I swear I did not put her up to this...and write this post.
Did somebody else?

I'm also in favour of - as Blankfist calls it - "compassionate downvoting", yet in general downvotes - whatever their reason - are not clarified.

I wouldn't necessarily remove the post from the queue in case of downvotes, other people will probably like it..though in some cases many in the community have an aversion towards the video (e.g. search for Achmed the terrorist in the advanced search (top right of the screen), here you can also search for sift talks by selecting it in the drop down menu under "search type".

BTW this IS the right place to bring this up:)

As long as your post doesn't violate any rules, go right ahead and post whatever you want. Part of the sift is finding the "gems" that others don't know about. If you get a few downvotes in the beginning, just let it sit in the queue, someone might have a different opinion of it - this is a pretty big group after all.

If you're anxious to have a reason for a particular downvote, I welcome PM's or just messages on my profile page, as do others, I think. Sometimes, there just isn't a specific reason behind any given vote, could be outside influence, bad mood or some such.

OMG, ADVANCED search! Blush - never thought of that.. OK, I am learning =) thanks! =)

If you feel that someone has unleashed a down-vote spree on you rather than your videos, I recommend offering evidence to those whose mission it is to uphold the spirit of the site (ie Dag and Lucky ). They have been known to check the voting time stamps to see if there is any funny business. But also remember that the goal here is not to have the most sifters with the most star points, but rather to have the highest quality videos possible. Some people think that violence, sex, drunkenness, etc., don't belong on the Sift. Indeed there are certain content points that I am inclined to down-vote out of hand; I see that as my prerogative as I believe it adds to the quality of the Sift.

Ever since the downvote was made available sifters have hashed out the topic on SiftTalk. Take a look at "downvote" posts linked below. Perhaps you will gleen some comfort from them.

http://www.videosift.com/search?q=downvote&t=t&u=&o=&vmin=&vmax=&l=&n=&b=&submit=Search

Like RhesusMonk said, the point is to keep Videosift a place for high quality videos. A filter for the numerous amounts of low quality media posted on video sites.

I don't understand why you would take a downvote personal, if the video is not even yours. I do understand however that feeling of getting a downvote out of something you thought was worth sharing with the community here, but realize that Videosift is a community so not everyone will find X music video worth voting, or agree with your definition of funny.

I downvote things I don't find funny, music videos that are really not that good regardless of how popular or how good the song is because we all know there are a lot of great songs out there but are their videos well made? not really. Is rare to find good music videos.

I also, every once in a while downvote things I feel are really overrated. Just because a couple of Zero Punctuation videos are brilliant, or funny, does not mean every single one of them posted here deserves to be on the top 15. It really doesn't and I don't understand why it seems to me that people automatically upvote certain things around here.

But anyways, dotdude already provided the best link for you to learn about downvotes on videosift.

I actually joined the site just after you so I am still somewhat unsure when to downvote myself. Checking the list of videos that you discarded, I did downvote a lisa nova video. I apologize if you took it personally, I have enjoyed several of your posts, I just found it unfunny and a tad distasteful, I did not mean for you to discard it.

As for one person constantly downvoting your videos maybe you just have different tastes?

Thanks for the replies. I do feel a lot better now, and I will dig through the older threads now that I now where to look. I know not everybody shares my tastes, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. I'll keep posting stuff that I like, and I just have to hope enough people like it too.

Like I said, I am just learning the ropes here =)

I've been here a bit over a year and have yet to downvote a vid though I have a handful of comments. Had a few against my vids but only two that bugged me, both like yours didn't bother to say why and both seemed out of character for them or out of place at the time. It's their vote though so I never bothered to ask.

Other than we're supposed to watch the vid first so judge that without prejudice and such there don't seem to be strict rules, self set standards seem to have drifted over time as well. Used to be that downvotes in the queue weren't all that common and mostly used as damage control for a really bad vid, now it seems to be used more freely no matter if in or out of the queue. I wonder if the increasing freedom with stuff like that among some is related to the newish comment downvotes? Made us a bit more free with them in general and opinionated? We grew a bit at the same time though so maybe it's just that.

This playlist, by djsunkid, might help explain one of our famous sift downvoters:

http://www.videosift.com/playlists/djsunkid/My-favourite-ant-downvotes

Here's an idea.

We remove the downvote button,
and put a double-upvote button.
So you can:

• do nothing
• upvote, and
• really upvote

quality is key, one monkey's vine is another one's bell-rope.....wandering into the church after hours with a bottle of scotch, and some true love for her parishiners....

don't take it personally, or do, these are trifling matters, in the grand schemata....