An alternative to just raising the queue escape threshold, could be to do a feature I've been talking about for some time: tiered rewards. Instead of just giving out a star point at 10 votes, a video could give out more than that if it attained many more votes, but maybe with some diminishing returns. It would break the simple 1 video, 1 star point model we have now, but it might have some merit as the site grows. If, for instance, the maximum amount of star point that could be given out for a single videopost was 10, then there could be several thresholds: 10 votes(4 stars), 20 votes(3 stars), 50 votes(2 stars), 100 votes(1 star). This would reward popularity, but still give a good reward for the under-appreciated gems in the bunch. (This would of course upset the star levels that we have since they would have to be raised, but I think it would be worth it in the end.)

A similar thing could be done with comments - there's usually a quality difference between a comment with 15 votes and one with 40+, for instance, and it's a shame that this is not rewarded somehow.

PS. Sorry about the many posts in a row, I'm trying to isolate each idea, so there's a clearer image of which people like and don't like.

This is a subject in which I can get really heated about. Not so much California but every state. I am in Texas and I feel the same way. Education gets cut before anything else. We fight these wars that will never end.. war on terror.. war on drugs... but we can't fight a war on stupidity? Why would anyone think that funneling billions of dollars into the first two lost causes is better than educating the people to make better decisions? So what if someone wants to smoke crack? I'm not doing it. Crackheads won't teach my kids. Who will though? Teachers are already underpaid and under appreciated. So we cut education spending to the point where it is more difficult to get an education that it is to do anything else. People who are more educated commit less crimes. Isn't that another benefit to society? I want to slit my wrists when I hear about the money we are spending on "Abstinence Only" education when there are fucking schools and kids out there without books! Do ANYTHING but spend our dollars on that bullshit. People will only get more dumb and easier to control..... that rings of a conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

*quality idea! so many great under appreciated videos hiding in all those pqueues

pqueued reggae, great for a slow, hot summer day like this (30* celcius here):

http://www.videosift.com/video/Burning-Spear-Marcus-Garvey

One vital thing you people forget....a LOT of new members are gonna join now that the Sift looks so awesome! In a couple weeks we will be asking for another raise of the siftlimit.

+ even if the siftlimit is 5 or less votes, there are always gonna be under appreciated gems in pqueues. and that's the beauty of the current system in which unsifted vids don't dissapear. If you're ever bored of Fry, Dawkins and puppies there are always pqueues to explore.

I don't really understand why people don't enjoy laughing at the products of inbreeding. For sheer WTF factor, I found http://www.videosift.com/video/DUB-Dragon-Edition to be highly under appreciated. Or maybe I'm just a dick.

P.S. Will look at everyone else's tomorrow, when I'm sober.

This is from "I'm Alan Partridge: Series 2". Steve Coogan at his best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Partridge

This particular episode ends with one of my under appreciated sifts.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Alan-Partridge-Dante-Fireplaces

Dare I say, maybe the most under-appreciated album of my time.

Stickman are under appreciated on the sift. I personally love them.

One of the most under appreciated, unrecognized character/dance of the 90's.

Good find, even though you don't deserve to post this by not having watched the show.

This lady is so under appreciated. Thank you for giving her some attention

In reply to this comment by jonny:
*promote

*promote one of my fav horrorshow spoofs and under-appreciated nobody-ever-heard-of-it movies!!!!

Transactions don't take place between individuals unless they are mutually agreed upon, the government is simply supposed to be there to protect property rights and offer recourse through courts. That is the principle scope of government.

In socialist programs, payment is forced. What is a government paid teacher beholden to? The consumer, the parents? Certainly not. Does someone vote that teacher out or in? No, they are appointed by a chain of other government officials voted in by the MAJORITY, all financed with taxes. Taxes are FORCED PAYMENTS. You don't get any say for the product you get. That people could actually come on this board and be stupid enough to equate profit with bad service is a real laugh. So many things around them, all the products you use came about from free people mutually transacting with one another. That orange you bought at the local market is a transaction as much as that computer you're using. And somehow profit and self-interest is bad? That's what incentivizes people into these transactions. But you people can't even figure out that without the taxes to fund public schools, people would HAVE more money to afford private education. It only looks unaffordable in an environment where you're getting reamed by the inflation and taxes that provide this socialist nonsense, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Famed libertarian Harry Reid once said "Government breaks your leg, hands you a crutch and says, see, without us you couldn't walk!"

The least regulated market in the world is computers, and we can easily compare what its done to advance society over some utopian ideal where people pay a king to dish out orders demanding innovation and self-sacrifice purely for the good of society. It doesn't fucking work that way. Nobody invents cool shit that helps society under some government edict, someone creates something in their self-interest that someone else might want with the end EFFECT of benefiting both parties. Yes, Henry Ford was a millionaire at the end of the day, but that money was from selling millions of people cars. That's a bit different from some despot who has a million from taxes. Unless a company in a truly free market can convince other self-interested people that their product will improve their lives, they're not going to get their money. If they lie about the product or infringe on rights, they can be taken to court. That's a desirable function of government. Not to engage in the market itself and make products or dish out subsidies to people with forcibly appropriated money, but 50% of GDP is controlled in this way.

Here's the government programs that are fairly simple in task and don't do much damage: delivering mail, picking up garbage, laying concrete. Here are the extremely complex market services that don't operate in the consumer's advantage: operating on your body, teaching and caring for your children, "managing" everyone's retirement, building and maintaining power plants. These things have impoverished an entire sector of society with the taxes needed to fund their inefficient operations. You can't opt out, you can't avoid it, even if you don't want the service. Not to mention the trillions stolen and redistributed to some companies and not others in this corporatist atmosphere we've accepted (subsidies, bailouts, tax credits). How does a company get an anti-competitive special advantage from government if it doesn't have anything to give? You idealist idiots who think your politicians are selfless angels in no one's pocket all these years need to wake up and stop entrusting them with you and your children's wealth. THEY BLOW IT. On themselves, and their corporate buddies. And it was all forced, they never had to convince you with a product on a shelf, all they had to do was get on a podium, appeal to your sense of being under-appreciated and underpaid, and promise you the mother-fucking world. Then they tax and inflate the bejesus out of you, only to hand it off to some dick providing you a "service." Then, now that they've impoverished you and made you dependent on welfare, they get on the podium again and tell you the answer is that it simply wasn't enough. That the private sector went crazy and their price fixing and interventions had nothing to with it. They need more. More power, more redistribution, more bailouts. Manchausen syndrome.

And every time some fistfuck runs his company into the ground for a million dollars, so fucking what? That allows a better company to rise up and take its place. Better than the USSR. It's not a perfect system, there's a lot of incestuous activity in the bigger companies for sure. But if you bail any of them out, it will be a merry-go-round for these fuckers. Some of the worst payouts recently have gone to Fannie and Freddie CEOs, these are pseudo-government institutions that were designed with the INTENTION of making housing more affordable, in reality leading us to the exact opposite. Their CEOs were former Clinton advisors, they're in bed with the Dodd's and Frank's of the world, they've channeled millions into Democratic and Republican campaigns alike. There are crooks everywhere, you need to figure this out already.

The banks, our money system, the lifeblood of an economy, are heavily, heavily connected to the government because of its desire to inflate rather than tax. We allow banks and only banks to loan out money they don't have AT INTEREST via fractional reserve banking. We have a non-market determined monopolized money, we allow the banking industry to centralize and price fix interest rates, THE ROOT CAUSE of credit malinvestment bubbles worldwide. You can't regulate this stuff any more than you can regulate murder, because it is inherently fraudulent what we are allowing them to be doing.

Your money is like a vote with far more overt benefits. As a consumer, that's the best vote you've got. If you want to switch off your brain and just have prosperity come down to whether the majority correctly chooses the best dictator or not, I guarantee you we are on the road to hell as we speak. There are some powers that GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT HAVE, because it matters not how long you can correctly choose the upstanding citizen to exercise them in YOUR rather than THEIR best interest if eventually someone comes in and abuses it, causing the whole damn thing to implode on itself. That is the importance of the constitution, it was supposed to stop this from happening, but as soon as they realized they could ignore it with impunity, they just use as toilet paper. Forget laws for politicians, right? Who needs regulation for the regulators? They're all angels out to save us from our greedy selves. Gimme an effing break.

Theme song to Freaks & Geeks, a wonderful and under-appreciated show!!

p.s. nothing rocks quite like a Gibson Les Paul

One pretty bad side-effect of the Sandvich is the the lulz potential. I've been on multiple servers, with a class limit in effect, where the heavies just sit in spawn all game eating Sandvich after Sandvich...remorselessly (and deliciously) taunting those who actually want to play Heavy with the sound of their own gluttony.

On another note, the Sandvich is the only one I've unlocked so far and it's very handy on those maps with very defined choke-points/areas of attrition; gives an overworked/under appreciated medic some breathing room to heal the others before the big push. Two heavies, one with Sasha and another with Natasha, and two medics, one with kritzkrieg and another with normal uber, can be quite devastating when pushing together. Kudos to Valve for making each major update smoother and more seamless, with more and more relevant achievements and less ridiculous ones, than the last. Not mention the ever-increasing frequency of them.

Again, you write some of the funniest, most under-appreciated comments here. LOL!

In reply to this comment by critttter:
Hey, I left the Sift. Did you notice? I got lunch and came back.