1. Why?
2. Why not let it just change through the top voted comments of all time?
3. People who have charted accounts should be allowed to remove this.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

>> ^Farhad2000:
1. Why?


Comments are the best part and lifeblood of VideoSift. Though sometimes we feel this aspect of our community is overlooked - it's a way to draw more people to the best part of the site.

2. Why not let it just change through the top voted comments of all time?



I'm not sure I understand what you're asking- but by limiting it to 12 hours - we're giving information about where a lot of community focus has been recently. It's temporal.



3. People who have charted accounts should be allowed to remove this.


That's not a shabby idea - but I have to ask - do you really dislike it? We try new things - sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. If lots of people don't like it we'll definitely take that on board.

I like it, and think it would be a very effective way to attract new members who are sick of the YouTube mentality.

I like the idea, but I don't think it works as it is now. It takes up too much space, in my opinion. I'm not sure how to do it better though, maybe a box on the right on top. Like the "top rated new comments" but only with the one comment and maybe like three-four lines max.

Point 2. I meant I believe it should cycle through the best comments of the site to give older videos some chance at new life. Right now we are operating on a lag time, creating alot of older videos that never again get viewed.

From a design standpoint, it's pretty awful. It visually disrupts the column layout. It's also next to impossible to read with a dark background. And it's kind of redundant with the top new comments box. Why not just move the top rated new comments box to the top of the right column?

comment not relevant to channel

>> ^MarineGunrock:
I like it, and think it would be a very effective way to attract new members who are sick of the YouTube mentality.

Exaaactly. That's kind of the inspiration for adding it. That and possibly to engage lurkers enough that they feel compelled to join to participate in the discussion.

It's different from the sidebar in that it only selects comments from videos and only from the past 12 hours. Aside from that, putting it in the sidebar would defeat the purpose of getting the attention of the casual user/lurker.

If it's that detrimental to the mental health of y'all, perhaps we should simply not display it for charters. (No option - just no display.)

Is there is a way we can make it less of an eye sore? I think it's a neat idea but my first thought looking at it is "damn advertisement."

I'm with Farhad2000 on this one -- it should be constantly rotating. Aside from the fact that it'll help bring attention to older (mostly forgotten) vids, it's kind of pointless to have the same comment up there for up to 12 hours. Once you've read it once or twice it's just wasted space.

The general concept is pretty good, but does it need to be on every page? It's even on the submit video, search, and profile pages. Seems kind of silly there.

As for layout, perhaps shrink it to the width of the main column?

And add another vote for quicker rotation. It doesn't necessarily have to be a top rated comment either. Perhaps anything with 5 or more comment votes.

>> ^Farhad2000:
Right now we are operating on a lag time, creating alot of older videos that never again get viewed.

I've been thinking about that more generally too. There's thousands of great vids from way back when. * Promote used to work pretty well for resurrecting some of those gems, but its usefulness has become diluted because of the power point system and the sheer number of vids that are here.

Maybe we could combine these ideas. Instead of just featuring one comment, how about featuring a video with a good comment thread? I know there are some older vids with excellent commentary, but those comments will never be featured because they were written before comment voting existed.

The staleness factor is a very valid point. We've changed it so it will effectively feature once every five minutes a random <= 12 hour old comment with at least 5 votes.

Just caught this...

Featured Member Comment
Stupidest Guy on Earth Speaks Out - "Colin Powell said it: "You break it, you buy it". I think we're obligated now. And it's going to hurt for a long, long time. A lot of men and women are going to die because of it. If I were a young..." read more by schmawy

Great. Now I look like the Stupidest Guy on Earth.

>> ^lucky760:
The staleness factor is a very valid point. We've changed it so it will effectively feature once every five minutes a random <= 12 hour old comment with at least 5 votes.

Why only 12 hour comment? There are hundreds of great comments going to way back, I think you should refine it to comments that score 10 and above across the whole sift time.

The current top rate comment section on the right side can handle the 12 hour high rated comments just fine.

Open the vaults of the Sift! There are so many great comments from way back when.

Your point's definitely valid, but again, one of the points of having it at all is to get non-members interested enough to jump into a conversation, so if we include irrelevant comments (wrt current discussion), that wouldn't do a good job of it.

^I like it. I'm finding all sorts of stuff I missed because of those comments.

I like it, but I also think it would look better aligned with the center column. And maybe it should only be on pages like Sifted, Unsifted, Hot, Beggars, and so on. No reason to be in profile and submit pages.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
I like it, and think it would be a very effective way to attract new members who are sick of the YouTube mentality.


Yes! This is exaclty why I am here right now. There is an elevated level of colloquy that happens here as opposed to other video sites.

It takes too up space IMO especially when I am in a hurry to watch videos and with 800 pixels width Web browser. At least give us an option to disable it!

I think it's pretty damn good, dag and lucky, especially now that you have it changing every 5 minutes. Perfect. Wouldn't change a thing.
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Well...maybe you could change the font to Times New Roman, 16 pt., bold, italicized, underlined, in fuchsia, with rainbow sparkles, flashing at 23 Hz, and also translated into the following languages:

Hmong
Urdu
Swahili
Catalan
Western Apache

Then it will be perfect. For now.

^Western Apache does not make a very good written language. Believe me it's near impossible to use it outside of a face to face conversation.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
I think it's pretty damn good, dag and lucky, especially now that you have it changing every 5 minutes. Perfect. Wouldn't change a thing.
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Well...maybe you could change the font to Times New Roman, 16 pt., bold, italicized, underlined, in fuchsia, with rainbow sparkles, flashing at 23 Hz, and also translated into the following languages:
Hmong
Urdu
Swahili
Catalan
Western Apache
Then it will be perfect. For now.


You forgot the blink tags.

>> ^lucky760:
Your point's definitely valid, but again, one of the points of having it at all is to get non-members interested enough to jump into a conversation, so if we include irrelevant comments (wrt current discussion), that wouldn't do a good job of it.


I disagree, discussions never truly end, and for many new sifters it would be interesting to read previous discussions held. There are many religious, scientific and political threads that make for great reading.

Of the top of my head especially the large discussion held about being beautiful.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

^ Discussion do end- on the Internet, just like in a real life party, people move on to other topics.

That doesn't mean discussions can't be revived- we've tried to allow for this as much as possible through promote and other areas- but when there's so many discussion you can't really focus on all of them being "alive" at once.

Too bad some of the best *quality or at least funniest comments are in SiftTalk threads, but I guess you kind of have to be 'in' on them. Nonetheless, I think it's great. Gettin' a little tired of Pirate Bay, though.

Awarding lucky760 with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by schmawy.