The biggest problem i see is that there are so many ways to approach to the problem that all seem to do what is needed, but right now are scattered between researchers and projects all over the world, and i dont have access to them! For instance, you have massively excellent ideas, but would i have even known about them if i didnt come on videosift? so who else might already have another piece to the puzzle that i am completely ignorant of? that is my base starting point, because of my experience level and resources.

you are correct in approaching the linguistic AI component as the heaviest and most critical task to work on. Everything else is trivial in comparison.

The researchers at Cornell started a project in 2004 with a 10 year goal to accomplish basically what we're talking about in terms of analysis, only for a different purpose. I would not like to... spend time on that component when that research will save time and ultimately be better than what i can think of or make with my resources. I could essentially dig the hole, and fill it in with their system... a desire not driven by a particular ... inability... but out of desire for maximum efficiency.

I seem to be my best at unifying already developed systems, so right now... im identifying what components are needed, in what stage, if any, do they exist currently, where do they exist, and how can i use them in this new way.

The database component and GUI is likely where i personally could do the most work, but soon i will have access to the brains here at the CS department, and hopefully they will be interested enough to give me pointers in the right direction for the rest. I am about 7 months out from even getting to that point, so in that time, i am going to keep basically brainstorming and researching all the stuff i can so that the concept is presentable and accessible to new minds.

I can't contribute much at this point besides vision, time, and energy, but i feel like its such a worthy goal that i could easily spend a lifetime on it and consider it well spent. Your ideas make total sense to me, but... i wouldnt have been able to produce them in such logical context as efficiently... so at least, i can identify the need to be educated and educate myself more. I want to see what specific areas i excel at here at school so i feel i have validity to ... waste the time of more brilliant individuals such as yourself.

I mean, you already have such practical solutions for an AI framework, and i haven't even done anything as defined. so it makes me feel .. unworthy of attempting to interact at your level when i know i am not ready... but i know now you have a piece to the puzzle... so progress has been made... perhaps soon i can make the call to arms for the project in a way that is appropriate to the end goal, which is participation of everyone.

That's all i can spew forth ... once again thank you for making me see that it really is important to other people... that alone is enough to keep me going on this. I belive soon i will make a .org website for people to start brainstorming on, with a forum and such... that is how i can most effectively contribute at this point... organizing channels for ideas regarding the various components, as they are identified. My younger brother, for instance, is getting heavy training in the PeopleSoft/oracle suites, so there is another piece right there.

Sorry to be so vague in response to your very specific ideas.. all i can say to them is... YES MOAR PLS!1 and lol you found the same funny definitions for the acronym i did... heh heh heh. There needs to be a clearing house for these ideas... that's where i can come in the soonest, i believe... i would love to watch the conversation develop between more parties with interests and abilities such as yours! ok, well, back to the drawing board to channel some of this excitement productively! i have a large break time coming up in late august, and with that i hope to be in full swing making the website and "conceptual" framework for others to spin off of.

boy this will be neat... thanks D!

I'm thinking 'somebody' owes MycroftHolmz 100 upvotes and 10 promotes.

But yeah, I've resurrected dead videos with a minute's length difference on one or two occasions, but there was careful duplicate-evaluation involved. Never called a dupe unless I watched both videos in entirety back-to-back, so to speak. Anyway, shall we brainstorm some penalties for incorrect dupe invocations?

*edit* Same length restriction isn't viable. There's thousands of dupes that have had a second's difference, which I assume is a result of host change via net-ripping, and there have been several precedents in which whole minutes of video have added next to nothing to a particular video, thus having been called duplicates (this however clearly isn't the case).

if a user spent as much time as jonny has, thinking about and writing about an idea that you AGREED with, you'd implement it tomorrow.

WTF? ignoring jonny and insulting me? WTF.

I accused you of brushing off criticism and ignoring suggestions, and what do you do? you come in the thread and say nothing except ignore suggestions, brushing off criticism and turning it against the critic.

Thanks for your input into our brainstorming dag.

In reply to this comment by dag:
^ Oh wow, what happened to the new Mink? Do I need to take back the acceptance of your apology now?

Well, I certainly apologise for not not contributing more in this thread - as you might understand, Lucky and I have been a bit busy with other issues on the Sift of late - in addition to the fact that we are both working full-time jobs outside the Sift. So sorry we're not living up to your expectations as usual Mink.

I don't think that raising the escape threshold is a good enough solution.

While there are many, many videos between 10-12 (http://www.videosift.com/search?q=&t=v&u=&s[]=s&o=hivotes&vmin=10&vmax=12&sh=&l=&n=&b=&submit=Search) it would still not touch the underlying problem, which is that quality is overlooked and quick-fixes are rewarded.

I think we need to devise a different way to measure quality that includes other parameters (although, it's a shame that we'd have to sacrifice transparency).

For instance, number of unique views could be a factor, number of promotes, number of begs, number of comments and so on. There is also a grave issue with time zone preference, which is a shame. What we could do, is to make videos only submittable in peak hours, so that a queue outside the queue was created and in peak hours the video was thrown on to the queue, or something like that, I'm just brainstorming (or brain-whisking in my case).

As crazy as the idea of shutting off the site to non-members is, I think MINK is just trying to brainstorm ways of saving this site, so I think it's not fair to shoot him down like this.

As far as opening the financial books of VideoSift.com goes...I don't really care about it. I'm sure other hosting options are being considered and weighted. Switching the host is not a decision that is to be taken lightly anyways. But the idea in itself is not that crazy (again, I'm not in favor of it). Non-profit organizations that accept donations (like Goodwill) do have to open their books to the public, at least they do have to in many countries. But again, I'm not interested in the details of that.

What I would be interested in is the system this site is built upon, namely VaroCMS. If this site was built upon a well-known system, such as Wordpress, Joomla, etc etc I could rest assured that it operates very efficiently, without a lot of bandwidth or server power going to waste. With the closed-source system VaroCMS I'm not so sure.

Here's a small example of what I'm talking about: I just visited 5 user profiles, all of them charter members. None of them has a custom CSS in use, but for each individual profile I visited, a new .css file was cached locally. Ok it's only 10kb per .css file, but stuff like this keeps adding up. Waste is a thief...

I'm not trying to pin lucky to the wall. Building a complete CMS from scratch by oneself(?) is such a ginormous task that I shudder at the mere thought of it. That's why I wouldn't have considered doing that for a site like this in the first place. The question now is how can the site's system be optimized to save even the last drop of bandwidth and servertime? Again, with a closed source system like this it's all in lucky's hands and that's alot of work he's not getting paid for.

imsteller, people would take you more seriously if you didn't act like such a douche all the time. Down voted for your smarmy video pimping. In the spirit of capitalism, supply and demand and freemarketology I'll give two dollars for every downvote of imnsteller's video (up to $20).

>> ^imstellar28:
I would like for this site to succeed,
but I'd be lying if I didn't find it ironic that VideoSift is falling on hard times during this depression, given the economic/philosophical outlook advocated by the majority of the community here. It seems odd to me, to cling to beliefs when the world around you is crumbling at your feet.
My two cents, brainstorm different server alternatives and revenue models. This depression isn't going away anytime in the next decade.
That said, I went ahead and donated one dollar for every vote received on, what I consider, the most critically relevant economic video on VideoSift.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Greatest-Economic-M
yth-Government-as-a-Window-Breaker

>> ^imstellar28:
I would like for this site to succeed,
but I'd be lying if I didn't find it ironic that VideoSift is falling on hard times during this depression, given the economic/philosophical outlook advocated by the majority of the community here. It seems odd to me, to cling to beliefs when the world around you is crumbling at your feet.
My two cents, brainstorm different server alternatives and revenue models. This depression isn't going away anytime in the next decade.
That said, I went ahead and donated one dollar for every vote received on, what I consider, the most critically relevant economic video on VideoSift.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Greatest-Economic-M
yth-Government-as-a-Window-Breaker


This is bar none. The funniest thing I have ever read on Videosift.

I would like for this site to succeed,

but I'd be lying if I didn't find it ironic that VideoSift is falling on hard times during this depression, given the economic/philosophical outlook advocated by the majority of the community here. It seems odd to me, to cling to beliefs when the world around you is crumbling at your feet.

My two cents, brainstorm different server alternatives and revenue models. This depression isn't going away anytime in the next decade.

That said, I went ahead and donated one dollar for every vote received on, what I consider, the most critically relevant economic video on VideoSift.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Greatest-Economic-Myth-Government-as-a-Window-Breaker

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
I think the FAQ/About page could use some work too. Maybe we could brainstorm/rewrite as a group in siftalk.

Haha! See the mess you create when you boast "egalitarianism"? Haha! Keep fighting the good (and inconsistent) fight.

I think the FAQ/About page could use some work too. Maybe we could brainstorm/rewrite as a group in siftalk.

1. Make the support link(s) more attention grabbing. The support, donate and buy powerpoints links are too subtle in my opinion. Maybe a new user notices, I don't know but I completely forgot where that support link was if it wasn't for this blog entry.

2. Like many have said, offer a simpler (lighter) charter option. And/or offer more benefits. Those 'benefits' have never interested me, and I don't think I am the only one.

"* Absolutely no ads
* Personal Blog
* Six (6) concurrent submission slots in the unsifted queue
* Two (2) Power Points per recharge period
* Personal subdomain for your member profile, e.g., siftbot.videosift.com
* Personalized colorizing for your username text and comment background
* Fully customizable CSS styling for your member profile
* Participation in the Sift Lounge chat room"

For instance, if I wanted a blog, I would go to a site specialized in blogs. The sift blog as it is, seems too simple I think.

What if besides being able to have 6 submissions you can also have the option of converting number of submissions available to time in the queue? For instance, if I want a a video to last 4 days in queue instead of 2 then I sacrifice 2 or 3 of my available submissions in order to extend the time for that particular video.

My point is, some of us don't care for a colored username, access to a chat, a simplistic blog, a subdomain or a custom CSS. A custom CSS sounds nice but if you dont know CSS then you won't care. Could you offer a more customizable profile, w/o necessarily having to know CSS? or maybe offer more themes for charter members besides dark and nublu....

I don't know, just brainstorming.

Charging people for just joining will drive people away.

>> ^jonny:
>> ^dag:
We do appreciate the contributions of Charter members - but from a cold, hard financial standpoint- our efforts in this regard have not worked out.
That's just what I was thinking of with the idea above. Revenue from members is so small because it's limited to such a small number of users. If you can tap the entire user base, or at least a large portion of it, while at the same time making the burden on any individual user minimal, then I think you've got a solution. I'm sure there are solutions other than my proposal that can accomplish the same goal.
The more I think about it, I think Krupo's got the right idea. Allow 1 post/day for all users; after that, it's a penny/post. Do you have any data on how many users post more than once per day? I'm pulling 1 post/day and 1 penny out of the air. Obviously you would want to base those numbers on some sort of analysis of usage patterns.


Crap, I was sleepy last night when I wrote that allow me to clarify...

>> ^spoco2:
Charging to post videos is just not a good idea at all. The lifeblood of the site IS the videos, so if you're effectively discouraging people from actually posting them... there goes your site. And saying 'but it's just a penny'... doesn't matter, it's the need to pay somehow, setup and account etc. etc.
It's all discouraging and would kill the site.


Don't get me wrong - we ALREADY CHARGE for posting more than 3 vids at a time. It's the charter. The idea would be a fee for pushing past a certain # of vids in the queue - i.e., a lower threshold.

The proposal: you still get one or two at a time gratis, but if you want to stuff the queue, you could buy the privilege (which charter members essentially already do with the 6-limit).

Here's the fun part: make it DIRT CHEAP to go from, say, 1 to 2. Like $1 a month. $12/year. Get 100 people to sign up for the $12/ultra-light-charter, boom, you have, um, $1200.

Obviously we would need about 30,000 people @ $1 each to cover costs for the year. This gets easier if you add additional "ladder steps" - $2/$5/$10 options to pull in more support.

I don't think we should push higher than the current "gold star full-ass charter" in terms of price... but you can give people 'a la carte' options to get closer to those features without taking them all. Customized user name, one fee, blog, another fee, URL, another, etc. So you can go bare-bones "Just let me have more powerpoints and queue slots" to the fancier end... allow "gift certificate" purchases for others, etc.

What I like about the somethingawful goons approach (mentioned above) is that there is LOTS of flexibiliy. One-time fee for certain benefits, higher fee for whatever.

Heck, you embrace a one-time "lifetime contributor" fee for the "1 to 2" jump, and have other ways of

The two key things to keep in mind is that:
1. Sifting stays FREE (at a basic 1/vid at a time level).
2. This enhances *qualitycontrol by encouraging people only to submit the best submission they have.

I also recommend, to avoid diluting powerpoints into an orgy of self*-promotes, that 2 powerpoints would also be redeemable for a free queue slot (for those who make quality contributions but for whatever reason don't want to go ultra-light-charter or anything along those lines - that's cool too - this is how we reward quality).

Just brainstorming - let me know what you think.

Thanks. Actually, I'm not sure Brainstorm is a good fit. I intend the channel to be mostly a subset of the science channel, with a smattering of philosophy and psychology when they intersect with brain science. I need to make another talk post and let everyone know what it's all about. I was going through a lot of videos to get some in there before doing that though, so I'd have some concrete examples.

In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
jonny! cool channel. just went through my sifts.

figured this was a sure thing for brainland, but wasn't sure about this.
go ahead and invoke if it fits your parameters.

jonny! cool channel. just went through my sifts.

figured this was a sure thing for brainland, but wasn't sure about this.
go ahead and invoke if it fits your parameters.

Tsk, tsk dystopianfuturetoday, brainstorming for McCain?