Reclaim Your Old Votes with *ReclaimVote
First and foremost I'd like to thank everyone who has provided so much assistance in the recovery efforts after the 3/11 Siftpocalypse. It's really thanks to you all that we were able to get back on our feet in such a quick and confident fashion.
Now onto the business... As you're probably aware, one of the last major outstanding issues from our recovery has to do with video votes. Since we lost all voter data, what we did to return all video submitters their votes was have siftbot cast "placeholder" votes on all affected videos.
We were going to leave our repair at that, but it leaves a huge, ugly hole in the site, and since user Eklek came up with such a brilliant suggestion, we've gone ahead and implemented it.
Available now is a new *reclaimvote invocation. If you have voted on a video in the past but your vote has been turned into a placeholder siftbot vote, call the above invocation to turn one of those fake votes into a real vote of your own.
This is a special invocation and available to all users. It is only recognized by siftbot on a video that: 1) was affected by the siftpocalypse; 2) has any placeholder siftbot votes; and 3) you have not yet voted on. If you try to invoke on a video that does not meet any of those conditions, your invocation will be silently ignore (no error comment from siftbot to keep things tidy as lots of people will be invoking). But if you're successful you'll see a success comment on the video.
Please use *reclaimvote instead of up-voting any video that you have voted up in the past. Let us know here if there are any problems. Otherwise, thank Eklek for the great idea.
(Note that since we weren't able to restore any down-vote information, this invocation is strictly for up-votes.)
[edit]
Periodically, to reduce the comment bloat caused by these invocations, we'll delete all comments that contain in them nothing except the invocation "*reclaimvote" by itself. So, to allow your comment to be cleaned up later, when you use the invocation don't comment with anything more.
Now onto the business... As you're probably aware, one of the last major outstanding issues from our recovery has to do with video votes. Since we lost all voter data, what we did to return all video submitters their votes was have siftbot cast "placeholder" votes on all affected videos.
We were going to leave our repair at that, but it leaves a huge, ugly hole in the site, and since user Eklek came up with such a brilliant suggestion, we've gone ahead and implemented it.
Available now is a new *reclaimvote invocation. If you have voted on a video in the past but your vote has been turned into a placeholder siftbot vote, call the above invocation to turn one of those fake votes into a real vote of your own.
This is a special invocation and available to all users. It is only recognized by siftbot on a video that: 1) was affected by the siftpocalypse; 2) has any placeholder siftbot votes; and 3) you have not yet voted on. If you try to invoke on a video that does not meet any of those conditions, your invocation will be silently ignore (no error comment from siftbot to keep things tidy as lots of people will be invoking). But if you're successful you'll see a success comment on the video.
Please use *reclaimvote instead of up-voting any video that you have voted up in the past. Let us know here if there are any problems. Otherwise, thank Eklek for the great idea.
(Note that since we weren't able to restore any down-vote information, this invocation is strictly for up-votes.)
[edit]
Periodically, to reduce the comment bloat caused by these invocations, we'll delete all comments that contain in them nothing except the invocation "*reclaimvote" by itself. So, to allow your comment to be cleaned up later, when you use the invocation don't comment with anything more.
23 Comments
Kevlar*ReclaimSift!
Kevlar^Aw, man, you mean there's no 'Fix Everything' button? Ah, well. Guess I'll just have to say great work.
OrnthoronWill you after a while delete all such comments? I'd hate to see every old video get cluttered up with spam.
lucky760That's a good point, but it's not clear how we should do that.
We can definitely do it for the siftbot response, but doing it for the user's comment isn't an easy thing to guess at since they might include more in their comment than just the invocation.
Perhaps we'll just remove any user comment that is just the invocation (IOW, it contains only "*reclaimvote" and no other text).
Deano^we clearly need a *deletereclaimvotecomment invocation.
darkrowanGreat Scott... this is actually going to kinda suck for me... I DON'T REMEMBER that far back
I've been here for years and racked up thousands of votes !_! I wouldn't know if I voted something or not.
lucky760This is heavy.
rottenseedwhy can't we just do a mass reclaim vote across the sift for each user?
lucky760How could we do that? We don't know who originally voted for what.
jimnmsSo I screwed up when I re-voted for for all the posts that I bookmarked. Is there any way to fix that?
kronosposeidonI'm going to have to do this only as I randomly come across old videos I've voted on, because I don't want to invoke *reclaimvote 20,000 times. Thanks for making this tool available, but I don't see myself using it often, unfortunately. Sorry.
schmawyUnfortunately, there is no *reclaimdownvote. I checked.
rottenseedMaybe I miss understood. I thought if you had already voted for it, it would somehow match you to one of the votes. The way I see it, you're just telling it that you voted for it because you wanna be honest. Useful tool as we go.
lucky760Before 3/11 all videos has some number of votes z (where z = up votes - down votes).
At 3/11 we lost *who* voted to put the video at z votes.
We added z siftbot votes for every video submitted before 3/11 to restore the z vote count of each.
Now most every old video has z siftbot votes representing the voters who are now unknown.
If you invoke *reclaimvote on any post with those siftbot votes, it is your way of saying "I voted on this before 3/11. One of siftbot's z votes on this video represents the upvote I cast prior to 3/11. Instead of clicking the up arrow to vote *again*, I will identify one of siftbot's votes as *my* unidentified vote."
Basically, yeah, it's mainly a useful tool for whenever you come across a video you know you voted on previously. It's the valid, honest alternative to casting a new, second vote. I don't think anyone will traverse all the thousands of videos they've voted on, but this is a small way to help restore some data a little bit at a time.
spoco2Man, I dissapear for a couple of weeks while my son is in hospital, and look what happens!
Obviously this has all occurred due to my lack of presence on the sift. I apologise for not being here to prevent this. I'll try harder.
And on a more serious note... phew, nothing wrong on initial inspection with my account
EklekCheers Lucky, you make teh magiK happen:)
heavy *quality
Not sure if I'll remember all 4500 votes but I'll see to it at least a part is reclaimed!:)
viva selfmanagement!
siftbotAwarding lucky760 with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by Eklek.
swampgirlOk, what if I downvoted a sift after 3/11 that I previously upvoted on? If I reclaim my vote there, will my name show as both voting for and against something?
MINKthis just gets stupider and stupider.
lucky760Nice to see the old mink is back.
It may be "stupider and stupider," but we're just doing whatever we can to restore whatever data we can. If you have any "intelligenter and intelligenter" ideas, please do share.
mauz15>> ^swampgirl:
Ok, what if I downvoted a sift after 3/11 that I previously upvoted on? If I reclaim my vote there, will my name show as both voting for and against something?
Is 'ukulele' the key word here?
swampgirl^Mauz, how'd ya guess?
swampgirl4 out of 5 doctors recomend *reclaim vote for your vote restoration needs
Discuss...
Enable JavaScript to submit a comment.