Go for 11, dude. Try that first for a few weeks, and if that isn't good enough then bump it up to 12. I think our community has grown enough since I've been here to make 11 or even 12 a decent escape threshold.

What kind of flour are we sifting anyway? White, wholegrain, or germ? I hope it's wholegrain, because that has the bran fiber. Guys our age start to need that, buddy.

Fine by me. I wouldn't even mind seeing it go to 15, but then I guess there might have to be a few offsetting measures taken if you went that far (extra 12 hours to get published, the ability to get videos into beggars corner more often, etc).

This Sift goes to eleven!

How about a baker's dozen? Just kidding of course. You know a lot of that today Dag could be my doing. I've hung around the "expiring soon" and member's pqueues all day.

Whatever number we decide to raise the escape threshold to, going forward I'd like to see that number being changed on a more mathematical/scientific basis. A while back I mentioned the following, but now seems like a good time to mention it again:

For example, let's say we raise the threshold to 12 starting tomorrow, and over the course of the next few weeks that number seems to work out pretty well for quality standards. Then dag, lucky, or James needs to take a statistical snapshot of the membership at that time. For example, let's say we have 300 active members at the moment we go to the 12-vote threshold, and let's define "active member" as any member who's at least voted once during the previous two weeks, just for the sake of argument. ("Active member" could be defined in many different ways, of course, so the definition can be debated now but must be firm if we implement this new process.)

Therefore we will have a 12-vote threshold, for an active membership of 300 people. Doing the math that works out as:

300 members/12 votes = 25 members-per-vote requirement.

Then for a designated period of time, let's say every 3 or 6 months, another membership snapshot needs to be taken by the admins. So let's say 6 months down the road they find we have 340 "active members" (see definition above). By the math it would work out as:

340 members/25 members-per-vote = 13.6 votes, rounding to a 14 vote threshold.

Once this new figure is determined, it can be posted in Sift Talk and profile-messaged to all active members two weeks before the change goes into effect, that way everyone has plenty of notice.

I think if this new process is implemented it would both ensure quality is maintained and hopefully reduce the amount of bitching that inevitably comes whenever a major change takes place. You can point out the numbers to everyone to justify your decision, saying that we're trying to keep things similar to a representative democracy here, so if they don't like it they must be an enemy of freedom and should be sent to Gitmo.

If you can't win them over with reason, then fear is a workable substitute.

I suppose if we wanted to, we could be continuously implementing kp's suggestion, making the queue escape level floating and always changing.

Make it 15.

I feel that the new first-time posters will find it even more difficult to sift. Let's face it, no matter what we raise the vote escape threshold to, publicity and popularity of the submitter does weigh in on the equation. What if we had cutoffs. Say, at gold star, not only do you get more abilities, but the threshold his raised, then again at gold 100, bronze diamond, etc. so that you are held at a higher standard to compensate for publicity, popularity and increased active members.

Something has got to change. And it's not kronosposeidon's underwear, although believe me it needs changing. (2 years is just a bit over the top.). I've been thinking long and hard (that's what she said.) about what to do with the queue. And I was thinking about having new videos go by a rating system rather then a voting system. Say on a scale of one to five. After 2-3 days anything over a 2.5 gets in anything else gets the boot.

Of course this would probably mess up coding but it's just a thought. I have no idea if the system is even plausible, but it might give a more widespread balance before making front page, that way regardless of volume you still get to the quality.

Other ideas:

*At 12 hour intervals, the videos posted between 2.5 and 3 days ago will expire, and only the top 20% of those will make it to the front page. This automatically compensates for fluctuations in activity.

*make the threshold higher for short videos than for long videos. The sift has only 12 *long videos above 100 votes. The current reward structure promotes splitting up long documentaries into little sound bites, which is kind of bad. Long videos tend to be of higher quality but a lot of people don't have time to watch them and skip upvoting them.

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

^ interesting concept - especially the second one- I like the idea of "earning votes"

But when I think about it, the nice thing voting is - it's simple. The more complex the strategies we use to manage a voting system- the more confusion, errors and frustration will emerge. I think now everyone knows that it's 10 votes to escape, so it's a clear goal.

You know the questions that we get on "why did my post suddenly drop off the top 15?" - imagine that cubed if the queue escape was based on an arcane formula.

what if you just shorten the time spent in the queue back to 2 days?

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^ that's also a possibility. Which is more frustrating- having your posts die quickly and moved to your PQ, or having your posts die slowly because they don't reach 12 before the cut-off?

Try it! Summer is almost here for northern hemisphere. American students will have summer vacation soon.

I only check VS during the work-day. I'm guessing most of you do it "after" work. So it makes it weird for my stuff to get sifted as it is. But, thats the way it goes.

Cut the queue level to 2 days; for god's sake don't raise the escape level. I've been having a hard enough time getting stuff published lately as it is.

Food for thought: If we cut the queue time down to 2 days again, now that we have the pqueue, you could quickly beg an expired post into the Canyon where it has a chance to garner enough attention/votes to shoot up to the top 15 before the 4 day limit.

Upping the escape to 12 alone would slow the publishing rate, but also keep more good videos hiding in obscurity.

^ could submitters be given a choice between escape # or queue duration, or would that be too complicated?

The problem is likely not with the queue escape level or queue time. The problem, as I see it, is that too many videos are being queued. This is amplified by personal queued videos which can also be voted up to the front page.

The only sure way to keep output at a respectable level is to limit input.

[ed] My solution? I would consider cutting the number of queue slots for everyone by one. And limiting videos going into the personal queue to those with at least 5 votes. Limiting the amount of promoted video could help as well. Perhaps re instituting a time limit on when a published video can be promoted to say 2 months.

*quality discussion, though everyone except me is wrong (ESPECIALLY you, gorgonheap.)

Awarding dag with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by kronosposeidon.

2 Days per video and then the warm and huggy personel queue for any that dont't make it to th front page..

i had had quite alot of my videos sift in 2 and a half day though...
No harm in trying this though

Oh, and everything that fails to sift should always go to PQ. You can of course choose to discard your own video if you think its a lost cause, or does not belong

As the site traffic grows I think sooner or later we will have to move on to something that represents the votes on a relative basis rather than an absolute number.

kp had some good ideas there already. maybe it is also a good idea to take the votes/views ratio into account and to measure something like the popularity within a timeframe (the 2 queue days)