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

*Qualit ... er ... OK.

As I mentioned to Mink earlier, we're very open to input on this issue.

I agree. At the moment you can easily go to the dead pool and get 1 star point per day.

I think the dead pool is a great idea, I just think you should have to fix multiple videos for a star point.

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

There's no doubt that the Sift is getting more complex. The number of users on the site is growing, but more concerning from an admin standpoint, the number of active content pages we are maintaining is really growing.

We could just let content die- but I think one of the really important parts of the way VideoSift works is that a link to a VS content page is actually more reliable than a link to a youtube page. Because we treat our hosts like a utility company, supplying us with raw media- we can be platform agnostic.

So, if that's the approach that we want to take, (and I humbly suggest that it should be) then we need community tools like the Dead Pool to make it function.

Would the Dead Pool work if it was just a tabbed page on the site without any reward or recognition? That's not a rhetorical question- I'm not sure of the answer - perhaps it would. But I suspect the majority of the fixing work would fall on the shoulders of a few dedicated Sifters, and the list would quickly become completely unmanageable as they burned out and gave up.

I know that you don't want this thread to be about Sift Money (some less mercenary term) but the idea behind it is to provide some "community fuel" for the tools that we need to keep VideoSift a fun, useful place - and return Star Points to their original single purpose use.

annnnnddd *sticky

Stickying this post at the top of Sift Talk - sticky requested by dag.

Mink and the others have a point, and I agree.
(And I say that even though I have benefited 7 stars so far from this deal)

I´d rather have real gold, than some kind of watered down version from just doing a janitor job now and then.

Could it be rewarded with some other type of recognition?
Maybe now is the time to raise the mugs & shirts issue again ?

And yes, I would still fix videos without getting a pin stuck on my chest. It´s just like bringing out the trash, not fun, but very rewarding once you do it so your house doesn't smell like something died in it...

how many people who fix a lot of deads actually fix the difficult ones? and what is the point in fixing a difficult one when you get the same points for picking the low hanging fruit?

i have fixed ones that are particularly interesting to me personally, because i want other people to see them. i fixed them regardless of whether or not i was eligible for a point. and i didn't spend more than 10 minutes searching for the new embed, that would be a long boring waste of time.

are we trying to build a pristine neverdying archive of youtube links? why?

this is a community site, not archive.org, i think there is an obsession with fixing deads when they really don't matter. if someone outside the community finds a dead vid, so what? if someone inside finds one, maybe they will be sufficiently curious enough to fix it. otherwise, what's the problem?

i don't like watching TV, i like watching Videosift. The archival thing doesn't bother me. It's 2007. If i want to archive stuff i'll download it. If i find something dead, who cares? theres 9238729384792 other videos.

it would be bad if there was no dead invocation, but the fixing thing is really not so important once a dead vid is discarded, as long as the tags are good so it isn't duped... then if someone tries to dupe it they can fix it instead.

i just remember a time (only months ago) when people did this stuff just to be nice, and didn't expect a star point or any "money".

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

Well Mink I think you're getting down to the bedrock of what VideoSift is all about. Without the Dead Pool an increasing number of posts become dead. What do we do when 50-60% of the content on VideoSift is in fact dead?

Although we can remove the dead posts from showing up in places like "related videos" or profiles - we then lose all of the great comment threads that make up the fabric of the site - not to mention all of the dead content now being linked to from thousands of external sites - what a frustrating experience that becomes.

c'est l'internet. don't fight it.

if i thought giving star points for fixes was making a huge difference to this then i would support it.

what you are talking about is making a great way for non members to see videos and comment threads without adding to the community.

i for one am not going to give up my time for lurkers and guests. in any community, a human can only care about 200 people.

videosift is the best place to go to have fun watching internet videos. the idea of becoming some kind of perfect metalibrary for fox news is on a hiding to nothing. videos go dead because we don't own them. plenty of fun and discussion to be had on the new stuff anyway.

imo!

Some people are deaders and some people are fixers. Me, I try to fix as many as possible when I have the time--regardless of star points. I find it more satisfying to fix 10 videos at a time than post a couple of news ones. After all, we want our content to be working.
But yes, if not star points, then some other reward could be given. I think that was mentioned on another thread here somewhere.

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

Good points for sure. [looking forward to reading this thread when I wake up in 8 hours]

zzzz

Just like maatc, I've gotten six points from this deal, but I would also think that a point should be awarded upon fixing multiple videos.
I think that it should still be points awarded, because it is still what the Sift is all about - member contribution.
And dag is right - without incentive, the amount of fixed dead videos would drop.

Also, for the whole "some are easier than others" - Well, there's really no way around that. Some videos are totally gone from their host, and others aren't easy to fix, whether because it has a humoring title that does nothing to describe the video, or there are just too many vids to know which one it's supposed to be. So it's pretty impossible to create a system that rewards differently for the difficulty of the fix.

My question is this:
Would those of us that have gotten one point for each video keep those points in the new system, or would they go into the pile to be added up for points?

If/when that whole Sift Money thing comes to life, stars will no longer be tossed about like loose change in a deep pocket. How about for the time being we simply extend the window in which a star can be given for fixing deadpool videos? Like instead of 1 per day, we make it 1 per week?

I don't think people will stop fixing deadpool videos because from what I've seen, all our quality Sifters are eager to fix the videos just to fix the videos. (Many are even unhappy that they receive a star for doing it.)

I think that one per week would be good. That way, contribution can still be recognized, but it still takes a while to achieve gold.
I for one, like the dead pool. I see it like this: If the video was interesting enough for someone to find it a year later, only to see it dead, it must be worth the time to fix.

Or how about this:

Make the star reward not related to the sifter doing it, but to the amount that is necessary in a day or week to keep a healthy alive/dead ratio.

So basically you do not know wether you will get a point or not, but you might just be lucky to fix one when it is needed, and then receive one.

That way you can't intentionally do it for the "money" but get rewarded anyway if it comes at a time when the community needed it...

Not sure how one would program this, but siftbot would know I am sure!

just to clarify my misleading title... i like the dead pool, i just don't like the reward for fixing deads being the same as the reward for a successful sift, because deads are much quicker to fix than sifts are to sift.

i would argue that once you get to gold 100 any further increase in your star rating is kinda academic. the goal should be to suck people in with the incentive of going gold, and then to make that sufficiently rewarding that people stay and behave like good sifters.

BUT the number one problem i see in internet communities is this striving to be perfect, this utopianism, this failing to see the real point of the project.

i first came to videosift when fedquip described it as his "local bar". that is how i see it, and i think that is how most people act (conciously or otherwise)

after all, what is the point of earning star points if you are not involved in the community? i want to be proud to show my gold star, i want people to recognise it as a badge of honour, not just that i spent hours on the site whoring the system.

would the guy with most sift money really be the guy who makes our lives the most wonderful? or are we all slaving away for the perfect sifted archive that nobody actually needs?

this place is the new TV. it is not for archiving the old TV. it is to provide a way you can go to the internet, look for a video you will probably enjoy, find one fast, watch it and comment on it. after that, it's gone, it's disposable. this is why i rent DVDs, i don't buy them. world's changing fast, here today gone tomorrow, etc. i know a guy with all the Friends episodes on VHS who is feeling pretty stupid right now.

For the time being, I have gone ahead and adjusted Dead Pool to grant a star only once a week.

a wise man once said: "If we have no measure to our goals we will, inevitably, never obtain the objective we desire." All things considered there needs to be something to see as a result of fixing dead videos. Be it money or stars, a pat on the back or other bonus. I'm not a fan of the star points for dead fixes either.

On a side note about the difficult fixes. In some cases people just need a better title or more of a description to the video. If I'm looking at a dead video that says: "Worlds biggest idiot", well try typing that in a youtube serach. Go ahead do it I'll wait.
...
See now which idiot was that video about? Hard to say.

yeah i suggested a hidden "in case of death, read this" text box, so we could still have entertaining titles and not give the game away in the description, but if it's deaded there's clues in there.

As an aside regarding what Dag said, one of my strategies lately has been to sort the deadpool by most comments and try to fix those videos with the most comments (or votes) first. And one thing I will say about the relative ease or lack of is that even an easy fix can take several minutes. I don't agree with Mink as to what the goal should be. If we want to make playlists and reward people for sifting good videos then we should strive to preserve good videos. Any contribution a member makes to that end is valuable. We can argue about how much better fixing a dead video is or the means to achieve that goal, but we should reward the effort.

I ended up with two star points for fixing 32 videos at one point and I was quite happy. Delaying the period during which you can earn a star is a disincentive. I recommend again that a point be awarded for every 10 videos fixed regardless of time and that a person could never earn more than 50% of their points from fixing videos.

And one last suggestion is that you could create a list of top "fixers" in order to recognize people.

"And one last suggestion is that you could create a list of top "fixers" in order to recognize people."

What's the point of that? It's just going to say:

"1:) eric3579"


But seriously now, that is a good idea.

twiddles they are some great solutions, but i always prefer simplifying things rather than adding layer on layer of bureaucracy and statistical analysis.

i mean you can be fixing lots of little problems with good bits of stickytape, but the project becomes a huge ball of stickytape.

you are another person who has stated that they like fixing deads even if there is no reward.

of course, what we really need is siftbot to fix them, or at least dead them automatically. i guess that's hard.

if i got a note everytime one of my playlisted vids died (not just my posted vids) then i would definitely try to fix them.

Top fixers!!! Excellent!!!

The way it was setup the people that worked the hardest on the Dead Pool were rewarded less then the people that worked the least on it during a 24 hour period. User A fixes 5 videos and User B fixes only 1 video and they both get the same star point.

I think the incentive is key...but that it just needs to be tweaked. Someone suggested 1 star point for every 10 fixed videos. That way the reward is equal and doesn't matter if they did 10 in a day or 10 in 10 days.

It does take time and some detective work to fix these videos and I think Dag is right that we can't rely on just the handful of dedicated sifters who will do it happily with no incentive because they will eventually burn-out as the Dead Pool grows and grows.

You mean we can fix things in the dead pool? --- off to fix things.

My suggestion would be that fixing deadpool stuff is worth a fractional point - .1 or .2 points. It certainly has value, but IMO, not as much as getting something published in the first place. This would also make it possible to get on a roll and fix a bunch at a time. The 24 hour limit is annoying.
The longer a vid stays dead, the higher the bounty to replace it, until it reaches a 1.0. Some stuff is easy, other stuff is impossible.

I'm with winkler on the fractional point thing. I think more videos are likely to be revived this way, other than "Well, I fixed one for the week. Start my 7-day timer." I'd say that 5 fixes would be sufficient. Like said before, not all are easy, so a member has to put time into it, and I think the amount of time that it would take to fix five videos is about the time it would take to find and post a new one.
I don't think that older ones should be worth more- all you would have to do is sort by date and go from there.

I like the idea of another type of reward for fixing dead videos. I had suggested the possibility of earning a self save or a self promote in another thread. Here is something I posted two and a half weeks back that may have been missed as it was near the end of a sift talk discussion and I think it applies here:

__________________________________
It seems that star points changed with 3.0. I remember when a user would have say 5 quality sift talk posts and 46 published videos they would still be a silver star (and usually wonder why they didn't have a gold star as it would say 51 published). Now it seems that this user would get a Gold star at this point. With this change I worry a little bit about diluting the value of star points, which is why I was thinking about other possible rewards sifters could get for fixing dead videos.

Fixing a dead video is the only way a sifter can gain star points themselves. Every other method requires other sifters to "award" the star points either by up-voting their videos, awarding quality sift talk posts, or quality comments. Fixing dead sifts is, therefore, the one that jumps out as potentially abusable. So if a different type of reward was offered then I would think the potential abuse would not be as much of an issue.
__________________________________

I suppose having 22 star points for dead fixes makes me the worst "abuser" of the system, and no doubt that I would not have hit gold in 2 months were it not for that. But...

deads are much quicker to fix than sifts are to sift.

I completely disagree with this. It took me much more time to fix most of the deads I have than to find and post my 'best' sift. Clips from Comedy Central, The Onion, etc. - these are all extremely easy to find and post, and are virtually guaranteed to get published. And, personally, I find that to be a much less significant contribution than fixing an obscure and great post that has died. Those sites already have their videos in one place, all nicely organized for everyone.

In the roughly 4 weeks the dead pool has been active, I have fixed a lot more than 22 posts, probably more than 4 times that many. I try to be very methodical about it. For an hour or two a night (depending on how tired I am), I pick a page in the pool with deads that I haven't seen yet, and start working my way down, spending at least 10-15 minutes (usually more) on each trying to find a fix.

I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but rather make a point - fixing deads is neither quick nor easy. And Dag's (and others) points above pretty well establish that fixing deads is not only beneficial, but ultimately crucial, to maintaining the integrity of the site over the long term. Furthermore, I don't think of it as "taking out the trash". I have found a lot of great posts (vids + comments) that I otherwise would not have seen because I searched for and found a fix.

the fixing thing is really not so important once a dead vid is discarded, as long as the tags are good so it isn't duped... then if someone tries to dupe it they can fix it instead.

Just last night I fixed a dead which had been duped with the exact same YT link that was left by someone else in the comments of the dead post. Were more deads being fixed, this would not happen. And the reason it shouldn't is because the original poster is denied recognition for their contribution.

Another point I disagree with is the notion of "here today, gone tomorrow". Some of my favorite sifts are classic tv and movie clips that I would never have otherwise seen again or at all. Why else would we have the vintage and 1sttube channels?
______________

What is the point of granting stars? To recognize the contributions of dedicated members of the community, not to give them benefits, but rather responsibilities. This is why only golds can discard posts, for instance. It is not an action to be taken lightly (and we've seen the consequences when it is). Point being, those responsibilities are given to members who have demonstrated themselves to be dedicated and responsible members of the community, and that can be demonstrated in many more ways than posting a lot of simpsons clips.

A number of folks have noted that any sort of time delay for the reward not only provides a disincentive, but unbalances the system in favor of those who would try to game it. This really should be a fractional point, whatever that fraction is (I recommend 1/5 point). If such a policy is going to be applied retroactively, then to be fair it needs to be applied retroactively for all fixes. And no offense Lucky, but changing the policy based on a 4 hour old thread before most people even had a chance to read it, much less respond to it, seems pretty hasty.

A quick point about sift money. I'd like to see the sift money be strictly for benefits like an extra slot in your queue, a self-promote, etc., and imnsho, should be gained in the same way charter members gain their benefits. Encouraging one-time monetary contributions could go a long way in maintaining the long term viability of VS.

To those who post lots of simpsons, TDS, or whatever, I like many of those clips and was only using them as examples to make a point. There are many other examples in the same vein. They are all good stuff - otherwise, it wouldn't get sifted.

how did this get unstickied? pardon me if it was done administratively but, *sticky

Invocations (sticky) cannot be called by jonny because jonny is not privileged - sorry.

lol! see what I mean about responsibility!

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

Well said Jonny.

I unstickied this, but I will re-sticky it.

@ Jonny,
That has to be one of the most well-constructed arguments I've seen. Hear hear!

Would you guys stop having these long, drawn out conversations when I'm at school??! You're driving me insane! I can't keep up. I'm just gonna talk about what I feel like...

Jelly beans are better than M&M's. It's just my opinion. You know who liked M&M's? Hitler. Yea, I read that in Jelly Bean Enthusiast Weekly.

And another thing - why is fire so hot?? I mean, come on! Seriously. Fire just isn't marketable in its current state. How can we package something like that and sell it?? Short answer - You can't. Long answer - You can not.

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*unsticky

Unstickying this post from the top of Sift Talk - unsticky requested by dag.

I like twiddles comment, in which fixing is recognized. Also, instead of star points to reward fixers you could say for every 5 fixes you get a choice between a * promote or a * save, or whatever gold star power, to be spent in the next 3 days or whathaveyou. Essentially I'm saying you can reward fixes by presenting restricted star powers (or bonus saves/promotes for gold members) but keep the submission-star-points separate.

Agreed that back in my day, a gold meant something! ...specifically that I spent way too much time watching music videos on the computer.

jonny, posting TDS might take very little time, but you still have to wait for it to get out of the queue before you get your point. However you do raise the biggest problem with VS which is that there are easy posts like TDS, Bill Maher is always in the top 15, etc etc... but you can't fix that with bureaucracy.

everyone is talking about fiddling around with ever more complex layers of rules and adjustments.... we'll end up with something resembling the tax system, and we all know that still isn't fair, and nobody understands it.

that's why i always recommend simplifying and refining rather than adding new rules until the FAQ page is 3 meg and takes a year to read and understand.

obviously I totally agree with winkler.

the "once each day/week" is bad, what is natural is fractional points for EVERY video you fix, and more points for videos dead for longer time.

posting TDS might take very little time, but you still have to wait for it to get out of the queue before you get your point.

All of about 4 hours. Even if it took 3 days, I don't see how that's relevant. Hanging around for a long time with popular nonsense does not translate into being a responsible member.

you can't fix that with bureaucracy

agreed. I would hate to see another layer of complexity added to the system.

The core of what I was getting at is this: Dedicated members of VS become apparent through a variety of actions, each of which should put them a small step closer to taking on more responsibility. To give unbalanced preference for certain actions which can be easily gamed over those which cannot in determining which members are allotted responsibilities is insanity.

I wont fix videos for promotes or saves. I'll fix them for stars. If Videosift wants aggressive fixing of dead videos, which seems to be one of the cornerstones of keeping it running, then fixing dead videos is important and worthy.

I see no one has challenged me on my arguments. I knew you were all weak.

rotflmao I didn't notice it!

I love jelly beans, but we don't have them here in Italy, so I've only eaten them when one of my friends mail-ordered them from the US!

m&m's rule too, so I guess that hitler could've surely been a bad person, but he had a fine food taste. He actually committed suicide when he was informed the yellow m&m supplies were empty and nobody was accepting his credit card anymore.

i didn't read through the rest of the thread once i hit about halfway, but what about something simple like a wrench with a number on it in your profile? or a star with a wrench in it and "x#" a la Mario to signify fixed content? you could then turn around and use those 'points' for an extra save , an extra promote, a star point, etc.. make it like the ticket games at arcades.

Save . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Promote . . . . . . . . . . 10
Star Ranking Point . . 25

I'd have to say a save is worth more.

well whichever way it goes, it's more the concept i was trying to illustrate...

i dunno... i agree with the whole thing about resifts not being worth star points individually like that.