Well, I don't like to see the downvote used to quash a video you disagree with morally or politically in the queue, you're right about that. I also don't like to see a downvote given as retribution.

I do appreciate a comment as to 'why' the downvote, but that doesn't happen often. I haven't downvoted but a few times, instead giving lots of no-votes...

*shrugs* i'm not here for votes & stats & rank ... i'm quite secure as a person!

looks like a lot of work went into your recent comment on your profile, benjee ... a little too much if you ask me ...

i downvote because i don't like a video ... period. most will get my 'no vote', but the lucky few that really leave a bad taste get a downvote!

Not too much work at all - I have a draft email I use as a 'personal' sift queue - so it was a copy and paste from that (most of the numbers I remembered, such as down votes). I was going to do something else with it...but I can't be arsed (will be frustrating to manual update for no-reason). Although it's good to remember what videos haven't been recieved very well, to either try again or avoid in the future.

The post was more about the fact that all votes are counted...which means the Sift is a measure of the intensity of reaction to its contents. Just seeing if there's any other taboos with negatives and what everyones opinion was with 'em.

> I have a draft email

How many people use draft emails like that I wonder... I have over 1100 items in my draft folder...

benjee, you deserve some sort of award for noticing that; it's a quirk of VS which has been known but not disclosed since it's not really material (in the accountants' sense of the word) to total votes. If you want, you can consider "generating controversy" in the form of stimulating votes a good thing (in the sense that 1. you got someone to watch it and 2. vote for it and 3. your video got posted anyway).

It's balanced out by the fact that, as you know, too many downvotes = discard, so you can't count on downvotes for doing too much for you, if you're counting your vote tallies.

Should you worry about up/down votes and any associated taboos? Not really.

Here's a fun tangent:

For your health and sanity it's best not to worry about your videosift "rank" since it's meant to be an amusing statistics, not something you should centre your life over (imagine, for example, the horror of falling several ranks when some of your videos die and get discarded). Come to Videosift for the front page, stay for the queue, don't worry about the "microeconomic" effects of votes, so to speak, b/c at the end of the day, it's all about watching cool vids, not some hunt for glory.

Pshaw, you say, sure, he'll say that since he has a gold star and whatever. That's the thing, though: people get more respect around the sift the less they care about votes - and they are then usually in a more relaxed frame of mind conducive to finding and sifting good vids.

I realize I've gone overboard in this reply - so please realize I don't mean to point this directly at you benjee, but as a general philosophical statement about sifting. Hope some people find this useful.

> For your health and sanity it's best not to worry about your videosift "rank"

it's pretty interesting though... For months I've been right around 50th place, no matter my behavior, taking time off, posting a slurry of vids, I'll creep up and then settle out to about 50th again

Imagine if stars were related to rank instead,that would change everything.

I'm not concerned with ranks or positions...or even stats so much (despite my own Sift history section!) It's just the Sift Bot I'm looking forward to - it's frustrating being 5 posts away from the invocations (such as dead and discard).

who says 'pshaw'?? i'd really like to know!