Help I'm freaking out!

So what about the other invocations for comment quality or appropriateness? Are they redundant now?

Ok, if I accidentally hit a downvote I want to be able to reverse it.

The old comment "vote" links have been removed. They proved unpopular and mostly unused.

If you click downvote, you'll be prompted to confirm that you really want to do it. If you still accidentally confirm and cast a downvote, an admin can delete the vote for you.

Noooooooo.....

This is weird.

Kinna like a valve for what, keeping one's foot in mouth to a minimum??? It is pretty weird, like all of the sudden, we are worried about what people say-Good old fashioned, run-out-of-town-on-a-rail works jim-dandy

I like it -- seems like it's already getting used a lot, whereas the old 'applaud' and 'mark inappropriate' almost never got used.

I think it still needs some fine-tuning in its presentation; it could integrate better visually with the comments.

Finally, a button to kill "FIRST!" comments with! .... OH, it only works on VideoSift!?!....<hangs head, and slowly walks out the room>

Ninth!

How else could I follow comment number 8?

I've seen a lot of comment numbers that are pretty high for no good reason? The siftbot requeueing something deserves a comment upvote? Repeatedly? I think you should add a confirmation button to an upvote. I didn't even know what the little triangles were until I clicked one and thus upvoted a comment that didn't deserve it. (I don't tend to read sifttalk regularly yet.)

In a word... This is stupid. Seriously, I don't see a reason for it. And like oxdottir said: Numbers are high for no good reason. I really think it's pointless.

Questions:

Do we know who voted up down for whom or is it anonymous?

Will the vote count judge where in the list the comments are listed, iow, Will high rated comments be at the top, low at the bottom? If so, that'll destroy the coherence of people's debates about certain vids.
[edit]: I see this is not the case...nvm

I also have a feeling the "rating" is really going to be a poll of who agrees with you or who disagrees with you. There's no arguing that this site leans a certain way. The ratings might just make it lean even farther, further marginalizing people who disagree with the majority.

Perhaps removing the option of a down-vote would fix that. Giving an up and a down in a debate can give each person 2 votes on what side they fall, one for them and one against those with whom they disagree.

it is a slightly better implementation of a weak idea.
it clutters up the screen.
i still haven't seen any problems in the comment threads that either require this solution or will be solved by this implementation.
i am not just being cranky, i really think there are a million other things to improve that will have a much better impact than sorting out the comment voting.

sorry man. barking up the wrong tree here. CommentSift is silly.

For the record, I have always been very much against comment voting, and will continue to be. I think it is a bad idea.

There is this pernicious concept flooding the internet in the wake of Web 2.0 sites, that the quality of thought and its representation in text can be measured on a numerical scale, that anonymous voters clicking away at their computers in the microcosm of their thread will somehow increase the worth of that thought. It can't, and they won't.

I didn't mind the quality and inappropriate voting, because I saw them as incentives for members to post more quality comments, and less inappropriate comments. This individual comment voting, however, stinks of needy pleas of "Please validate my opinions, please make me popular!", it reeks of mindless me-tooism and of passive-aggressive issues and of the all-too-scary truth-by-democracy. It is because of these dangers that I am adamantly opposed to the voting system, and that is why I fear comment voting will damage this community.

^dido what he said

THIS IS BULL

(have fun practicing the downvote btw awesome job lucky

yuck...

Hover over the up or down triangles to see who voted what. It's interesting, though we'll see how it plays out after awhile but for now I would very much like to see a sidebar list of the most recent highly-rated comments.

Nothing personal with the downvotes, just testing.

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

I'm glad everybody likes it!

What's that? lalalalalala I can't hear you. [fingers in ears]

Seriously though, let's try it for a week or so and see how it goes. As I tell my son - how do you know you don't like cauliflower unless you try it?

You might reply, that you've tried cauliflower on Digg and Reddit - but you haven't tried this cauliflower.

My point is, I like cauliflower.

My instincts are its screen clutter. I don't really see that it adds value, and because of its position, it gains attention form the eye but doesn't really warrant it.

I have occasionally exploited comment voting to a purpose (thinking specifically of /. on the rare occasions I've read a thread, and the shear post volume ment some kind of filter was helpful).

I've not seen comment threads here that are that large, to require some kind of a filter for usability. Also, just because it has a score, is unlikely to prevent or particularly encourage the reading of a content post. If your eyes looked across to the score, your likely to read the post regardless of the scores value. Having the score is just likely to prejudicially influence you before you even start (positively or negatively).

Divergence of opinion leads to fertile discussion (beautifully illustrated by http://www.videosift.com/video/Jan-vankmajer-Dimensions-of-Dialogue) which is a good thing, and voting that discouraged that would be a negative side effect for the community.

It possibly has made me think before even making a post, but I'm not sure that would make posts I do make any better, and might actually serve to discourage new posters.

i am opposed to the general idea of the comment voting, however i can see where it might come in handy sometimes, especially if heavily downvoted comments get hidden or minimized.

honestly though, the public flogging that ensues after an inappropriate comment is made is generally enough to make people think just an extra second before hitting submit... we've had a few experiences with people who really needed to think a little first, but we haven't had anyone who continually does this, a la YouTube.

I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. features are great, when they're needed.

Thats an interesting point mix. I suppose once the data's there, it could be used in a variety of ways. Comment ordering leaps to the mind as another possibility (although that would trash the linear readability, so its not a "good" idea I realize).

And i was writing my comment at the same time as yours Dag. Giving it a week is definitely sensible.

Yeah, it's a cute experiment, but its utilty is questionable for the simple fact that most threads *don't* have a huge volume where you need to filter it out, one of the strong reasons for a rating system. I'd argue, in agreement with Thylan, that /. has one of the best implementations. The "insightful/funny"etc. justifications for ratings make sense.

I like my cauliflower with bread crumbs on top. This, I'm afraid to say, not so much.

bug report, incidentally - you can currently vote on siftbot's comments: http://www.videosift.com/talk/Siftography-Farhad#comments

Moving back to the topic at hand, it might make marginally more sense with Siftars/siftbux - in the sense that it would provide you with a forum to allocate such funds. If you were to go in such a direction, I would recommend at least two limits:
- only X comment upvotes per day count as 'currency' granting (to avoid crazy-ass inflation)
- only X-Y comments upvotes per day per person, so you can't make a sockpuppet or have a friend upvote your comments and yours alone - you could, say, upvote 2 or 3 from one person, but any more would also hit the 'daily currency grant' limit.
(Idea of limits is, of course, not unlike caps on point awardation from deadpool cleanup)

Without linkage to a currency system, I would argue that the current setup is rather weak - it doesn't expose people to the full effect. Still, the experiment effects can be carried forward as deemed necessary.

In conclusion, ranking of comments by votes affected order - definitely a no (order of conversations is v. important usually). More testing needed to see if this affects anything else...

I also see the comment voting moving dangerously in the way of YouTube. I say lets be unique and stop trying to blend in with every other website on the internet.

Just wanted to throw my jockstrap in the ring here - why is there comment voting on profile comments? Am I really going to upvote everyone who leaves me a comment?

Krupo - try downvoting one of siftbot's comments.

other than that, just paste MINK's comment here.

I saw nothing wrong with the old system. Now that it's a bit more obvious, I agree that it is screen clutter and will start to encourage the bad 'uns to game the system (not that we appear to have many of those but you get my drift).

I'm curious as to what metrics are being employed to determine the efficacy of the previous system. If it wasn't rampantly popular it could still be serving a purpose to highlight the great and the bad comments. Now we're going to see lots of comments get votes which diminishes the impact.

The clutter issue might be solved with simple "+" or "-" instead of the up/down button, and put it back down with the author's name. The spam link would then become redundant, perhaps?

Some folks have mentioned the comment system on YouTube. The YouTube team posted this on the YouTube Blog, back on September 5th, concerning future plans for comments. This was in response to user feedback:

http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=A-4OS7durGQ

just seems kind of pointless... that's my two cents... the old system was under used, but seemed to serve more of a purpose, to mark inappropriate comments, or congratulate truly awesome ones... I think I only ever got one of those little shout outs, but I am seldom commenting on vids at the moment, but it was nice all the same, I felt all warm and fuzzy... this, however, just seems kind of... 'meh'.

Now that I'm no longer high, I would like to say that I stand by my original statement, minus the overtones of social armageddon.

Lucky, thanks again for all your hard work, and Dag, you're right, we definitely should give this an honest go. Who knows, it might turn out to be a good thing. I just wanted to put my opinion out there, just in case, so I can potentially point to it at some later date and say, "Didn't I tell you the Patriot Act was a bad id" - *ahem*, I mean, "Didn't I tell you comment voting was a bad idea?"

THE ILLUSION OF SIFTOCRACY.

Let me first say that it's dag's and lucky's site so they can do what they want, i am not starting a coup here... but...

You guys basically think of an idea which you think is cool, and then implement it regardless of Sift Talk opinion, using Sift Talk as your democratic varnish. There are numerous eloquent rebuttals of your comment voting ideas in this thread and others, but you're going to do it anyway. You presented Sift Money as an "idea" but clearly you're going to do it anyway. Meanwhile other suggestions that have received support and few objections are left on the "to do" list and forgotten.

That's cool, it's your site, I just want you to know how it smells.

Comment voting is stupid because the numbers represent only the opinions of people who give a shit about comment voting. If a comment gets lots of downvotes, that makes me want to read it MORE. if you hide comments it buggers up the flow of the discussion. if you praise comments that get a lot of upvotes you end up in the feedback loop like the top 15... the winners are those who attract upvotes, not those who submit the most interesting videos/comments. It's abstraction, and then when you come to rank all the "most upvoted comments" you are not actually reading the "most valuable comments".

About comment volume... it is NOT high enough yet to need comment voting, and if it was I would prefer you just restrict commenting to star members only.

Keep laughing it off...

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

^ great comment - upvoted

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

You are right - we do think up ideas and try them out - some of them come from us. A lot of them come from the community. For the record - Sift Money and many, many features in VideoSift 3.0 were born from member ideas - not mine or Lucky's.

We're not Microsoft, George Bush or the Illuminati - we're just a few people trying to make a good site and have some fun.

I don't know if us trying out a feature like comment voting is worth fomenting revolution - but Sir, I respect your right to voice it.

you're making a damn good site, and one of the things that are key to its success, it your constant presence, your being a part of the community, your talking with us and being among us just like one of us.

I hate most of the big sites mostly because I don't know who's behind them, and if you try to tell something they are simply not intrested in hearing you, and I can't stand it.

but, with that said, I still think the idea of voting comments stinks. a lot.
I'll use them, though, because I like random clicking

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

Thanks Looris - that's a good point about the random clicking - at the moment comment voting doesn't do anything. Comments are not hidden when they get below a certain vote.

So beyond a bit of clutter - it's just a whirly-gig to click on. For this reason, I'm surprised by the amount of people lighting molotov cocktails.

A part of my DNA that is in this site is the idea of rankings. I like stats and points and levels. I think it comes from a lot of Wizardry and Ulitma when I was 14-15, setting the pathways forever.

So, the reason I like comment voting, is because I like the idea of being able to see who the top rated commenters are on VideoSift.

I also would like to see what the top 15 new comments are over a 4 day period. For me this is some pretty interesting data.

I'm afraid though - that many see it as way of controlling comment content, stifling free-speech or worse. I know it's used this way on other sites - but that's not really our intention here.

nice one dag, lol @ molotov cocktails, but it doesn't matter if you don't understand why people are so against this... and i know things come from user suggestions, the point is that if people are against this and you do it anyway, well... that's you pushing things through that you personally like rather than listening to the community.

>>>So, the reason I like comment voting, is because I like the idea of being able to see who the top rated commenters are on VideoSift.

I have no interest in who the "top rated" commenters are, I am only interested in who the best commenters are, and that can only be measured by my brain doing work and reading comments, not by a comment voting system.

>>>I also would like to see what the top 15 new comments are over a 4 day period. For me this is some pretty interesting data.

I would also like to know the top 15 comments, but comment voting won't show that, it will show the top 15 receivers of upvotes which is a totally different thing. We already have this problem with the top 15 videos... do you really think that futurama is the best thing on here? No. is it the kind of thing that gets loads of upvotes? Yes.

I think people who are into stats forget that they are analysing stats, not reality. You make a fake stat by counting upvotes, then pretend it is representative of reality because you haven't got any other stats.

Same problem in here with the discussion... maybe sift money and comment voting are just 2 things that make a lot of people angry and vocal, while 95% form a silent majority in favour. How would you know?

You don't know. So you invent statistics and pretend they represent the real world, like people invent models of the climate and then pretend they actually know what the climate is.

Already most people skew their video submissions to get more upvotes, and don't submit stuff they know will die in the queue. Do you want this to happen with comments?

>>>I'm afraid though - that many see it as way of controlling comment content, stifling free-speech or worse. I know it's used this way on other sites - but that's not really our intention here.

That's a copout. Read the thread, nobody is talking about free speech, we are objecting to screen clutter for unnecessary crap which won't have the intended effect, however honourable the intention.

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

>>>> I have no interest in who the "top rated" commenters are, I am only interested in who the best commenters are, and that can only be measured by my brain doing work and reading comments, not by a comment voting system.

You could say the same thing about video voting MINK - of course your brain is required to make a subjective decision on what you think is the best video or comment. All of the stats and points on VideoSift suffer from that abstraction.

I'm certainly not looking to get into a flamewar. I hear everyone's criticism and I kindly request that we give this feature a chance first and put up with the screen clutter - before passing summary judgment

If it turns out to be detrimental to the site, of course we won't hesitate to remove it.

>>>You could say the same thing about video voting MINK

errr.. i DO say the same about the video voting. two wrongs don't make a right.

video voting i put up with because it's just a bit of a laugh and anyway you can go to good members' pages and ignore the top 15.

comments balance that out for me, if some ridiculous advert for Dove gets a million votes at least i can comment about it without fear of downvotes.

Comments go in a thread and always include personal views of the poster, videos stand alone and are never allowed to be from the poster. Big difference.

In all this discussion, nobody has actually ever said WHY we need this. Some people don't like choggie, they whine and want to delete choggie, and now we have ineffectual screen clutter and an atmosphere that every comment on here is going to be "judged" numerically and recorded in some spurious charts.

Please understand, i WISH comment voting worked, but it doesn't. I oppose the mechanism not the intention. You are giving power to people that can be bothered to commentvote. Some people vote up, some vote down, so what?? what does that mean? Nothing. You want the stats so much you don't care how you get them.

Mink, you just voted down a comment you didn't like. Earlier you said "If a comment gets lots of downvotes, that makes me want to read it MORE, so perhaps you just wanted to call attention to it, not sure. You're using the new system, yet you seem so vehemently against it.

Isn't that a contradiction?

Dag I'm a numbers guy myself, come from the same Wizardy background, however the comment voting leaves me with some trepidation. It definitely seems to be a double edged sword and may end up making some people lazy. Why make a rebutal if I don't agree with your comment if I can just down vote it? Why write my own comment in support of your view if I can just click and up vote it? I hope it won't used that way, but it probably will to some extent.

I can wait to see the results. But perhaps as a compromise we could vote on the best discussions of the week?
I would rather have that than making it a competition to see who is the most prolific writer/commenter/debater.

bug report, incidentally - you can currently vote on siftbot's comments

Not a bug

I would recommend at least two limits

To give you all more of an idea of the potential we see, consider this: If/when the currency system is implemented, it could cost you to cast a comment vote. This would cause all members not to toss votes at anything and everything in sight, but reserve them for thing they feel are truly worthwhile. Perhaps instead of simply collapsing very down-voted comments, the author could also be dinged some Sift Dollars. Soon there may be a "Top New Comments" type sidebar and then sorting by most votes on the Recent Comments page...

With this current "beta" dry run that lacks any limits, rewards, or consequences, it's no surprise that it seems so pointless, but consider all the possibilities... And as Dag said, give it just a little time to see if we can't convince you, and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo, except of course the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage as a negative is: I collect your fuckin' head, just like this fucker here. Now if any of you sons of bitches got ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, NOW'S THE FUCKING TIME! I didn't think so.

(I kind of bled into a fun quote from Kill Bill if you were unaware. Lucy Liu was so awesome in that flick; she should have played The Bride. Ignore the end of my monologue.)

Mink, dude. Let it slide, man. All the arguing in the world ain't gonna gitcha nothin' for now. And I personally think it's unfair to wag a stick at Dag just yet. He's only doing what he thinks is best for the site. So we're not a democracy. Big whup.

I'm of the opinion that our community is solid enough that all the silly comment up-voting and comment down-voting a few months of trials could entail will not somehow drive us apart and bring us at each other's throats.

It's not worth fighting over, especially before the system's even been tried. Let it go, brah.

I knew that's what it was Lucky, yet somehow I took you seriously.

....you're Chinese and American, Lucky? Good christ, and here I thought you were a ginger kid with a winsome smile and a predilection for green sports-jackets and matching hats. I don't know if I can handle this! Chinese.....American....*shudder, marches off muttering about what our internet has come to*

Why do we need something else to vote on? MLX brought up a point in her comment. What about using comment voting in a rebuttal? It just opens another facet for arguing. Not something our community needs more of in my opinion. I don't need someone coming back to me and saying "you voted up on this comment, so what does that say about you?" I'm here to sift videos not agree or disagree with peoples comments. It detracts from and cheapens what people say. Seriously look at any other video site with comment voting.

Do what you will but why on earth does videosift need all these unnecessary features? Your going to end up killing the community especially the comments, and detracting from the rich conversation of the site. I'm already on VS enough without having to juggle siftmoney or comment voting. Eventually it would burn me out.

Features are great when born out of necessity. Features born out of boredom are death wishes.

Read the following post at lunch at work, and spent a bit of time pondering, so what follows is those musings.


-- Quote of Dag
So, the reason I like comment voting, is because I like the idea of being able to see who the top rated commenters are on VideoSift.

I also would like to see what the top 15 new comments are over a 4 day period. For me this is some pretty interesting data.

I'm afraid though - that many see it as way of controlling comment content, stifling free-speech or worse. I know it's used this way on other sites - but that's not really our intention here.
-- End quote

This got me thinking about the voting on Vids, and why it does work (not 100% artificially ideal, but very good, and why i come here, and not anywhere else.)

Voting a Vid up (or to some extent, down, if so empowered) is something that its natural to do. Three may be all kinds of reasons why we might make a vote, but we are all very capable of coming to a decision on our votes fairly quickly, and of providing/defending such votes were we asked too.

The two mediums for voting on (vids/comments) are very different. The Vids often fall into a category (a fact exploited by the channel tags) and often those category's emphasize which criteria it might be likely you'd want to make the vote judgment on (e.g. is a vid marked as comedy, and trying to be comedy, something you enjoyed/found funny? if not, you might pass, but if you liked it, upvote). Comments, on the other hand, are much harder to categorize in the abstract. Any comment with content depth (more than 1 point) may fall into multiple categories. What criteria you might use to make a vote is much less clear, and also far less clear to others, what criteria you used. Sure, some cases would likely to be obvious, but i think the majority of cases, the reasons for upvotes or down votes would be ambiguous to most of us.

I listened to an audio book of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" which deals with this issue well, the issue of "Quality" which i believe this is. It describes a struggle to define the term Quality, and the importance of it. Although the perspective of the author is that of an English Professor, it gets very philosophical a lot of the time. The contrast between grappling the issue of quality from the perspective of Art or Science, is the key.

Quality in Art is not procedural. But we are still able to identify it.
Quality in Science is procedural. But something done purely procedurally, can so lack the heart and spirit of Art, that it fails the judgment of quality.

The author gives an illustration of this issue (the problem of identifying quality in comments) when he sets his class the task of ranking pieces of work by voting according to their perceptions of quality. Despite the fact that Quality of written work was impossible to define in a procedural way such that one could be sure that following rules would imbue written work with Quality; he was able to show that such a definition should seem to be possible because statistically the class would give very consistent rankings, according to their own judgments of quality. Of the course of a term the deviation between the classes rankings and his, were very small. So their was clearly agreement amongst the whole class on what quality was.

So, to my point. I had thought that my musings on the difficulty of categorizing comments would show why voting worked so well for vids, but was much harder to "add meta value as a result of quality" for comments. But being reminded of the class ranking illustration, i realized this may not actually be so. True, any attempt to define quality is impossible (I'd suggest reading the book as a mental warning before seriously trying lest you go mad. Not kidding), so trying to rationalize why voting on comments would work, cant be done (it will always fail) as theres no rational way to define how the judgments should be made by which we vote. But, that need not mean that the voting is not still rational, and this, potentially adding value.

Which would be a good thing.

However, this issue does get clouded by:
Usability/styling -- Where on the screen it appears and does it impinge site usability, or aid it. As this can be solved by restyling/moving, tis a redhearing in terms of should we have comment voting or not. I work in software designing UI's and getting things in the ideal place 1st time is very rare and almost always luck/accident.

Resultant uses-- What we do with the data. If the data's there, thats powerful, in potential. we may find uses with time, but if we don't have it, we cant use it. Some of those uses may be +ve and some -ve but that shouldn't detract from whether we have the voting, just needs how its used to be thought about, and revised with experience/resultant effects.

Survival effects-- Vid voting exploits this (unsifted pool, 10votes, dead, save/reque etc). When you vote, you know you might be helping to keep a vid alive for others to see, and possibly to reach 10. A vid you didn't like, and chose to ignore, may fade away... Passivity for things you don't like has a genuine consequence. This kind of economic model dosent apply to comment voting atm, but some possible plans of limited +ve's to spend etc, may allow interaction with possible Usages, to produce side-effects that are +ve meta data for this site, being a good thing

So having started of with a non +ve initial reaction, I've actually convinced myself there might be something in this, and that it would take a bit of time to find out whats possible, and how.

Sorry, if this reads like an essay, but your all capable of ignoring/skim reading such a post

^that's some good shit. I will praise it with words, not just press "upvote". Ugh.

@rembar... "let it slide"???? slide prevention is my game! videosift... such a perfect pure white simple concept... now heading for bloatville at 100 miles an hour.

Problem with comments? Make comment voting! Problem with voting? Make buttons bigger! Problem with irrelevance? Tie it to sift money! Problem solved! In only 4000 lines of code and with only 5 more pages on the FAQ!!!

Can anybody say "Soviet Union"?

Has anybody actually read Animal Farm here?

I read Animal Farm. It was kinda depressing. Stupid pigs!

Anyway, I understand your frustration Mink. I don't think it's quite that dramatic but the thing I've always liked about VS is that it's so simple. I don't have to wade through a million crappy things to just enjoy it.

I like simple things. I have to worry about finances, bills, job, family, food, cars, house, etc. When I come to VS I don't need MORE to do. I just want to enjoy videos and not have to worry about sift money, and comment votes.

A part of my DNA that is in this site is the idea of rankings. I like stats and points and levels.

Yes Dag, i LOVE stats, in general, and I love points and levels.

Only, not on comments. That's all.

I'd love to have again a full channel ranking, and an in-channel member ranking, for example.

^ how could i not upvote that? lol

Okay, the "Top Rated New Comments" panel is in effect in the Sift Talk sidebar.

Funnily enough, the current #1 comment is this one by rembar where it starts off with: For the record, I have always been very much against comment voting, and will continue to be. I think it is a bad idea.

It's currently showing the top 5 comments from the last day. Any suggestions or opinions on this display method (other than "comment voting sucks")?

hahahahahahahahhahahahaha
how much did i laugh at this...

Top Rated New Comments
1. For the record, I have always been very much against... by rembar

2. THE ILLUSION OF SIFTOCRACY. Let me first say that... by MINK

3. Adding video to channels (Cooking, Geek, Philosophy)... by siftbot

4. it is a slightly better implementation of a weak idea. ... by MINK

5. sifty is too busy counting the comment votes. by MINK


there's your stats, dag! love and kisses

*edited because it just got even better! hahhahah i love this feature for ALL the wrong reasons.

Ummmm.... Comment voting sucks?.... *runaway*

What if we were to keep this idea, but modify it some? I would move that we go back to the "Applaud comment" feature and dump the comment voting feature. However, maybe just have another button we could use to "nominate" a video to be featured on the sidebar because of it's discussion?
That way, it holds more merit than just "Adding video to channels (Cooking, Geek, Philosophy)... by siftbot"

^i started reading that and i thought oh no, modifying a modified weak idea?

then i realised you are just proposing a *discuss tag, which i already tried to implement via playlist:
http://www.videosift.com/playlists/MINK/Discuss

so i think wow, maybe you've got something. i have no objection to highlighting a discussion so that people interested in discussing can find lively threads easily. What i object to is then casting driveby judgements on each post being "good" or "bad" instead of actually joining in with words, intelligence, wit, effort.

It reminds me of shows like The View where people say shit in order to get applause.

Ya SiftBot ftw!

People are gonna down-vote what they don't like or don't agree with, no matter the quality of the post. That might not be true for most of the real dedicated folks here, at least from what I've seen anyway, but nevertheless, the anonymous horde will stomp dissenters. Not a happy thing for anyone not in the majority. If we allowed the majority to decide what speech is free and what isn't... well... don't think I need to say more about that.

If we keep this around, I vote killing the down-votes altogether or maybe only allowing one a day or something like that. I liked the "applaud" thing we had before even though no one used it. Maybe bring it back and make it more visible and prominent.
Or, keeping the new system, limit the number of votes (daily) for each member to make people really treat it as a prize. Unlimited up/down votes in general makes them a cheap.

One good thing that'll come out of it at least is I can guarantee you there will be a crap ton more funny comments.

Doc_M, I disagree - you've been downvoted.

I see your down-vote and raise you and upvote... since I don't have a down-vote

Wait a minute, did you just agreed to me disagreeing with you? So you admit you were wrong? HA! Your argument has just been raped by logic.

well, what a thread. i mean, how much opposition do we need before the Sift Lords actually remove the comment voting thing?

this week's trial... what are your criteria for success?

how's the "top comments" thing going? oh... it's a racialist pun about a fictional porn star at number one, and my opposition to commentvoting at number two. and OMFG is at number three. kewl feature.

One minor annoyance about this that I have noticed, and maybe Lucky can fix this with some code magick... being able to mouseover the up or down button and see who voted is cool, however, once I have voted one way or the other on a comment, I then lose the ability to do this... same goes for the arrows related to my own comments, so in effect, we don't have the ability to see who agrees with us, and who does not... so yeah, kind of annoying.

Actually, raven, the hover text is always there, before as well as after you cast a vote. It could just be your browser. What browser are you using? Is anyone else experiencing this? It works as expected for me.

Re: the continuing barrage of "Hey, look at me the big comedian using unwitty sarcasm to insult this stupid feature that I hate so much," Dag kindly asked for a trial of a week. Is it really too much to ask that during this time you not resort to YouTube-style commenting immaturity?

Regardless of the voting feature itself, I personally like what the sidebar is showing me this morning as it's pointing me to interesting videos and conversations that I'd likely otherwise miss out on:

Top Rated New Comments

1. If you want to play the taking credit game, let me... by xxovercastxx

2. OMG! ROTFL. Everytime you play this, somewhere in the world a nerd dies. by twiddles

3. Looking forward to the pow wow raven ^ I'll bring chips, dips, chains and whips. by dag

4. ps. I also don't like this idea, the ban command only... by raven

5. ANSWER #1: This was filmed in 2006 but using 1970's... by rottenseed

I just modified the interval at which comments will be selected, so we'll be seeing a more dynamic sidebar listing.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Me too! Mouseover there before voting. Not there after voting.
Using Firefox 2.0.0.7 on a Mac

awwww lucky you took it personal. never mind eh. actually i think you should shut sift talk and just get on with it yourselves, you're talented people right? but seeing as you insist on free speech, you're gonna have to read comments from people in a style you don't like.

i don't think it's unreasonable that if dag says "try it for a week" ... well.... we need some criteria by which to judge the success/failure of this experiment. otherwise wtf will you say after a week? "It worked!"

and it was a serious question... exactly how much opposition do you need to see from us before you delete something? Diverting the question into an attack on my maturity is just lame. And i am british, sarcasm is turned on by default.

I agree with lucky here, I have not been monitoring this thread, and just poured through it today-I too, like the top comments feature, for 2 reasons: Takes you to, an otherwise missed post, that has a vibrant thread, and.....shows ya who the talented semanticizers are out there, as well as those with well-developed senses a humor-

Dig, that comment about the Miss Trannyverse pageant had me milk-nosing.

It changes constantly, as well, and I like shiny, flashy things.....(raccoon blood)

so in order to have some flashy thing we need screen clutter all over every thread and loads of posts with one or two pointless upvotes?

why not just have a *discuss tag or just an applaud button which is small?

maybe you could opensource videosift 1.0 and i'll go play with it on my own in a dark room, sobbing gently.

and it was a serious question... exactly how much opposition do you need to see from us before you delete something?

This is a loaded question. There is no degree of opposition that we "need" because we are not going to just "delete" the feature. Again, we are trying it out for a week. It shouldn't be too much for us to ask to just try using it (or not) and helping with meaningful feedback rather than simply repeatedly shouting unfunny insults and demanding that it be removed.

why not just have a *discuss tag or just an applaud button which is small?

We had an applaud link that no one except looris used. A *discuss invocation would be useless because it could not reference a specific comment; invocations can only be tied to video and talk posts.

so in order to have some flashy thing we need screen clutter all over every thread and loads of posts with one or two pointless upvotes?

I wonder... What if we moved the vote stuff down below where the old "applaud" and "inappropriate" links were. Might that help with presentation by uncluttering the left side, but still getting attention with the arrows? Hmm.

I'd upvote Rembar's second comment on this thread, except doing so invalidates his points about the usefulness of voting on comments. I concur, but do so in text rather than with the click of a button.

re:I wonder... What if we moved the vote stuff down below where the old "applaud" and "inappropriate" links were. Might that help with presentation by uncluttering the left side, but still getting attention with the arrows? Hmm.

---

I'd be interested to see that, certainly.

Also, can anyone comment vote atm? (e.g, anonymous as well as well as registered, or is it registered only?)

Only registered members. Actually I think pretty much making any contribution on the site requires you to be a member. Otherwise abuse would be a serious problem.

Yeah, thats what I had assumed, and should go a fair way to prevent silly abuse.

@lucky, I am using Mozilla Firefox, latest version. Also, just so you know, although my initial response to this new feature was 'meh' I am starting to the see the potential value of it, and could actually grow quite fond of it... particularly the top rated new comments box on the sidebar, surfing that is giving me yet another way to procrastinate between classes, thanks guys, always thinking of new and innovative ways to suck me back in!

@MINK, can you please quit your bitchin' for a few days and just wait and see how this thing plays out? I mean come on, saying stuff like, "xactly how much opposition do you need to see from us before you delete something?" We get that you don't like this, and are having a tough time dealing with it, but... geez... can't you just roll with it for a while without seeking some way to sabotage the whole thing? I agree that things seem 'cluttered' now, but chances are, in a week, we won't even notice it so much, or Lucky will find some innovative way to better integrate the new feature... just give him and Dag some time, they are talented guys, and just trying to find new ways to keep the sift fresh.

Can the following be done with the data your gaining?

Rank top Threads, by totaling all Upvotes in the thread, across all comments in that thread, and counting each persons upvote only once (so, if you vote for more than one comment in a thread your votes only add 1 to the thread total. Downvotes ignored).

I think this would be interesting...

I've changed idea. I like the top comments thing.
Still, only if the comment voting has no effect such as deleting comments.
If it's done just to show the top ones, then it's great.
If it also gives points, I dunno, I guess it will depend on how it gives the points.
If it makes something disappear.....

I am in agreement that downvotes should not delete comments, as personally, I am against censorship of any form... as far as the making them worth something I don't know, I kind of like them as they are, a quick way to express 'yeah' or 'nay' without any repercussions to the commenter one way or the other.

What about the idea of collapsing very downvoted comments? This would just require you to click a link to expand it and see what was so bad.

Are there any other ideas regarding what consequences there should be for posting an "inappropriate" or just generally bad comment?

Is it really voting? I mean, when you click on down, the confirmation window asks you if you're sure you want to mark it as inappropriate. Didn't that used to be something only goldies could do?

I contend that "appropriate" and "inappropriate" comments are still a relative and very subjective matter. One person's appropriate can be another person's inappropriate. And I believe that also holds true for the videos.

ack. it was a serious question, not loaded, you're just being defensive because i am being brash. point is, if you are going to have a debate or a test, you need to know how to judge the outcome of the debate or test, otherwise the debate or test is less useful.

*discuss isn't tied to posts, that's the reason i prefer it, i don't like judging individual posts.

but yeah raven you're right i made my point, i guess i don't have much more to add, and lucky has a right to be defensive when he has worked so long on the code (which is excellent code, btw)

the confirmation window asks you if you're sure you want to mark it as inappropriate. Didn't that used to be something only goldies could do?

It was, but was changed and is now like video voting in that bronzies and up can downvote.

I contend that "appropriate" and "inappropriate" comments are still a relative and very subjective matter.

Very true. This is why we defined rough guidelines in the FAQ for what we consider to be "inappropriate."

it was a serious question, not loaded

You clearly aren't familiar with what a loaded question is. I'm not necessarily just being defensive. I'm asking for a cessation in the meaningless bashing and a little helpful use or input during this trial. It's not a test that will require some quantitative judgement at the end. From reading some comments above, some fellow haters of the feature are starting to change their minds about it because they are actually giving it some honest thought and consideration instead of just ignoring and insulting it.

*discuss isn't tied to posts

You're not understanding. Think logically about invoking *discuss. How could your comment containing that invocation identify some other comment as being the comment you're invoking about? When you invoke a command, you do it in a comment "thread" (a video or talk post) and that command is associated with this parent/container thread. There's no possible way to use a comment invocation to associate it with some other comment.

By the way, on the Recent Comments page, you can now display recent comments (from the past 48 hours) by most or fewest votes.

I think what MINK was going for with *discuss is not just pointing out a specific comment, but a whole discussion.

I myself am not a fan of comment voting, but I think that if there is a hot thread being developed, one should be able to invoke *discuss, so that thread would be showcased in the sidebar as a current point of interest.

Top comments are cool and all, but so far it's not working when Siftbot adding a channel is a top comment. I really prefer the idea of highlighting a thread over an individual comment.

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

*unstickying. Obviously, we'll be back to this topic soon ...

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

I think up and down might be a bit too ambiguous. Do we vote based on our agreement with the post? Do we vote based on the quality of the post? Even if this is specified in the FAQ, it's likely to be forgotten or ignored. If we are to implement comment rating, I would suggest something less open to interpretation. I would also suggest hiding the scores and keeping the voters anonymous.

Displaying the scores, IMO, makes (some) people view it as competitive.

Making the voters known makes it easier for people to play "private club": "MemberX voted down my comment so now I will vote down all of his/hers" or "MemberX voted up my comment so MemberX is my friend and I will upvote all of his/her comments."

De-emphasize downvoting. Aside from the spam vote, I don't think there's any reason to demote someone's comment.

Instead of up/down, how about something like Funny/Informative/Perceptive? If you simply disagree with a comment, then make one of your own and say why.

If you want to bring back the star point reward or something similar, perhaps you make Funny = 1pt and Informative or Perceptive = 2pt. When you get to, say, 10pt you get a star point. Indicate these posts with a small marker that shows this is an exceptional comment.

Have a look at my mockup which uses a screenshot from a comment by lucky above:
http://bayimg.com/oAhMiaAbi

In the top left corner is the star point reward marker, indicating this is an exceptional comment, but nowhere is the actual score indicated. Anything below 10pts would be completely unmarked.

At the bottom are the Funny, Informative, Perceptive and Spam buttons. They should probably turn grey if you've selected one already.

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

That's an interesting idea overcast. I like your mockup. I wonder though - if people are preferring simplicity and less clutter - if this would fit with those goals?

I think even if you switched the up and down arrows over to the right margin along the comment box, near our avatars, things would look less 'cluttered'... Because we all read left to right, and that is how our brains instinctively process stuff, so when we go to start reading a comment, we are instantly distracted by the arrows and the score because that is the first thing our eyes 'see'. If the arrows were off to the right sides, our brains would first process the comments and then logically move onwards to the score at the right.

Or, you could work them in somehow below the comment box, maybe something completely simple like: - 0 + , but then I suppose you risk losing them completely, just at the 'applaud comment' 'mark as inappropriate' links got ignored.

clutter? what clutter?

http://bayimg.com/baHPIAABi

(revised)

@lucky: collapsing is acceptable
if users can choose NOT to collapse them in their profile, you'd have even less objections, I guess.

^ agreed, collapsing is still censorship, if only in a milder format, and like mlx said once long ago, if someone makes an assinine comment here, it should be left up for one and all to see, and thereby inform us of their overall character, douchy comments and prejudices included.

Overcast sounds like /. http://www.slashdot.com

lucky... gunrock's got my back... i am suggesting a way to tag the whole thread as interesting rather than focussing on one post.

yeah and it could be advertised near the post title, such as "NSFW" or "Long"

exactly. and look at the top 5 comments... 3 of them are from the same thread right now, and you don't know what the thread is because you just see the first few words of the comment. you don't even really know what the comment is, because you just see the first few words of the comment.

if it was "threads most recently tagged with *discuss" then it would work better as a way of getting people into debates.

Possible feature?

Under member profiles:Member stats

comment Karma (Total no. of comment upvotes - comment downvotes)

I guess I should have posted my original comment on this subject here, but I didn't know of the thread. In fact I don't know why it popped up in my sidebar right now, but that's how I stumbled into it. Well, rather than go through the whole thing again (discussion starts and ends in this excellent sift, for anyone who might care: http://www.videosift.com/video/Take-on-Me-Literal-Video-Version ), I'll just briefly add to the record that I think it is unfortunate that the system is set up such that:

1. a 'probie' is not entitled to display the same negative opinions others are. In fact it would make more sense to allow no voting at all rather than allowing just one sided opinions; instead the message is, "you can be positive, but that's it!"
2. a 'probie' is still a 'probie' even after years of membership and hundreds of posts and hundreds of votes cast

All presumably resulting from a fear that 'probies' downvoting will ruin the site somehow, despite similar voting systems on countless other sites, the viability of ventures like wikipedia, etc.

As a result of such a system, videosift favors only those who contribute (one half of the equation) while treating visitors (the other half) as second class citizens.

I understand the sentiment, but your opinion is mostly a subjective one based on your personal experience. In the grander scheme of things, we must consider that some people could sign up just to do harm to the site by down voting every comment they see. It's obvious, I think, that unnecessary down voting can be harmful (since it's negative) and up voting isn't (since it's positive).

It's the same as non-probies still not being able to down vote videos until they achieve their bronze star. We need some quantifiable method to decide if a user can be trusted enough with privileges that could be used to harm the site. In your case, you've been a member for 2.5 years (wow), but our current method assumes that you could and would have had a single video published by now to enable you to down vote comments.

I appreciate your thoughts, but your situation is an extreme one and our best efforts to protect the site and the community shouldn't be construed as a personal slight against long time probies like yourself.

What Lucky said. Plus, 999's had one comment applauded in that time too, so as soon as the Probie P is dropped, 999's up to *2* star points, not just one - hurray!

So hurry up and sift. You'll be a mere 8 points away from a bronze star!