Am guessing this is because of Snaremop's recent posting spree?

I agree that such invocations should be seconded.

If the time comes that the user base increases beyond being able to wait for a second Gold Star, administrative powers should take one step up in the chain, being given to Gold 100s.

But Lucky is right, other more drastic measures must be discussed. As the site grows and expands it become important to think what happens when we have a much larger user base, and in hand abuses start to increase. Like the month on month increase in self links created the need for *ban invocation.

I also like the idea of the profile keeping a record of violations.

I dunno... I think we have enough invocations as it is. Perhaps the sheep need a reminder now and then from one of the shepherds on protocol and etiquette instead of taking the censorship route. It would make for a better atmosphere.

I've followed the "Snaremop" threads and I've been impressed on how well everyone's handled it. Snare is one of the young pups around here eager to participate. Once his zeal overstepped his place w/ the Wiki entry, others kindly came to his aid. The post was read by many, and now more members will be mindful of their posts topics and community manners. At least that's what I got from it.

And for the record, I'm against posting violations of any kind on anyone's profile. (sorry Farhad, you know I love you)
One of the ways this site attracted me to this community in the first place was how issues were handled 'this' way..in a blog.

We would still mediate topics on the blog. It would just create a record so that users were not divorced from their past fauxpas, similar to the discard field on someones profile. For many it's just a way to see what posts have died, but for others it is a damning indictment of their astroturf activities.

Please read my latest reply on the Wikipedia post everyone.

Anyway, I completely disagree with this. I believe that Sift Talk should be a place for members to talk about things other than videos, a section where you actually get to know about the people of the 'Sift. Maybe there should be two sections of Sift Talk?? An "offtopic" section that doesn't have anything to do with VideoSift or videos, and then a section for discussing VideoSift, suggestions for VideoSift, etc.

Anyone else agree?

No, not really.

There are any number of general conversation forums out there where you can discuss whatever you want. VS is a video specific site and as of late does not have a general chat channel.

Quite honestly, I think that the VS admins would do themselves a favor and keep it that way and not go the way of a full fledged forum and increase their workload x10.

If you wanted to post a link in your profile to your own blog or MySpace or FaceBook or whatever's your pleasure, I don't think that would be too unreasonable, just as long as it's not directly associated with VS.

I can see why this blog should be limited to VS business. If everyone treated it like a personal blog, then no one would be able to follow the pertinent announcements. But you're right that many members would like to communicate, that's why a comment feature was added to personal profiles.

Maybe down the line VS profiles will have their own blog features.

Snaremop, on the side of the SiftTalk page there is a pretty succinct definition for the space:

"Sift Talk is a discussion area for our members. Feel free to post and respond to issues about VideoSift, our community, or online videos in the news."

I think if you are found guilty of creating an off topic sifttalk post then you have a 1 week ban from the internets!! (or posting new sift talk posts)

James: My point was, why not create a new section for general chat?

Swampgirl: Sure, there are profile comments, but what if you wanted to ask the entire community a question, not just a particular user? You'd have to comment on each user's profile individually.

Wumpus: My point wasn't that there should be some place on the internet for general chat, there are plenty of forums like that. What I am saying is that there should be a place for general chat on VideoSift, so you can better get to know everyone.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a place on VideoSift where you could have a big discussion with all users about something not related to VideoSift, but with the same users that you are friends with and know from the 'Sift?

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

I think some communities cast too wide a net. I like that we have the videos to talk around. the conversations are often better than the videos themselves, but I think we need to keep the focus there.

One thing I enjoy about this place is that I don't "get to know" everyone in a matter of days. Through posting videos and participating in the comment threads on those videos, I learn a little bit of many of you daily. You can still get to know many here in this community, but it takes a little more effort. I my opinion, it's more enjoyable.

What about this:
• If three of a user's posts in Sift Talk are marked *offtopic, they get some form of penalty.

Remember, that's three posts being marked offtopic, not three offtopic invocations on one post.

Do you like this idea?

If so, what should the penalty for three offtopic posts be?

I don't think we need additional bureacracy around the Sift Talk page.

I remember in the site's infancy you'd see, at most, one new Sift Talk most a day most of the time. Then you'd see a few once in a while. Now it seems like there's a dozen every day or so. Sift Talk really should have a slower volume of posts because you want to limit posts to the more important administrative/general-video-related issues rather than just this or that.

"Recent Comments" functions as one way to get people to feel the flow of conversations in the community, and you can always use your user page as a general chat forum: anyone who wants to join in will notice recent comments on the recent comments page, after all.

Alternatively, post videos you're interested in using as "conversation starters" and see how much of a conversation you can generate with them.

I agree with dag's view that we need to maintain the focus on videos here (in Sift Talk).

Having said I'll this, I'm officially neutral on adding/removing an *offtopic invocation... although I lean towards including it, perhaps limit it to the 100-goldies because I don't anticipate it being used very often (and as such, if it shouldn't be used v. often, it doesn't need a lot of people who can invoke it in the first place).