Don't worry, we still love you!

Thanks for your support, orn.. i'm still wearing it.

I'd have bought my own support but then i was out of pocket last time i donated a bunch of cash to this website which i love so much to stop it going down the fucking pan.

GRRR i'm angry.

interesting..
i appreciate your candor on matters such as these.i find it fascinating how varied people who come to the sift actually view the sifts "purpose" and how they themselves utilize the sift.
it never occurred to me that someone would be upset losing a colored star but that is because my perspective of the sift is most likely different.
star levels add a certain goal oriented premise to the sift i guess its more important to some than others.
i was like you in many ways,i came to the sift since its inception..lurked..then finally created an account to do exactly what you did..comment.found myself busy came back to a number and all my comments toast.this time around i am actually posting.
mainly music videos,which contrary to your statement is not for votes but more for the purpose of archiving.(that and to stump paul4dirt,that man has incredibly obscure tastes).to me its all about the sharing.
i love your comments bud..i agree sometimes,sometimes i dont but im always impressed with your passion.
i would hate to see you stop your passionate comments due to a star.
you my friend are way better than that.

I like music. Don't go knocking on music, you bastard..

I too would like to get star points from comments though. And I think you need 14 other people in your circle jerk now.

If there's any circlejerk voting, it's not on videos. It's on comments. But I feel your pain. It takes a long time to move up in the system. Here's a star point. *quality

Awarding dannym3141 with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by Fjnbk.

i finally got a gold star and now its back to silver, and i only cried like for 2 minutes. flagrant racists with handcuffs... aka westy? i thought we cleared that up...

>> ^vairetube:
i finally got a gold star and now its back to silver, and i only cried like for 2 minutes. flagrant racists with handcuffs... aka westy? i thought we cleared that up...


It can never be cleared up. Only nuked from orbit until dead, dead, dead. And hopefully not arise as a zombie...damn zombies.

I feel your pain here speaking as someone who was shooting for Diamond and is now instead aiming for Ruby. And each sift now needs 15 votes.

Perhaps existing star levels for individual users should have been preserved in VS 4.0, even if it meant bumping up their points artificially.

Yeah, recounting people's points and potentially giving them a different star-level according to the new rules feels a little like retroactive legislation.

Music ain't easy to sift.

>> ^Fjnbk:
If there's any circlejerk voting, it's not on videos. It's on comments. But I feel your pain. It takes a long time to move up in the system. Here's a star point. quality


While i disagree with the first half of that, i appreciate the second half. That's happened to every sifttalk post i ever made now, thanks to high ranked members thinking my contributions were worth something and finding a way to cheat the system.

As for the other comments here - it's not really about crying. I think my arguments were lucid and my concerns valid. It's not like i've been here a few weeks. I've been bronze from comments for ages, and i've been contributing ever since. But despite my contribution, apparently now i'm LESS valuable to videosift than i was when my first video got promoted.

Can you imagine being in that position? Apparently my contributions have given me negative value to this community.

It feels rough, believe me.

Use your power points to promote and beg your own sifts, I guess. They're not WORTHLESS... promote is a powerful thing.
Nevertheless, I'm in your same (demoted) position and I agree it would be nice to trade in 5-6 power points for a star point...

At the time, it made perfect sense to stop the applauded comments becoming star points, as too many people were getting points for half arsed commenting and it was taking away from the main focus, videos. Having said that, an important close second to videos on this site is the community. And your contribution to that is incredibly valuable in my eyes.

I'd like to see two parts to applauded comments. A power point for 15 votes and a star point for perhaps 25 votes. This would ensure that the quality of the comment was recognised, but not too easy. I'll definitely be bringing it up in ideas for 4.1.

I know you were fairly happy at bronze, being able to downvote videos and comments as you saw fit. And I know a lot of people are pissed that they have been busted down. But the traffic and membership is getting higher and higher and therefore eventually we'll be seeing it become easier to get vids sifted at 15 votes.

The powers that be I guess have to make it work for the majority, and the fact is that the majority don't participate in the way you do. IMO no one contributes to commenting quite like you. This is your strength and it should be recognised a bit more than it is now. But, again it is a video site. To have a leg to stand on in your argument, i'd say that you should at least try and submit some stuff. Of course it will never be your main focus, but I reckon you should give it a whirl until such time as they change the rules for commenting, which I sincerely hope they do.

You only have 9 points left to get back to bronze, how about you put some of your wicked thoughts into sift talk posts, get the community juices flowing. I will guarantee you a quality for each one You do deserve it danny

>> ^dannym3141:
But despite my contribution, apparently now i'm LESS valuable to videosift than i was when my first video got promoted.
Can you imagine being in that position? Apparently my contributions have given me negative value to this community.
It feels rough, believe me.


Just so you know it: I have NEVER felt that anyone on VS was less valuable because of their lack of star points. Being valuable to other people is something you have to earn, and it's impossible to do that via some arbitrary reward scheme on the internet. And believe me when I say that you have earned it by the power of your own personality, nothing else.

Of course, having a high visible rank might give you a podium to shout from, and might make more people prone to read your comments. But when the comment is finally read, I believe that it is the content alone that influences the reader's jugdment over you. So gather together the praise you have received during your time here, and wear that as a badge instead. At least to me, that is much more impressive than a star or a gem next to your name.

Sorry you feel so badly about it, dannym3141. We appreciate all our members, especially those like you who have been here for so darned long.

The long and the short of it is that we felt we needed to make the adjustment, and unfortunately it had to be a global policy change. Keep in mind these changes we make are for the overall betterment of the site and in no way some kind of attack or punishment against you or any other members.

Danny: you are by a clear mile one of my favorite sifters and one of the bunch that I practically always agree on the widest variety of issues. While a_c's suggestion of posting to Sift Talk is a really good one, additionally I think I can help you get to 25 in a week or so by posting videos - if getting linked stuff that otherwise I would post myself is OK with you (take a look at my sifted videos list if you're unsure - nowadays it's mostly geek/news/comedy).

alien_concept: the 15 vote power point and ~25 (30, maybe?) vote star point award for comments is a fantastic idea. I don't see a reason for it to not be implemented in 4.1.

I've got to agree with almost you said, danny. I'm pretty annoyed to be bumped back down to starless, too. All I wanted was the ability to downvote people-getting-hurt videos and racist-haha-only-serious comments. It was like pulling teeth just to get my first ten vids sifted. Maybe you have to submit like 50 for every 1 that makes it through without ten begs or promotes, but I don't have eighty hours a day to troll Youtube for fart+cat videos.

25 videos does seem like an awful lot to sift before you get a star, especially now with the 15 vote threshold. Could we have a star level added back at 10 sifted videos? Maybe a tin star? Give tin stars the ability to downvote and ban immunity. The star powers are pretty concentrated at the silver level, so maybe spreading that out a little would help too?

I would love to see a rank that allows the occasional downvote without needing to post a voted video. Perhaps after you've been a member for one year or you've donated money to the site? It would be limited but it would be nice to be recognized as a long time lurker/poster/member/donater.

Which means you can now be instabanned again! BWAH-HAW-HAW!

I actually quite agree.

I spent ages getting to gold, made jokes about it in threads, Even said "When I make gold, i'll go charter" on my bio.

So, I did, felt like an accomplishment, I'd been on the sift for years, but finally got up to gold star status. I know it's the same as silver star in terms of what it can do now, but it's not exactly the same.
Well, I got gold.. And I chartered, and now i'm back down to silver.

It feels like a slap in the face, and I know it's unintentional, but it's still there. Same goes to everybody that got bronze and stopped, I feel your pain. I don't see why they had to change the lower tier of the system as much as they did..all they did was remove gold 100 and moved everything else up a rank.

If it was an issue with banning I don't see why they couldn't have just moved the "Can no longer be banned" option up to silver star instead. Well, who knows. maybe if enough of us gripe about it they'll reconsider.

I have to agree as well. It would even have been ok if those of us with stars were "grandfathered" in - able to keep our star/downvote while making the threshold to get the star higher. I worked hard to get that star.

To me it felt like I was becoming a full member of the community: a little more respect and a little more responsibility. Now I just feel like I was kicked in the junk.

Perhaps to keep everyone happy, you should put people back up to the level they were at previous to this, and then they'd have to do the same as everyone else to get to the next level. For instance, danny has 16 star points and no bronze, give him his bronze back and even if he gets to 25 he still has bronze and has to get to 50 to earn silver.

Because the videos that were submitted before 4.0 don't need 15 votes to have become a star point, I think the same should be extended to members levels

I agree with danny, this new star point hierarchy sucks and so does raising the escape limit to 15 votes. dag, lucky - you're making a big mistake. also, I don't appreciate the way you introduced this very important new changes. these changes are more important than the new layout and ui and you should have consulted with the community before implementing them - that's why we have polls, right? as it is now, I feel we don't matter enough to have a say in where this site is going.
I became addicted to sift crack in may 2007 and have been hanging around for a couple of months before that. I felt good in the company of fellow video junkies with specific, unique tastes and wanted to make a difference by contributing what I felt was worthy of showing up on the frontpage of a site that boasts "quality control" in their title, and while I do realize "quality" is subjective, I feel these new changes will only serve to promote mediocracy. it will not bring more participation from newly registered sifters and long-time lurkers like danny. i feel like there's no room for original findings deep from the tubes any more. our frontpage might soon look like any other bullshit site out there and that is not why I signed in for. if you want the site populated with what is trendy, you don't really need us sifters to decide what is quality and what isn't - you could just look at the top 10 most visited video sites on the net, see what's 'in' and steal the embeds. if you only want those kind of sifters, let us know. like deano, farhad and mr. fisk already mentioned - some of us will hardly get anything sifted now unless we adapt, go mainstream and try to beat Zifnab at ZPR. well, I for one refuse to sell out!

FWIW, I'm bummed out too. I was 2 points from Silver, now I'm 2 from Bronze. Wtf. How could this be construed as anything other than a cock-punch?

I'm with you, brother. I used to hate having anything in my pqueue and then went nuts trying to get up to gold status. (I spend so much time on here I may as well be fixing tags and having some editorial control!) Now I've got a bloated pqueue and a demotion at the same time! Oh, right, and a fight video as the top sift. It's a beautiful Monday.

Still, I can understand why they did it, even if it sucks for me personally. Hope you stick around - I've always enjoyed your old fogey commentaries.

I'll admit, I'm a bit bummed about losing my Bronze, and several of my star points were from applauded comments, back when that worked.

However, a stroll through my own comments highlights the reasoning behind the decision to stop awarding star points for applauds - I've only sifted a few videos and the bulk of my contribution is three years of smart-ass jabs and attempts at sarcasm. I can understand why we wouldn't want to promote that sort of behavior.

I've gotten very little use out of Power Points, except (coincidentally) to beg a video so that I could get my 10th star point and earn my Bronze.

As an additional suggestion, what if Power Points could be used by sub-Bronze members for downvoting?

The main problem is that anything useful is hidden away in higher star-levels, seemingly for no reason. 25 sifts are *hard* for people who don't constantly search for videos or race to post this week's Zero Punctation, and only submit good videos they happen upon, half of which may be too niche. I only went for Bronze to get extremely basic abilities of downvoting, marking videos dead, and fixing dead videos. Why do you hate freedom want to drive away help?

How long would Wikipedia have lasted if every poster, in addition to being registered, had to make 100 quality (as determined by other editors who had to take the time to review them) non-minor contributions before they could correct typos or other information in existing articles? It's just shooting yourself in the foot.

I just realized that my star points breakdown says I have 7 points from Sifted videos and 4 points from Dead Pool Fixes. I don't think I've ever fixed a dead video.
I assume those were applauded comment points that were rolled into "Dead Pool Fixes" once that category of star points was eliminated.

I'm not so fussed on rankings, as I'm mostly ignorant of the powers they entail. My issue is with the 15 requirement to get sifted. Most of my attempted sifts are pretty obscure, and if any of them get close to 10 I'm pretty stoked. I like that - it's part of what I'm here for. But raising to 15 does tend to provide an incentive to sift lowest common denominator stuff, and a disincentive to sift more niche videos.

The argument that the sift is getting more popular, so 15 votes will be easier to get, does not necessarily hold if our popularity is with cat and fight fans.

Tiered point giving is the key.

Power point for comment +15, star point at +30

star point for video at 10, and again at 25, maybe more.

This will reward quality posts over quantity.

Retracted.

I haven't developed a strong opinion on the 10 vs 15 sifted rule. But I think I'm leaning on going back to ten. It seems like the same trend has continued that most people vote on videos that are already sifted. So this puts an disparity to the more obscure video being sifted.

And again, what exactly is it about marking videos dead and fixing them that warrants hiding it behind a 25 star point tier? Would it be too abuseable at a 5 or 1 star point tier, so much so that the site would rather all the dead videos that are their prime popularity go undiscovered and unfixed? I was just about to submit *dead on a video just now when I remembered I couldn't anymore. Oh well, better put out the thought of contributing in that manner out of my head forever.

>> ^Zyrxil:
And again, what exactly is it about marking videos dead and fixing them that warrants hiding it behind a 25 star point tier? Would it be too abuseable at a 5 or 1 star point tier, so much so that the site would rather all the dead videos that are their prime popularity go undiscovered and unfixed? I was just about to submit dead on a video just now when I remembered I couldn't anymore. Oh well, better put out the thought of contributing in that manner out of my head forever.

The FAQ page addresses this:

If you are a VideoSift member, you can try posting a profile comment for the video submitter, informing them of the problem. If you are a Silver Star member or greater, you can comment with the *dead invocation. If you are not a member, you may contact us and we will address it.