lets you see the front page in a more graphical way - grouping thumbnails together to view more content in a smaller area on the page.
Star Levels
On to a more contentious issue. We've nerfed member levels. When we first started VideoSift - we thought that surely no one would get beyond a gold star level. Now we have Sifters well on their way to 2,000 published posts. Blame us for poor planning, but the old structure had lots of level changes scrunched up towards the low point end, and then huge gaps between the higher levels. So, we've changed it thusly:
Powers have remained mostly the same for the new levels and can be reviewed here. Sorry if you feel like you have been demoted- we're definitely not trying to punish - but we want to make the rules about star levels as consistent and reasonable as possible.
New Hosts
We've added 5 news hosts to VideoSift that anyone can submit content from - they are:
- 5min - Instructional and DIY videos
- Blip.tv - Creative indy podcasts and videoblogs
- Current - News videos and current affiars
- Funny or Die - edgy comedy videos
- Reuters - Hard news
Thanks go to KronosPoseiden - who was the source for these host additions.
New Invocations
We have a few new invocations. These first two are biggies and should help in building the community aspects of the Sift.
The first one you already know - *quality. It's part of our crowdsourced slogan "online video *quality control" . Until now, *quality only applied to Sift Talk posts. We're expanding it to include video posts as well - but it works in a different way. Instead of awarding a star point, a *quality invocation will give a new video a small boost in its "hotness" ranking - making it more likely to display at the top of the front page. It's a way to help new, worthy videos shine a bit more. *quality invocations require a silver star.
Our other new invocation is a doozy. *frontpage will send Sift Talk or blog posts to the very front page of the site, where they will hang around for a while before returning from whence they came. This should be used for things that we want to expose to the world to get a message out. Not to be used lightly, *frontpage requries a gold star and 3 power points.
In addition to these two major invocations, we've also added *notlong and *notbrief to undo mistaken *long and *brief invocations.
Custom Charter profiles and Channels
For those of you who don't like mucking with hex color values, we now have a neat color picker for charter members to customize their profiles.
Channels are a work in progress - we've done work to manually convert the styles of some channels like vintage and nature over to the new layout, but it's going to take a while for the rest. We're looking to bring in a color picker tool like the one used for profiles to let channel managers customize their channels in the same way. Bear with us while that comes online. Functionally, all channels should work just as before.
Other Changes
Here's something unique to most voting sites- we've enabled non-logged-in voting. That means that you can vote temporarily while not logged in- and then when you do log in eventually, all your votes are assigned to you. Temporary votes are only visible to the voter and don't become "real" until you sign-in or create an account (for new users).
We've added a "Newest Appreciated Comments" panel on the front page and video posts- it's a running, chronological list of comments that have just been upvoted.
We've improved our handling of Comedy Central videos- we now display their preview thumbnails and the videos may be resized to match bigger screens. No more tiny John Stewart vids for all you Daily Show addicts.
"Blocked" has been added as a submission option - no longer just an invocation. (Thanks Endall for catching this one.)
All charter members (as well as crowns) can have YouTube video avatars. This means their usual comment avatar images can be clicked and their video avatar will start playing.
New "Loose Width" and "Fixed Width" layout styles have replaced the resolution select list. "Loose" will always stretch the page to fit the width of your browser window. (Try them out at the bottom of the page.)
A new comment editor makes it easier to create bold, strikethrough, or italic text - and insert links.
Whew. So that's it. As I mentioned, 4.1 is already in the works- we'll have a brainstorming thread soon to get ideas for that. As this has been such a big change, you're bound to find bugs or issues with the way things work. Please use the 4.0 issues thread to let us know about anything you find. Lastly, I'd like to say a big thanks to all Sifters for making this place what it is. Did you know we're about to hit 1.7 million visitors a month? What a rush. And we owe everything to the community of this crazy place - including retaining the talented developers who have risen from the Sift ranks. Hugs and kisses to you all.
Edit: Whoops- forgot to mention that we've raised the queue escape limit to 15. Lets try it for a while and see how we go.
Guess I'll roam a bit and check out the new features.
Edit - I've noticed the notlong and notbrief invocations. What about a notnsfw one?
Side note: I just populated the new Personal Recommendations list with real data for the first time ever and after just looking at page 1 (of 30 pages) of recommended videos, I have to say I'm actually very impressed. Every video in the list looks like something I'd love. I don't know how I missed them all.
Only I've seem to have lost my dupeof powers
Also I had a little problem finding out how to display the video instead of going to the video page. But I figured out you only have to click the thumbnail.
Campionidelmondo: The new UI looks beautiful!
Lucky760: I cannot imagine how many long nights of coding you have invested, and my brain hurts just from trying. Rest assured that they were well spent.
And Dag: It must be a fantastic feeling to see your brainchild evolve like this into the best community on the web. Know that we appreciate all your hard work.
No, I mean, I'm really fucking high and I'm viewing Videiosift 4.0.
what a strange mouse over on this submit button
Good work all and thanks for letting us know campioni's name is Fabio. I know I laughed
One thing: the diamonds and crowns look a bit cartoony.
I'm now trying to see how this video avatar thing will work.
otherwise, looks good so far, although I've now given up trying to get a star. (was only 2 away, now I'm 17 away from bronze) no offense, but I don't have time to scour the web for cool videos to post them here, when 99% of them are already here
Very annoying, I dont look forward to having to 'hover' to find who has commented on a site where I value the community and the discussion as much as the videos.
Good work all.
*edit
As has been pointed out, you can find your most recent comments in the "Comments" submenu. Nice feature. Shiny.
Has the number of votes necessary for sifting a video changed? One of my vids has 12 votes, and isn't sifted. Check out my profile to see what I mean.
it's like a new playground...
As said above, the WYSIWYG comment editing is extremely welcome.
Something I've noticed is that I tend to be enticed to view videos where there are a good number of comments. Previously this was easily observed, but currently the amount of comments is only viewable in a tooltip instead of plainly displayed.
It's like digging around in an Easter basket, moving away the plastic grass and finding that snack-size Snickers you missed.
now make me some pancakes.
Oops, sorry. Wrong thread. Now can someone please tell me how to delete my comment?
VS 4.0 is the cat's pajamas!
Bee's knees! Awesome work! Seriously, this wins the internets.
I appreciate that whoever did this did it with the best intention, and a lot of work went into this, but being slidey and cool doesn't trump usability. (It does gyre and gimble in the wabe. And mimsy were the borogoves...)
My big wish for 4.1: Add an optional "static" layout, minimizing javascript effects.
And please move the "login" link out of the "New user?" menu. I was looking for over two minutes for that darn login link.
No seriously, it's hard to comment until I play with it. It all looks great though... Great work! Now... On to The Sift!!!!
Too soon?
Other than that, cheers on all of the great changes to the site!
I'll just start using the new version and then come back here to bitch when I find something I don't like
Updated original post - as I forgot to mention that we raised the queue escape limit to 15.
Seriously 15? Quite an increase, is this because the front page was moving too fast? I never thought so.
Updated original post - as I forgot to mention that we raised the queue escape limit to 15.
don't like it. i hope you change your mind soon
One thing: the diamonds and crowns look a bit cartoony.
Yes, I made them with giant crayons and sidewalk chalk.
I'm actually quite happy with how the crown came out. I mostly worked on these while zoomed in like 1200% and I wasn't sure it was going to be clear at normal size. I had to make a few tweaks but really I was just quite lucky to get the result I did.
All of them, but the crown in particular, remind me of power-ups out of Super Mario World or something, and that makes me smile ever so slightly.
(And xxxovercastxx, I do want to jump up and claim one of your gold stars, so that can be invincible for a few moments before falling into a pit and dying after a poorly planned jump. That power-up music went straight to my head...
...I mean, good job on the logos
ahem.
Bronze looks bronze, gold looks gold..silver looks like a rock.
I do wish the silver star had a lot more life to it..
Bronze looks bronze, gold looks gold..silver looks like a rock.
Get a gold. Problem solved.
>> ^Shepppard:
I do wish the silver star had a lot more life to it..
Bronze looks bronze, gold looks gold..silver looks like a rock.
Get a gold. Problem solved.
I DID get gold, I've been bitch slapped back down to silver.
there's a couple of things about the UI that throw me, sometimes the menu takes a second to switch back to the current location, and only some of the submenu links are centered. one other thing - wasn't there some visual indicator that clicking the video thumbnails played the video on the page before that's gone now - maybe put a play icon or something over the thumbnail to replace it?
anyway, enough nitpicking - amazing work, this site keeps getting better and better.
You cannot modify your account while hobbled
If the intent is to encourage more of an "elite" community and prevent an influx of YouTubers, then I suppose I can see the justification. I'm just glad I got to exercise my downvote powers on a few westy comments before my star was snuffed out.
The datanerd in me is curious what the breakdown of star levels looked like before and after the astral realignment.
Obviously I'm directly affected and thus biased, but I think 25 is a bit high for the first star, especially since it was recently made more difficult to obtain stars. It was encouraging at 10 because that's attainable for the "casual" sifter (like myself).
If the intent is to encourage more of an "elite" community and prevent an influx of YouTubers, then I suppose I can see the justification. I'm just glad I got to exercise my downvote powers on a few westy comments before my star was snuffed out.
The datanerd in me is curious what the breakdown of star levels looked like before and after the astral realignment.
Then:
Probie (0)
Member (1)
Bronze (10)
Silver (25)
Gold (50)
Gold 100 (100)
diamond..then it gets a bit fuzzy, 2 or 3 types of diamond and then a crown.
Now:
Bronze - at least 25 star points
Silver - at least 50 star points
Gold - at least 100 star points
Ruby - at least 250 star points
Diamond - at least 500 star points
Bronze Crown - at least 1000 star points
The only real difference is they took out gold 100 and moved everything else up a rank.
...The datanerd in me is curious what the breakdown of star levels looked like before and after the astral realignment.
Old star levels.
Old member privileges.
I meant "how many people were\are at each level".
[edit]
Change values to percentages to paint a clearer picture.
edit .. You basically relegated submitting videos to the site to the same hierarchical value as beggars canyon.
Which would be fine imo if both of them were on top. The last thing Beggars canyon needs is to be buried in a sub menu. Same with submitting videos.
I took those numbers and diddled up a little graph. (Did I mention I was a datanerd?)
The graph shows the breakdown of members by level using the old (top) and new star point thresholds.
The first thing that's immediately apparent is that the Sift just got a whole lot more elitist. (The term "elitist" carries a much more negative connotation than I intend to convey. Unfortunately, I'm at a loss for a more accurate term.) Even before the realignment, less than half of the members had a star (43%), but now it's down to 29%. Perhaps this simply reflects that it's a select few individuals who contribute the most, and the graph could certainly be skewed by user accounts that sifted one video and vanished.
Looking at the members list myself, I am curious about lucky's data - using the numbers given by lucky, I get a total of 1173, but the Top Users sorted by star points shows over 1500 users with at least 1 star point.
The term "elitist" carries a much more negative connotation than I intend to convey.
Selective. Discerning. Sagacious.
>> ^ReverendTed:
The term "elitist" carries a much more negative connotation than I intend to convey.
Selective. Discerning. Sagacious.
All of those imply a more stringent application of the conscious act of selection, which I don't think applies in this case. The selection itself is still being done by a simple numerical milestone; it's just that the milestone is higher. They also don't convey the consolidation of power.
For some (though obviously not all) the Star Levels provide a degree of prestige - a badge of honor to demonstrate their level of service or dedication. But on a more quantifiable level, they represent the degree to which a user is allowed to participate. To me, it seems unintuitive to deny the powers available at the Bronze Star level to 70% of members.
I'll readily admit that the most important powers (the ability to upvote, Sift videos and post comments) are available to everyone, and personally I think ban immunity should be limited to only the elite few. However, as difficult as it is for the average sifter to acquire 10 star points (again, less than half of all members have attained that level), I think that demonstrates the necessary dedication to allow use of Bronze-level powers.
I do wish the silver star had a lot more life to it..
Bronze looks bronze, gold looks gold..silver looks like a rock.
They were originally made to match up to the old rankings. I wasn't happy with the way text was looking in icons such as Gold 100, so I opted to eliminate it and make unique colors for everything. Thus, Gold 100 became Platinum Star and Silver Star was dulled a bit to keep it from looking so similar to Platinum Star.
Since things have been reordered, it's no longer necessary. I could polish up Silver Star if it is the will of the people.
Also figured I'd put some variant crowns together. The current crown was intended to be Red Crown, not Bronze as the metal is clearly Gold. Additional crowns would be blue and/or green.
Fun fact: For hahas, I made a Crown of Thorns that I was just going to include with the other icons and say nothing of it. Unfortunately it was completely unrecognizable at normal size.
Is it possible to make the list of invocations we see above the comment box clickable so when we need to invoke one of them, we can just click it and it pastes it into the comment box for us?
I am lazy and do not want to move my finger from my mouse to the keyboard. Additionally, it causes me to put down my beer to start typing.
I agree - the first thing that needs to be fixed is the location of "submit video" - it's too central to site operations to have it tucked away like that. Otherwise, exciting changes, but it'll take some time for me to digest it.
Just one thing I had to deal with immediately...
>> ^kymbos:
Loving the new look, but I'd add my voice against the 15 votes change. My sifts are really unpopular and getting ten votes is hard enough - 15 is going to ruin me!
Be cheered by the fact that http://www.videosift.com/playlists/Krupo/PQUEUED-with-9-Votes is now re-chartered as "PQUEUED with 14 votes".
Of course the URL doesn't change, per Videosift design, but that clearly makes it all the more a historical artifact of the site's evolution.
I'll be curious to see what the move to a 50% higher escape threshold has on general sift operations (and whether expanding the group playlist's mandate to include 12-13 vote vids when worthy will be sufficiently deep). Should be interesting to follow.
For instance, if I want to find myself, I am currently located on page 13. If I want to get there (without manually typing the page number in the url bar) then I have to click to page 4, then page 5, then page 6, and so on until I reach page 13.
Is there no way to add more page numbers as selections in order to "scroll" a bit easier?
Just my thought on a minor improvement to be had.
strikeCheers!
Also firefox moves the window to align upper left with the video i'm watching, I want the window to move to the voting buttons...I like to vote and watch!