>> ^Hybrid:

1. Make it so I can choose a custom thumbnail in the actual submission page. I would be happy with just this!
2. Ditch the Top 10 Lounge Lizards box from the front page. Not all member ranks can access the lounge anyway.
3. Remove the "login with facebook" button from the top of the page, and put that onto the member login page directly. So a user either logs in with facebook or their username & password. That seems to be the standard way of doing things.
4. Clean up all the social networking integrations/icons/text about the place. A generic "social networking" panel on the right of the page (perhaps replacing the Top 10 lounge lizards box), might be a cleaner way of doing things.
5. A dynamic ticker bar for the top of site, viewable on most pages. Cycles recent "news items" and by that I mean: Videos hitting #1, videos going Top 15, members ranking up, new sift talk posts, new blog posts. Maybe even badge awards (though that might be a lot of news items to cycle).... When news items are low it could generate informal ones like "@dag is only 3 sifts away from getting their crown. Click here to look at their pqueue" etc. I actually had a similar idea for just publicising member rankings before: http://videosift.com/talk/Publicize-member-rank-increases
6. Auto-generated sift talk posts by Siftbot when a member reaches gold or above? Could be a nice way to make sure people don't go unnoticed when they rank up? Though I am aware that there have been some great custom, new rank sift talk posts in the past, so it would lose that aspect.
7. A page (similar to the no thumbs page), that has all the videos that have had dupeof called on them, but are awaiting the second isdupe invocation. Also, I think we do need a notdupe invocation to cancel out bad dupeof calls, before someone randomly calls isdupe without proper checking.
8. Ditch Beggar's Canyon.
9. Server load permitting I guess, but open up the lounge to all non-probie ranks.
10. The ability to transfer powerpoints to another member. I know, strange request, but it'd be nice to have this for those times when members want to reward another for helping them out with finding a video or something.


And this from the guy who just wants custom thumbnails

I love #6 too. It's such a shame we don't seem to make such a celebration of people's milestones like we used to. I really don't think the community is any less inclined, just that we've got lax about it.

1. Make it so I can choose a custom thumbnail in the actual submission page. I would be happy with just this!

2. Ditch the Top 10 Lounge Lizards box from the front page. Not all member ranks can access the lounge anyway.

3. Remove the "login with facebook" button from the top of the page, and put that onto the member login page directly. So a user either logs in with facebook or their username & password. That seems to be the standard way of doing things.

4. Clean up all the social networking integrations/icons/text about the place. A generic "social networking" panel on the right of the page (perhaps replacing the Top 10 lounge lizards box), might be a cleaner way of doing things.

5. A dynamic ticker bar for the top of site, viewable on most pages. Cycles recent "news items" and by that I mean: Videos hitting #1, videos going Top 15, members ranking up, new sift talk posts, new blog posts. Maybe even badge awards (though that might be a lot of news items to cycle).... When news items are low it could generate informal ones like "@dag is only 3 sifts away from getting their crown. Click here to look at their pqueue" etc. I actually had a similar idea for just publicising member rankings before: http://videosift.com/talk/Publicize-member-rank-increases

6. Auto-generated sift talk posts by Siftbot when a member reaches gold or above? Could be a nice way to make sure people don't go unnoticed when they rank up? Though I am aware that there have been some great custom, new rank sift talk posts in the past, so it would lose that aspect.

7. A page (similar to the no thumbs page), that has all the videos that have had dupeof called on them, but are awaiting the second isdupe invocation. Also, I think we do need a *notdupe invocation to cancel out bad dupeof calls, before someone randomly calls *isdupe without proper checking.

8. Ditch Beggar's Canyon.

9. Server load permitting I guess, but open up the lounge to all non-probie ranks.

10. The ability to transfer powerpoints to another member. I know, strange request, but it'd be nice to have this for those times when members want to reward another for helping them out with finding a video or something.

@oritteropo

I work in Silicon Valley. My social network does include dyslexic techies (not a big deal) and also non-professionals who are never going to do anything with their lives, but I've never known anyone who would write anything this badly after highschool:

Man I'm doing a report on how to cut a fade but when I said this cats fade I was like, Imma get an F if this is a fade! and By the way You plugged my man at the front of the fade. I mean I still see it. jus sayin.

Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible. I'm certain that even if a joint effort between developers of all sorts banded together to copy and create an MMO like wow, it would likely be crap, because they have no other incentive to make it than "because we can". Design decisions based on that are not good - look at linux. Even Mozilla is a company nowadays. A command structure is essential in creating a massive work of art in a reasonable time.

Making a copy of WoW isn't "just" making a copy of WoW, it's enormous. By the time someone has copied it to the finer details, the game will have moved on to something else; systems change all the time.

A good example of something happening like you say is Vampires: Bloodlines where the community made a huge amount of "community patches" to fix the game, after the developer went bankrupt. I like that, but they could do it because the things they were fixing were straight forward. If they wanted to make entirely new things, who decides which things are good and bad? Like wikipedia, they would need custodians. A private company like Blizzard does not have that problem.

I was certainly a little too broad when I said all intellectual property is bunk. First of all I have a problem with the umbrella term of IP. I don't think it's helpful. Different types of IP have different solutions and problems. Some are more bunk than others. (Wtf is with they way rights to music works? What is it now, 100 years after the artist dies? Crazy.)

Like you I am philosophically on the "you can't own ideas, man"-wagon, but practically I'm more loose with my morals - hell, morals are fluid baby.

I'll say this. I would rather have 50000 people playing my game and 50 people paying for it, than I would have 50 people playing my game and paying for it any day.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.
Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.
The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.
But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.
I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).
I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.
It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.
You know, people like you and me.
>> ^gwiz665:
Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.

Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.

The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.

But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.

I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).

I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.

It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.

You know, people like you and me.

>> ^gwiz665:

Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.

You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.

I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.

I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.

The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.

Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

>> ^longde:

Wow. Just wow. If rampant piracy existed in your country, or the key markets for your products, you wouldn't have a livelihood.
How can "service" or "design" stop outright duplication of a work?
So, if I completely duplicate WOW, from the look and feel to the name, and everyone flocks to my servers, that's just tough nuts for Blizzard, right?>> ^gwiz665:
Reproduce all you like. That said, I'm just a part of who makes it, so the official stance on piracy etc etc is not my call. But for my 2 cents, piracy is a service issue. You can design your way out of it.
>> ^longde:
I find it wildly ironic that a VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER decries the concept of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
To use your analogy: so it's OK if I independently reproduce your video games and make money off them.>> ^gwiz665:
Agreed. If I built a ford out of parts I made myself, down to the fucking molecule, it still wouldn't be stealing. I have not taken anything from anyone.
Intellectual Property is a phantom dreamed up by those who want to control information. Information wants out. Information wants to be free. In the end it cannot be controlled.
Make a better service, then software piracy becomes a moot point.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
STOP CALLING IT STOLEN! The entirety of human culture is stolen by that kind of logic. You can only steal something that is a limited resource, of which bits really are not.

i was disappointed when i saw Bill talking on the issue... uninformed and with that lack of information, making wrong declarative statements

SOPA makes you guilty on assumption, and you are forced to prove your innocence...
and for MOST non-media conglomerates, that means you go out of business.. because your website is shutdown until you fight it out in court...

this isn't about copyright protection... its about competition elimination

and the scope of this bill lends itself quite well to being misused... this site is speaking out against the government, or an ally of the government, or talking about things we don't like? we'll just have SOPA shut the site down, maybe go to the amount of effort required to post a comment on the site that "justifies" the action... and the status quo goes on uninterupted

its the boundary line, its the point that when we cross it, the concept of FREE information over the internet ceases to exist... because any single country that takes action because of SOPA, it affects everyone else on the planet (who's government has also signed onto SOPA)

the uprisings that took place in the middle east due to social networks would be a thing of the past only... they'd NOT be allowed to happen anywhere else (most especially in the WESTERN world - I take it back partly, if there was oil/resource interests for the WEST in that country, it'd still be allowed)

and as for Bill's, "people just like to steal shit" comment... please, demonstrate that a person who downloaded Religulous would have bought it if they had no other option... you can't... its alot easier to show examples of people who DID buy it because they downloaded it in the first place

take a look at the VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY... while there are some big companies whose sole purpose is to rate/review/preview upcoming video games, you'll see alot of these are closing down... why? because fan created, by donation alternatives are providing a valid and sustainable alternative... that's ALOT of free advertising (dbl edged because it could be bad reviews) these companies get... and for some of the smaller video game companies/independant game companies, the ONLY advertising they get

how easily would all that be squashed with SOPA? didn't like your review... your site gets shut down. we only give permission to sites we KNOW will give us good reviews... etc etc

that's not protecting internet creativity... that's killing off internet creativity... and the ability for non-media conglomerates to compete

make sure your government knows the distinction between small business and monopolies
make sure they are serving your interests, and not their own pockets
businesses spending lobbying money and offering jobs to representatives to influence the creation of laws IS the end result of UNFETTERED MARKETS... the laws that they complain about, that hurt their ability to "compete", are laws that were enacted to protect YOU the consumer

change the USA to the UCA... United Corporations of America... they'll lobby to get rid of the America part... too restrictive

In the growing battle for the future of the Web, some of the biggest sites online -- Google, Facebook, and other tech stalwarts -- are considering a coordinated blackout of their sites, some of the web’s most popular destinations.

No Google searches. No Facebook updates. No Tweets. No Amazon.com shopping. Nothing.

On November 15, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn wrote a letter to Washington warning of SOPA's dangers. "We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation's cybersecurity," the letter argued

Google co-founder Sergey Brin himself has loudly denounced the bill. “While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don't believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world,” Brin wrote on Google+ social networking site earlier this month.

More: Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/30/will-google-amazon-and-facebook-blackout-net/#ixzz1jNPe7gdV

My favourite part @1:10:40

"If I was always violent to you ...or gave you misinformation, you would cut the ties to me and the network would disintegrate. Therefore the spread of some good and desirable properties like altruism and love and happiness and ideas, is required to nurture and sustain the network. And similarly the network is required for these desirable things to happen.

So there's a very deep connection, we think, between social networks and goodness. And actually we think that in a very deep level humans beings assemble themselves into networks because the benefits of the connected life outweigh the costs."

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Mark Zuckerberg, Inside Facebook, BBC, documentary, Facebook, Intenret, social network' to 'Mark Zuckerberg, Inside Facebook, BBC, documentary, Facebook, Internet, social network' - edited by kulpims

>> ^TheSluiceGate:

Step 1: Learns Ant Crusher
Step 2: Angry Birds
Step 3: Masters social networking
Step 4: Takes over world


step 5: ?????
step 6: profit

Step 1: Learns Ant Crusher
Step 2: Angry Birds
Step 3: Masters social networking
Step 4: Takes over world

>> ^CrushBug:

>> ^notarobot:
So glad that hollywood is catching up to NIN music from twelve years.

So much so that Trent Reznor won the Oscar for doing the soundtrack to The Social Network.
http://videosift.com/video/Trent-Reznor-s-Oscar-Nominated-Score


He needs to realize that the world liked NIN better than his new.. thing.. and get NIN back together.

>> ^notarobot:

So glad that hollywood is catching up to NIN music from twelve years.


So much so that Trent Reznor won the Oscar for doing the soundtrack to The Social Network.

http://videosift.com/video/Trent-Reznor-s-Oscar-Nominated-Score

Good, it looks like Fincher is back on form.....(sorry, but "The Social Network" just didn't do it for me)

^Upvoted^