There seems to be a fundamental problem with the current thinking on *dead videos. At the moment, when a video is *deaded the original submitter has 7 days to fix it before it is discarded. If he/she does not - or cannot - find an alternative source for the video, the video will be discarded and one post will be subtracted from the submitter’s total number of published posts. In some unfortunate cases – often when many videos go dead - this can mean that the submitter may drop from a powerful gold star to a powerless silver. This result is not only unfair, but it also raises an important question about the nature of the Sift – can the Sift ever really be an effective long-term video library? VideoSift is not a site like YouTube which directly hosts videos. Rather it is a site which allows users to post videos from other sites which do host videos. As non-self-linking Sifters we are at the mercy of the host sights and the original uploaders. If a video is pulled by the host or the uploader our video goes *dead, and often - particularly in the case of more obscure videos – we will not be able to replace it. This means the Sift can never be anything more than a short-term place to see videos. However, the current thinking on *dead videos seems to reflect the idea that the Sift can be an effective long-term video library. Surely we should just accept that the Sift can never be anything more than a short-term library of videos, and consequently not punish Sifters when one of their videos goes *dead by subtracting one post from the submitter’s total number of published posts.