The maximum refers to the freebie 1 powerpoint that "regenerates" every few days. If you earn powerpoints by getting top 15 videos etc, then they are added onto your existing amount. You get every power point you earn. This is how people are able to doublepromote etc. I, for example, currently have 7 powerpoints.

The same also goes for purchased ones, they are added onto your current amount I believe.

Awesome, thanks for the help.

As Hybrid says, power points can be a bit tricky. We have a regenerating amount, which is 1 (or 2 if you're a charter) and as long as you already have those, your pool doesn't recharge. If you have 1 as a charter, it will start a recharge counter and when that has reached it's goal (2 days, I believe) your power point pool is set to 2. If you gain points in other ways (comments, top 15 videos, qualityed talk posts etc) they are added on top and if you get over your normal maximum, the recharge counter is reset, as far as I know.

No points will ever be deducted from you, unless you use them yourself. And if you buy points you always get them, but your recharge counter will stop.

Does that make sense?

It does make a little sense. Two things though. Doesn't getting a quality in sift talk give you star points and not power points?

And, can you be more specific as to when your power points recharge? If you are charter and currently have 2 power points, and you use 1. That means two days later, you'll recharge 1 point, and then have 2 power points total again? And if you are charter and have 2 power points, and you use 2 power points, than two days later you'll recharge 2 power points and still have 2 power points?

And if you have 10 power points as a non charter member, you won't recharge points at all until you've used all 10 power points and have 0?

Sorry, the above post was written by me, but with the ridiculous Facebook settings, it had logged my girlfriend into Videosift so I accidentally posted on her account. Questions still stand though

Yes on all counts.

My mistake on quality sift talk post, they do indeed give star points. Things that give power points are: sifted video, 15+ upvotes on a comment, fixing dead videos, earning a new star level (bronze, silver etc.) and maybe some of the new badges, I'm not sure on that last part.

If you want to know how long until your power points recharge, look at your profile page.
Yours says
"Last Power Points used: never • Available: now"

Mine says
"Last Power Points used: 2010-06-05 • Available: 11 hours 11 minutes 20 seconds"

It starts the counter the second you come under your maximum power points.

Lemme just give you a little head start. *quality

Awarding kurtdh with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by gwiz665.

Sweet, thanks for the point! This brings up a few more questions though.

I received an e-mail saying my post was flagged as a quality contribution and that it earned me a "power point." The FAQ says you get star points, not power points, so is the e-mail wrong, or is the FAQ wrong?

And, my profile still lists me as having 1 power point. Does that mean that it awarded me a star point, and not a power point? And, if it did award me a star point, where in my profile page can I track my current star ranking, as I don't see it listed anywhere, and it should be at 1 or 2 (not sure if 1 is the default star ranking.)

You do have one star point now, so that's what you got. Default is 0.
from your side bar:
"Member Stats
Rank: 1777
Rating: P 1 star points <-- THERE
Votes Received: 5
Votes Cast: 23
Comments Posted: 27 • browse
Unsifted Vids: 1
Sift Talk Posts: 1
Quality Sift Talk Posts: 1
Profile Views: 554"

Ah didn't even see the side bar. Excellent. I hope I can keep asking my questions here, as I seem to keep finding many!

Next question! When I click on "Unsifted" Then on the right hand side I have it ordered from best votes-to-views ratio. Currently my video has 5 votes out of 86 unique views. Doing the math, that means 1 out of every 17.2 people who viewed it gave it an up vote. What I don't understand, though, is how come my video is listed as many pages behind? There's a video on the first page, the Sweden's got Talent 2010 winner, and currently it has 20 views and 1 vote, which gives it a 1 in 20 person up vote ratio which is lower than my video. How come it's on the first page, and my video is on the 5th page, when I'm ordering it from best votes-to-views ratio? It seems like post date also comes into the equation...but why is it effecting my search results if I have it ordered by ratio? And, if post date is coming into the equation, do you happen to know the exact formula used in calculating which videos stay up near the front page on the unsifted page? I realizing promoting a video can do that, but these aren't promoted videos I'm talking about.

And second question- how do you send a private message to somebody? If you click on someone's profile and you submit a comment and click the "private" box underneath the comments box, is that a private message, or is that something different?

Third question- Since the e-mail I received is wrong since it says I received a "power point" instead of a "star point", who is the administrator of Videosift that I can contact in order to suggest a typo or bug fix?

Ah, now we're getting into more eldritch territory.

1) The exact formula is only known to @lucky760 and @dag and has not been revealed as far as I know. It does indeed involve how long they have been there, "hotness" is the used term. IF you get many views, it gets hotter. If it gets many votes it gets even hotter. Quality affects hotness as well, boosting it enough to become the first listed video just under promoted videos. The Sweden video likely got the 20 votes in very rapid succession, which boosted it up. If it doesn't get more votes/views it will fall down in the queue fast.

The difference between promoted and quality is that promoted do not affect hotness and only "floats" the video for a given period. The quality gives a one-of boost to the hotness, so it will have to subside as normal hotness does, which means that if it gets a lot of votes after being qualitied, it stays there for a while. At this point, quality is far better at getting more votes and views than promote, in my experience.

2) As you say. If you mark it private, only you and the recipient can see it. (And likely the admins if they look directly in the database, but they don't really do that.)

3) You direct your bug reports @lucky760 or that's what I do, anyway.

I've only skimmed the conversation, and it looks like most questions have been answered, but here's a little more input.

Regarding Power Points:
You have a given allowance, 1 for non-charter, 2 for charter members. Any time your PP use cuts into your allowance, a 48 hour timer starts counting down before your full allowance is refilled. If once that timer runs out your allowance is already filled, no new points are given.

Regarding votes-to-views ratio:
The views that are used to calculate the ratio for sorting in Unsifted are "unique views," that is, the number of unique members who have viewed a video. Hover your mouse over the views to see more info.

Regarding quality Power Points and Star Points:
When someone invokes quality on a video, you are awarded a Power Point nothing. When it is invoked on a Sift Talk post, you are awarded a Star Point.

Regarding Front Page hotness/promote/quality:
Gwiz described it pretty accurately.

Regarding private commenting:
No one except the intended recipient will ever read a private comment.

>> ^lucky760:

Regarding quality Power Points and Star Points:
When someone invokes quality on a video, you are awarded a Power Point.


That's not true. If someone quality's your vid, you get nothing more than the satisfaction of it being 'bumped' back towards the top of the Hotness listing, and therefore it (probably) will earn more votes.

I was just checking to make sure the class was paying attention.

So who founded this site? Lucky, or Dag? Or are they co-founders?

And, just to be clear- the views-to-votes ratio view is PURELY calculated on unique views-to-votes and nothing else, correct?

Also, can someone give me more specifics on what can earn you star points? I viewed the FAQ, but it doesn't really give you any detailed information. From my understanding, there's two ways to get star points. The first way is to receive quality tags on your sift posts. The second way is getting votes on your videos. Is there a third way? It's the second way that is the most confusing to me. How many votes equals a star point? Does 400 votes on one video equal 100 votes on 4 individual and separate videos in regards to receiving star points?

10 votes means your video is sifted and you get a star point. The star point is only for getting a video "sifted" to the front page. You don't get any stars based on # of votes.

Ah ok, the FAQ is a little mis leading than. So if your video gets 10 votes you get a star, and if you get a quality in a sift post you get a star. Those are the only two ways?

If ranking isn't based off votes at all, how come it shows the top sifters of all time in the bottom right hand corner, and next to their names it shows the amount of votes they have received?

Getting a video over 10 votes and getting a qualitied talk post are at this point the only two ways of getting star points.

Once upon a time, before power points, we got star points for comments as well, which is why there are some discrepancies if you try to calculate how many an old user "ought" to have, me for instance.

I've been lobbying a little for a tiered approach, where a video that gets over a certain amount of votes could "pay off" a little better - say another star at 100 votes, and a power point at 50 votes, but so far it's not been made.

The actual ranking of members is defaulted to number of votes received. That is, the sum of all the votes on all of your videos that are not dead at the moment.

Dag started the site, lucky760 came in a little later, as far as I know.

Thanks for the help. What's the difference between a kill and discard tag? And, are videos that are killed/discarded by you still counted in your total vote count since technically they haven't been flagged as dead?

From my understanding, kill tag gets rid of the video altogether, where a discard tag removes your video from the sift and puts it into your personal queue. I discarded a video and it's not listed in my personal queue though, so I'm not sure what happened to it.

And, if that's not what discarded videos do, how can you move an unsifted video to your personal queue so you can post another video?

Kills are completely killed. That is, no one can comment on them anymore, it cannot be promoted back into the queue.

Discard is a relic of olden times. It discards your video, that is, it throws it in the discard pile and it counts as not existing. People can, however, still comment on them and you can theoretically * promote them back into the queue or sift if it has 10+ votes.

You cannot move your video to the PQ other than to let it's unsifted timer run out. It's an intended limitation. If you want to move stuff out of the way, you can discard other stuff in the queue.

Be forewarned though, if you discard something and someone else posts it, his is not a dupe of yours - yours is technically out of the sift system, therefore up for grabs.

Your discarded video is here http://videosift.com/member/kurtdh/discarded which is also linked in your sidebar.

.

So if I have reached my maximum limit of 3 unsifted videos, the only way to get one out of the way so I can post another video is to discard it or wait for it to be put into my personal queue?

And the only way to get a discarded post back is to use power points and promote it?

And do discarded videos count towards your total vote count?

^Discarded, killed, and dead videos are not included in your total vote count. Personal queue videos are included in your Votes Received stat.

>> ^kurtdh:

So if I have reached my maximum limit of 3 unsifted videos, the only way to get one out of the way so I can post another video is to discard it or wait for it to be put into my personal queue?

You can also use 2 Power Points to open an extra Unsifted slot to queue one additional video (you can only have one extra slot at a time). The other alternative is to upgrade to charter and you'll have 6 rather than 3 Unsifted slots.

This is a great series of questions, kurtdh. I makes me realize we should have a diagram illustrating all the possible video states and transitions between them. We'll work on that.

Thank you, I think that type of diagram would be very useful. I'm the type of person that asks thousands of questions about topics I'm interested in that I can't find elsewhere. If I have any more, I'll post them here!

http://videosift.com/faq-en.php#vidstates

Nice diagram, problem.