VideoSift v3.1 Unveiled

In this, our first upgrade since our historic move onto our current platform, we asked and all you dedicated Sifters responded in great detail how you think we could best perform some home improvements. As always, we listened to you, the community that makes this homepage away from home the unique partying spot what it is.

Rather than simply adding some dull bug fixes and minor tweaks, our main focus ended up being largely based around adding features that everyone has been rioting for. Without further ado, allow me to introduce you in no particular order to the changes in VideoSift v3.1.

The Vote Box
The most obvious thing you'll notice is that we've changed the appearance of the video vote box. It no longer appears as a box, but just a simple pair of arrows around the vote count. We think it is a much cleaner, streamlined look and feel.

As an unfortunate side effect of modifying the vote box styles, all custom CSS on channels and charter profiles will need to be updated (add the desired color: to .votebox). Until that happens, the vote count text will appear the default VideoSift blue on all pages.

Recent Comments
We only became aware very recently of the confusion some Sifters have been having with the "recent comments" page. We've done what we can to make it as easy to use as possible by merging the drop-down of the listing for all users with that for individual users.

Advanced Search
We originally had the restriction on the advanced search form to include search terms because too many empty searches could slow down performance of our database. Due to popular demand we have gone ahead and removed this restriction so you may now initiate advanced searches without specifying any search terms, so very customized queries are now possible.

Comment Quoting
A new "quote" link is now available below comments on post detail pages. When you click it, the comment's body is copied into the new comment form and you jump down to it at the bottom of the page. Multiple comments can be quoted; each subsequent one is appended to the end of the comment form.

Stars for Comments
When we started the comment voting siftsperiment, it was met with a lot of controversy. It's become apparent over time that it is generally accepted and enjoyed by most users. We have decided to reward extra special comments that receive at least 15 up-votes with a star point. This is a high number, so such stars will be granted very infrequently, and only for the most overwhelmingly extraordinary comments.

Snipping Sift Talk and Blog Posts
From time to time you may notice extremely long Sift Talk or blog posts. This is not a strike against the submitter, but it does make for a more difficult browsing experience by other users. In order to help with this problem we have introduced a special keyword: [[snip]] (which is demonstrated in this post itself)
In any listing, all text from this special keyword to the end of the post will be replaced simply by a "more inside" link. On the post detail page, the keyword simply does not appear, but the entire body of your post does.

Channel List on Submit Forms
The layout of all the channel checkboxes on the video submit form has worked out very well. So well, in fact, that we've done away with the "personalized channels" and are now just listing all available channels on the form, and we're now listing them alphabetically in vertical rather than horizontal order for better visual parsing.

In addition, we've added the channel checkboxes to the Sift Talk submit form. This change might get a little bit hokie because of the way Sift Talk posts work, but basically when submitting a ST post, you must either select the "cross-post to main Sift Talk" checkbox, one or more channel checkboxes, or both. Posts will no longer automatically be included in main Sift Talk or in the current channel's Talk.

*Kill
This is a new invocation for members to use on their own video posts only. It works similarly to *discard except it is used when you want the video to permanently remain discarded. To that end, a *killed video also no longer has a comment form.

Submission from Any Video Host
The minimum required to post from any video host has been moved down from Diamond to Gold member status. This can easily be misused, so please take care and be sure you are submitting from sources that are reliable and likely to offer your embed longevity.

InstaBan
Instead of having a monopoly on the above ability, Diamond members now have the ability to instantly ban any non-starred members. This should only be done if you're absolutely certain the member has exercised gross violation of Sift guidelines. Available to Diamonds on all member profiles of bannable accounts is a link that allows you to perform the instant ban. A comment will be left by SiftBot on the banned member's profile. Note that an administrative email will also be sent to us so we can be sure none of our Diamonds go mad with power and try to ban anyone who doesn't deserve it. You can InstaBan only once every two days.

The Queue
Queue rot and an overfull queue have always presented a problem, and with a continually expanding community, it's only gotten worse. We have made some positive changes that should significantly help combat this. (Don't worry, we haven't raised the queue escape level!)

The first change was suggested by a Sifter (sorry, I don't recall who it was). Instead of a high votes-to-views ratio, the default sort order for the queue is changing to the fewest unique member views. What that means is that queued videos that have been viewed by the fewest members/voters will be displayed first. I don't know why this never occurred to us before, but it seems obvious that it is the best way to give all queued videos equal exposure and vote opportunities.

The second change, which has been called for by innumerable Sifters, is a change in the queued video lifetime. Instead of having 4 days before a video expires and is discarded, it now has only 2 days. This will serve to keep the queue as fresh as possible. *Requeue will still be permitted, but once every 12 hours instead of every 2 days, for obvious reasons. The "expiring soon" queue sidebar panel will display the highest voted videos on their second day in the queue.

*Promote Transforms - *Save Disappears
We foresee this as becoming a rather popular invocation, but may at first be a little unclear. We have removed the *save invocation (which was used to give a queued or discarded video another chance in the queue) and expanded *promote to do much more.

*Promote is now a Gold-100 ability. (That's right, we Gold-100s finally have a power of our very own!) To keep it inline with the new queue lifetime, it may be invoked once every 2 days. The invocation can now be used on all post types (videos, Sift Talk posts, and blog posts). When any post is *promoted, it will be floated up to the top of the corresponding listing for a specific length of time, after which it will descend back down into the listing. You can only invoke for posts by other users, but multiple posts can be floated simultaneously.

Here's an overview of details for each post type:
  • Published Videos - Floated for 1 hour; After 1 hour it moves down into the top of the front page listing
  • Queued Videos - Floated for 3 hours; Video's queue date is reset (a la the old *save invocation)
  • Discarded Videos - Identical to Queued Videos
  • Sift Talk Posts - Floated for 24 hours
  • Blog Posts - Floated for 12 hours
[edit]By the way, *promote no longer requires a published video to be 6 months old, or any age for that matter.[/edit]
joedirt says...

[EDIT: I'm not being negative, just pointing out with the new sorting] If you can tell the video by the title.. do not watch it or open it in it's own webpage or it will get shoved further in the queue. Similarly you know the video is crap, instead of a downvote, just click the expand video twistee to move it to back of the line.

MINK says...

can't see MY recent comments, "browse" goes to all comments, and the dropdown on the comments page doesn't seem to work to select just my comments. how am i supposed to exercise my vanity? is it just a glich on my end?

edit: now it works. weird. i'll let u know.

edit edit: actually "browse" still doesn't work, goes to an old url and redirects to "all" i think.

MarineGunrock says...

Superfuckingawesome.
Will the comment stars be retroactive? And the snip thing, we just type it exactly like it's shown there? I just tried it - and it's awesome.

P.S. - You guys rock. I wish I could buy you all a beer/preferred beverage of choice.

lucky760 says...

(Hold onto your seats as I go wild with the new 'quote' feature.)

>> joedirt:
So, If you can tell the video by the title.. do not watch it or open it in it's own webpage or it will get shoved further in the queue. Similarly if the video looks like crap, and most people don't downvote, so just click the expand video twistee, or open in background tab to move it to back of the line.


Regardless what solution we come up with there's always going to be some drawback. It's just the nature of the beast. This is possibly the best solution thus far, though.

>> joedirt:
(Now if you could hide videos you have viewed, that would be sweet for the queue instead of forcing you to downvote to remove them from view.)

That's not as easy as it sounds and we came up with a similar solution but it was shot down in a blaze with no glory.

>> jonny:
2 days for the queue is too big a jump. wind it back like the Fed does.

Most advocates for this feature agreed 2 days was best, and if we're going to do it better why not jump right in instead of waiting to see for a few months if a slight reduction didn't work?

>> MINK:
can't see MY recent comments, "browse" goes to all comments, and the dropdown on the comments page doesn't seem to work to select just my comments. how am i supposed to exercise my vanity? is it just a glich on my end? edit: now it works. weird. i'll let u know.

There was a buglet hanging out. Squashed it, likely while you were trying to use it.

>> MarineGunrock:
Superfuckingawesome.
Will the comment stars be retroactive?

No.

joedirt says...

I wasn't saying the "fake views" is a bad thing, just pointing it out. It's like a no vote. It is interesting concept now, if you see your favorite music video, you are better off waiting until the front page to watch it.

Lucky, One idea though. The new default queue sorting is way to random now. With say 10 people sifting in the queue, by the time you make it to page 2 (or even click reload) it is all sorts of random order.

I'm not sure if you are doing this dynamic now, but it might also help load to make the list of queued videos (i mean the order they appear) a static page that gets generate every ?? 5 mins ??.

2 days in great for the queue, and good idea combining the save function.

One idea you might want to try for a few days. In the queue, hide the "2 votes" part, just up and down arrow until after someone votes.

lucky760 says...

Because of the change in queue lifetime, lots and lots of videos were discarded after the upgrade.

I guess the best solution is for we admins to change the status back to queued at your request, iff it was last queued between Jan 8 and Jan 10. Agreed?

joedirt says...

Lucky, instead of dealing with the discarded 2-4 day old videos, just allow a *save free-for-all for a day or two and then turn it off again forever. I'd rather only revive videos people care about then revive the queue rot from the dead. I started am amnesty thread.

JAPR says...

I'm a little sad that I just got gold, only to see the Save ability disappear. I don't like that. I think keeping the Save invocation but putting the promote with said new features up to the gold 100 level would have been much better. I see a lot of good videos die in queue, only to be saved and then succeed. Please bring back * save.

Also, the sudden shift to two days killed one of my videos before I could requeue it (EDIT: some kind admin(?) saved it somehow, thank you! ), and I'm not very happy about that. I think 3 days would be better than two, as in four days a lot of videos would get very few views/votes anyway.

Some good changes, but some rather distressing ones as well.

lucky760 says...

Thanks, eric. Sorry JAPR.

Blankfist: There was some kind of internal error when you attempted to *promote your own post (let's see what SiftBot says to me). You can't promote your own posts.

[edit]
Okay - that self-promote bug has been fixed, so it won't hang any more. It'll just tell you you can't promote your own post like it's supposed to.

joedirt says...

Lucky, you may want to reconsider the Promoted sticky function as implemented. The list of promoted videos show up on all pages, like p.2,3,4.. I would think they would just be listed on the front page for "Sifted" and "Unsifted" and "SiftTalk". I don't really mind, but if there were 20 stickied videos on every page....

We could conceivably have 100 promoted videos showing up if we all promoted together. But I guess this is only a problem for an hour or so. (We should coordinate on holidays )

maatc says...

>> MINK:
can't see MY recent comments, "browse" goes to all comments, and the dropdown on the comments page doesn't seem to work to select just my comments. how am i supposed to exercise my vanity? <img src="http://static1.videosift.com/videosift/i/emoticon/smile.gif"> is it just a glich on my end? edit: now it works. weird. i'll let u know. edit edit: actually "browse" still doesn't work, goes to an old url and redirects to "all" i think.


Same here. Dag, it is the link in your own profile that is supposed to link to "your" last comments. ("Browse" next to comments on member page)

Everything else: Awesome work!!! But I still do miss the "validate embed code" button somewhere accessible at all times. Maybe it will come with 3.2

joedirt says...

Lucky,
There may be a bug in the code for gold & diamond can submit any site. See the next SiftTalk thread. It appears to be parsing the website and only allowing approved hosts for me.

...

Also, I see a bug in the quote function if you look at the comment above this one. The original ":)" got quoted as the escaped URL.

Thylan says...

the new *promote sounds awesome.

Re joedirt's "Best not to view vids you know and like" comment, i imagine that is only true if you can click to upvote, "without" having registered as a view. I just did a test, and i voted up a 9-10 that i want to watch and my view was not registered, as i haden't actually viewed it yet (dont worry, ti was a vid that was going to make it out for sure, adn i do want to watch it after ive played portal. still havent yet.)

So, is there anyway, that on upvote, it can see if your view is registered, and if not, list you as having viewed? or some such?
Then theres no possibility for unintended abuse, and it is worth viewing the video you want upvoted.

oxdottir says...

OK. I just woke up early and read my mail in bed before knowing there were changes to see that all 6 of the videos I submitted 2 plus smidgen days ago are all discarded. I had been watching them, and they were moving a long slowly, but at the normal clip for--at least my--videos. Some weren't going to go, ever, I imagine (judy garland doesn't seem to be a siffavorite), but some were good things I thought were quite worthwhile: http://www.videosift.com/video/Lemony-Snicket-Tim-Curry-relates-12-Books-in-120-Seconds at 6 votes, for instance, or http://www.videosift.com/video/Any-Winehouse-mixed-with-Linda-Ronstadt-No-Good at 5. Hell, I have videos at 30 votes now that moved slower than that: more than one of which finished its first pass through the queue at 1 or 2 votes.

Now, I pretty much never have videos that move faster than those two. Should I just move along now, and I'm done sifting videos? Suddenly waking up to have 6 messages from sifty makes me feel like my services are no longer desired. I know for me it's still sleeping time, and I am probably being unnecessarily gloomy, but honestly, I feel like I've been dumped by my boyfriend.

It's not like I'm necessarily against the new features: I don't know the new features and I don't have a feel for the new features. They came in the dark of the night and kicked me in the teeth. They are shiny new features of a place that is no longer my home.

I know you folks like to keep things quiet while you unveil them, but I doubt I would feel so discouraged if I had had any notice instead of just suddenly having my queue unexpectedly flushed.

Thylan says...

^
Yeah, i woke up to see my queue was at 1. yay i thought. looked at my star points. Hadent moved much. My discard had instead gained 4 videos, that were doing ok. tis a shame. I dont know if the sift amnesty thread (in which ive linked mine) is the solution, or temporally allowing us to save the vids that dropped, but i'd like there to be something that can be done. springing the queue crop on us was the harsh side to the unavailing tbh.

Thylan says...

kill is cathartic.

Can there be an *unpromote that can only be called by the original submitter? negates the promote obviously. someone might want to do that for ST posts, or blogs, and conceivably vids too.

joedirt says...

I agree with *unpromote (for sifttalks)

And everyone acting like your life is over because your TWO DAY OLD submission is gone, calm down. It can be saved and I'm sure the admins will gladly reinstate it. So quit talking about how upsetting it is. Either drop the admins a msg, or see the other sifttalk thread for the do-it-yourself approach.

videosiftbannedme says...

I agree with the changes made to the queue. Yesterday I checked it and it had bloated to 21 pages. Yikes! However, on the flipside, only about 1/3 of the videos I've submitted have ever made it to 10 votes within 2 days. Possibly increasing the queue to a 3 day might be something to ponder. This is of course premature as we haven't even seen how well 2 days works yet but I figured I'd just throw it out there for later perusal...

Other than those reservations, I like the new look. GJ, Lucky. Kick back and crack one open before you start on VS 4.0

raven says...

Instaban: I don't know how or why you guys came up with this but I don't like it... I think it will be too easily abused. I mean, just because someone has a diamond does not mean they are instantly above the baser instincts of human nature... as I've said in the past, sifting X-number of videos does not endow wisdom, intelligence, or good judgment skills upon a user.

Is there going to be some oversight to this? And are 'bannable' members those without stars who have submitted vids, or is it everyone without a star? I mean, what is to stop someone from going around and banning all the N00bs that they feel express political or philosophical opinions they do not agree with? Or the trolls? Or people that they believe are trolls just because they say stuff they don't like to hear?

For all my gripes about the way bans have been carried out I at least felt confident knowing that they were being done via the consultation of more than one member... this completely eliminates that, and I don't think it will in any way help encouraging new members, or making this site seem less 'elitist' if Diamonds can suddenly go all vigilante and ban whomever the hell they want.

The potential for this is not good sift lords, not good.

Thylan says...

regarding ^ I'm curious to know why it was felt to be needed. Were there situations where 2 bans were not being invoked quickly enough? In those cases, was it even a diamond that was the first to invoke the ban? Im not sure what problem this is meant to have solved.

raven says...

Yes, if instating this was meant to somehow make up for giving everyone gold and above the ability to post embeds from any site then I say, take it back! I am a big enough person to share the powers of free for all post-ability without requiring some unnecessary and potentially abused power being granted in return!

lucky760 says...

>> maatc:
Same here. Dag, it is the link in your own profile that is supposed to link to "your" last comments. ("Browse" next to comments on member page)


The comment "browse" link on your own member profile has been fixed.

>> joedirt:
There may be a bug in the code for gold & diamond can submit any site. Also, I see a bug in the quote function if you look at the comment above this one.


Fixed and fixed. Smilies in quoted comments are simply vanished.

>> Thylan:
Re joedirt's "Best not to view vids you know and like" comment, i imagine that is only true if you can click to upvote, "without" having registered as a view.


This was the intended functionality (it's also how the votes-to-views system works) and has been corrected. Now when you vote, the unique member view counter increments.

>> oxdottir:
I feel like I've been dumped by my boyfriend.


I hope you feel better about the situation after reading around. We didn't at all intend to discard everyone's posts to clean out the queue. I take full blame for the oversight. Just as I realized it was going to happen and hurriedly tried to auto-requeue everyone's queued videos SiftBot did his automatic clean-up thing. I fixed the two videos you linked and if you have any others we can fix those as well. You haven't been dumped by us. We don't just wanna be friends. We do love you and are still in love with you.

>> Thylan:
Can there be an *unpromote that can only be called by the original submitter?


That's not a bad suggestion. However my initial concern is that people will be able to just promote for a few minutes, unpromote to get their power back, promote another post, etc. Perhaps if you unpromote you still have to wait 1 day from the initial promote to invoke it again... ?

>> videosiftbannedme:
only about 1/3 of the videos I've submitted have ever made it to 10 votes within 2 days.


I know what you mean. Though I think this will just be a benefit to those of we Sifters who are a bit more active. The nonchalant video submitter who doesn't really care will have their video disappear in two days, but the rest of us can requeue every 12 hours. Let's give it some time, but I think this new system will work great. Again, most calls for a decrease in queue lifetime all agreed two days would be best.

>> raven:
Instaban: I don't know how or why you guys came up with this but I don't like it... I think it will be too easily abused.


The InstaBan feature can only be exercised once every two days (and, no, there's no countdown timer because you shouldn't be looking forward to your next InstaBan). This is needed because there have been lots of situations lately where a spammer just posts spam comments all over the place. There's no way to invoke *ban because you have to do that in a comment (IOW, you can't comment an invocation about another comment). This power must be used with care and we will be informed via email any time someone uses it. If it is abused action will be taken against the abuser. (Think water boarding or bamboo shoots and fingernails.)

gorgonheap says...

I'm so mad about the dramatically shortened queue time that I'm going to forgo the massive amount of swearing I would like to do and just say that it sucks and is THE WORST feature added to Videosift. Not even the downvote decision made me this mad.

BillOreilly says...

Great, now because of InstaBan (sounds like a Metamucil competitor), everyone will be racing to get a star, even me. Wait, no I won't, I refuse to be bullied by the threat of banishment! I will fight the good fight! I will stand up for the little guy! I will take my InstaBran with every meal to stay regular! Hear Hear!

Thylan says...

>> lucky760:
>> Thylan: Can there be an *unpromote that can only be called by the original submitter? That's not a bad suggestion. However my initial concern is that people will be able to just promote for a few minutes, unpromote to get their power back, promote another post, etc. Perhaps if you unpromote you still have to wait 1 day from the initial promote to invoke it again... ?


Actually, you may have my idea backwards

*unpromote is not callable by the person who called *promote. It is only callable by the original submitter of the SiftTalk post, or Blog post (and maybe vid too, haven't really thought as regards vids)

I see it working like this.

Fred makes a blog post.
1 month later George calls *promote on the blog post, and so his promote timer is set.
Fred, who's post it is, feels its not appropriate for the post to be on the front page again (for whatever reason. i can think of many) as its their post, they invoke *unpromote and it goes back as it was.

Now, as its not the original *promoters fault that it got *unpromoted, so it possibly is fair that their timer gets reset and they get their promote power back. not sure. but i'm not suggesting that they should have the power to recall their own promote by invoking *unpromote on something they just promoted.

raven says...

@lucky: I can see the rationale in the case of spam comments... ie the folk just posting links to their websites or products... because those are indeed difficult to get rid of. But I really would feel better if this definition is spelled out somewhere prominently, because I fear it will be misinterpreted as the right to ban anyone a diamond member might feel does not belong here, or could be said to be exhibiting troll-like behavior. But, as much as I or others might dislike trolls, this site should remain committed to free speech and work to protect that right among its users.

That said, I hope you do monitor those banned, but I would almost feel even better if there were some sort of way to make that information public, so others could review it as well, and there can be public oversight of these decisions.

eric3579 says...

Time to chime in:

Queue - I dont think promote should be used in the queue. Promote vid should not be on each page. Two days seems way to short. If Im gone for a weekend my vids get discarded. I dont see why there is a twelve hour requeue. When you requeue are you just reseting the date? If so a video deep in the queue will stay there. Im assuming unique view is not resetting.

This is however an initial impression.

lucky760 says...

>> raven:
I really would feel better if this definition is spelled out somewhere prominently ... there can be public oversight of these decisions.


When you try to InstaBan it alerts that you can only continue of the member is guilty of gross violation of Sift guidelines. Aside from our private email alert, SiftBot will post to the banned member's profile. I considered having create a ST post to announce it, but thought it'd be too much.

>> eric3579:
I dont think promote should be used in the queue. Two days seems way to short. I dont see why there is a twelve hour requeue. When you requeue are you just reseting the date?


I and most others seem to feel promoting queued videos is a good idea. If there's a video you know should be published, you can promote it up above the listing to get everyone's attention and those last missing votes.

It may seem short, but again, most people were hollering for two days and we think it is reasonable.

Yes, requeue only resets the queue expiration timer, so the video will get another 2 days and that's it. We can't erase views because that would lead to immediate abuse pushing videos that maybe don't deserve getting published to the front of the queue twice a day.

All this is brand new. Like any new changes we add or propose, it is met by most with hatred and disgust, but ends up working out perfectly well. Give it time. Fortunately for my emotions, most of our changes this time around were called for by so many that there is actually some happiness/appreciation.

Doc_M says...

Why up the promote to Gold 100? So gold isn't good enough anymore? It seems like it's making the sift even more aristocratic than before. Goldies rise up! and I'm not even gold.

Also MAJOR downvote to the shorter queue time. Huge downvote. You can't imagine the size of this downvote without bionic brain implants. Either this needs extended or we need to all make a huge effort to make our judgments twice as fast as we did... or we need to double the size or our registered user-base somehow. Has anyone else noted the small number of videos getting through the queue lately or is it just me? yeah... screw that, I'll give it a month before I gripe anymore.

Aaand, remove instaban entirely. Too oligarchical. I'd even vote to change the "ban" requirement to 4 invocations.

Sorry for being so negative.

I like * kill and comment stars and "quote" option. Big ups on those. ...and all the ones I didn't bark about. They all look sweet.

raven says...

I would like it if a SiftTalk post was created... I mean, how else would others know if a member is banned? I don't think any of us is in the habit of frequently perusing the profiles of Noobs.

MarineGunrock says...

>> raven:
Instaban: I don't know how or why you guys came up with this but I don't like it... I think it will be too easily abused.


No, it won't. There has yet to be any gross abuse of goldie powers (to my knowledge). There is zero potential of abuse as far as I can see. I think everyone here would tell you that our userbase is far too mature for that, especially the diamonds. No, earning 250 points doesn't instill you with any wisdom, but it shows that there is a commitment to this community, and that they aren't about to fuck that up.

I think if there was potential for abuse of powers, we would have already seen someone * discard other member's videos. Raven, you have 271 posted videos. I can almost guarantee that someone could discard every single one of them before anyone was able to stop them, or even notice.

So no, I don't think there is any potential for abuse of instaban.

MINK says...

>> lucky760:
All this is brand new. Like any new changes we add or propose, it is met by most with hatred and disgust, but ends up working out perfectly well. Give it time.


you sound exactly like tony blair.

Krupo says...

>> jonny:
comment quoting = +1 comment voting = -1


Oooh, new quote feature. I like!

The elmination of "*save" means that I have rename my two playlists:
http://www.videosift.com/playlists/Krupo/VideosToSave
http://www.videosift.com/playlists/Krupo/Videotopromote

Everyone, I'd like to re-introduce you to "UnpublishedVideosToPromote" and ... "Published Videos To Promote".

I may consider deleting the latter actually but I'll hold on to it for now.



>> MINK:
>> lucky760: All this is brand new. Like any new changes we add or propose, it is met by most with hatred and disgust, but ends up working out perfectly well. Give it time. you sound exactly like tony blair.


Oooh, it works. Nice!

>> K0MMIE:
this is worse than world of warcraft! Now I have to lvl up to 250 to get my instaban! OMG! Epic!


That's both hilarious and sick.

>> blankfist:
Cool, thanks, Lucky. I wasn't sure if we could promote our videos back into queue-siftence or not, but I'm guessing we cannot. I'm still trying to figure out the new rules.



I think queue will do the trick in that case.

Grimm says...

Possible bug...earlier last night I got a notice from siftbot that a video expired in the queue after 4 days. Then 12 hours later I got another notice from siftbot that the same video was being expired again because of the new 2 day queue. But when I went to look at the video it was not discarded.

Something else that may or may not be related....after this happened I tried to submit a video and got this message "Whoops! You've reached your submission quota. As a charter member, you are allowed 6 videos in the queue at a time." yet I only had 5 videos in my queue at the time. I was thinking that perhaps it had something to do with the video that was expired but did not discard. But in the meantime the video mentioned above got the 2 votes it needed to be published and moved out of my queue leaving me with 4 unsifted videos. I submited another video taking it back up to 5 and then again was blocked from submiting a 6th because siftie thinks I already have 6.

lucky760 says...

All that wackiness has to do with SiftBot automatically discarding a ton of videos, then my half-ass attempt to re-queue them all which allowed them to get discarded again immediately, then finally my full-ass attempt to re-re-queue them all again.

CaptWillard says...

Gorgonheap's brief Sift Talk post about shortened queue times has been discarded, so I'd like to reiterate what I wrote there:

Actually I thought that 3 days was the consensus too, lucky. Sure, even I stated that 2 days MIGHT work, but I also stated that we should try 3 days first just to see how that worked out. Still, I'm willing to give this a try, but I wish we had gone to 3 days first. This issue should definitely be revisited in 2 to 4 weeks. Maybe this new queue period will make a believer out of me by then, but I think it should be put to a vote in 2 to 4 weeks tops.

PS: Lucky760, I don't think what gorgonheap wrote was a "random, meaningless rant". He made a valid point about a major change to the sift. Of all the changes that you made, the queue time change has had the biggest impact of all. Just because YOU don't see any quality doesn't mean it's not there. Eye of the beholder and all, eh? So if you think * quality stars are being abused by me or anyone else here then restrict their usage too, or just get rid of them completely if you feel that our judgment lacks standards.

lucky760 says...

Sorry, but I disagree. The content of his ST post was essentially nothing more than "Hey! Why did you discard my posts? I didn't get to requeue!"

It wasn't about a change to the Sift. Rather, it was about being pissed about an error that slipped through the cracks last night during the upgrade.

That is no more than a rant and nowhere near worthy of a quality star point.

[edit]
And, btw, the discard was because it was just GH asking a question, and the question was answered. Period.

dag says...

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

I too felt that the consensus was 2 days. But consensus is a moving target. We can only do our best to interpret, and also add our own judgment.

There's only one certainty I've discovered in running an online community. No matter how popular a change is perceived to be- there will always be people unhappy with the outcome.

We understand that- and to run this place effectively it's our job to listen and try and decide if the complaint warrants redress. We're listening- but our current configuration is around 12 hours old, so excuse us if we're not jumping to undo the current changes in order to address personal opinions.

CaptWillard says...

>> lucky760:
Sorry, but I disagree. The content of his ST post was essentially nothing more than "Hey! Why did you discard my posts? I didn't get to requeue!" It wasn't about a change to the Sift. Rather, it was about being pissed about an error that slipped through the cracks last night during the upgrade. That is no more than a rant and nowhere near worthy of a quality star point. [edit] And, btw, the discard was because it was just GH asking a question, and the question was answered. Period.


So what you're saying is that you're the final judge of quality, right? How else am I to interpret that? I basically said that quality is subjective, thereby at least giving us some wiggle room to respect our differences in opinion, but you're unwilling to see it that way because YOU, an almighty admin, simply say it ain't so. Forgive me if I fail to worship at the altar of the SiftGods, but I ain't buying it. People post "milestone" articles at Sift Talk about so-and-so achieving a new level, and quality stars are almost always given out. And I've done it too. But really, what's so quality about that? Someone notices a sifter's star turns gold, writes three sentences, and ABRA CADBRA, * quality? Should you have intervened and invoked *notquality to put a stop to this, being the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Quality? Give me a break.

CaptWillard says...

>> dag:
I too felt that the consensus was 2 days. But consensus is a moving target. We can only do our best to interpret, and also add our own judgment. There's only one certainty I've discovered in running an online community. No matter how popular a change is perceived to be- there will always be people unhappy with the outcome. We understand that- and to run this place effectively it's our job to listen and try and decide if the complaint warrants redress. We're listening- but our current configuration is around 12 hours old, so excuse us if we're not jumping to undo the current changes in order to address personal opinions.


Dag, I'm not asking anyone to jump and undo any changes right now. As I said in my comment before the last one, I'm willing to wait and see how the new system works over the next 2 - 4 weeks. I wish queue time had been shortened to just 3 days first, but since you set it to 2 I'm willing to ride it out for a little while. As I also said, in 2 - 4 weeks I may be a believer. So I'm not at all being close-minded. I simply think gorgonheap has a legitimate complaint, and because of this I hope that we revisit these changes in 2 - 4 weeks by polling the membership in a Sift Talk post by asking us how we all think these changes are working out. Maybe by then I'll be on board completely with you guys. In fact I'd say there's a decent chance of it. So is polling the membership down the road being unreasonable? That's all I'm asking.

MarineGunrock says...

>> CaptWillard:
So what you're saying is that you're the final judge of quality, right? How else am I to interpret that? I basically said that quality is subjective, thereby at least giving us some wiggle room to respect our differences in opinion, Give me a break.


Capt. Willy, methinks you need to not get so offended because Lucky's opinion is different than yours. Isn't that what you were preaching about up there? Respecting difference of opinion?

He said his, you said yours. There really isn't much else to be said, and especially done. So just give it up and drop it. There is no need for sarcastic remarks and snide comments about "SiftGods" and "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Quality."

CaptWillard says...

>> MarineGunrock:
>> CaptWillard: So what you're saying is that you're the final judge of quality, right? How else am I to interpret that? I basically said that quality is subjective, thereby at least giving us some wiggle room to respect our differences in opinion, Give me a break. Capt. Willy, methinks you need to not get so offended because Lucky's opinion is different than yours. Isn't that what you were preaching about up there? Respecting difference of opinion? He said his, you said yours. There really isn't much else to be said, and especially done. So just give it up and drop it. There is no need for sarcastic remarks and snide comments about "SiftGods" and "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Quality."


Methinks you have a piss-poor understanding of what I just said, MGR. I originally took the stance about quality being in the eye of the beholder, i.e., it's all a matter of opinion, while Lucky's declaration that gorgonheap's post is (italics his) no more than a rant is a solid declaration that there is no gray area. In other words, he is treating it as a fact. Not me. Pay attention.

Don't try to give me any lessons in manners either, as I've been the recipient of your oh-so courteous treatment, as well as others. Is it time now for you tell me to "stay the fuck out" of Sift Talk? As YOU would say, "Give me a fucking break".

Lucky's ass has been duly kissed now, so run along, brown-nosing hypocrite.

CaptWillard says...

>> MarineGunrock:
Actually, "give me a break" was your sentence, not mine. And no, I'm not telling any one to stay out of Sift Talk. I never said you were wrong or he was right. Again, all that was said between you two were opinions.


No, MG, YOU said "give me a fucking break" and "stay the fuck out of this channel" when you wrote this comment, the same one I linked in my last comment in the word "others". That's how YOU talk to some people here. So as I said, spare me the lesson in manners.

lucky760 says...

"What the hell!
Ok how come there wasn't any warning about cutting the queue time in half?! All my queue got discarded and I didn't even have a chance to put in a requeue! That's messed up. I had two vids that need more of a chance then that."


Well, that's the entirety of GH's post, and that's all I've left to say on the subject.

There's been quite enough of this empty debate and I'll not pander to your visceral hunger for insults, argument, and name calling, CaptWillard.

If you'd like to continue this, please head over to YouTube where there is an endless supply of like-minded intellectuals who have no other wish than to participate in such endless cycles of offensive remarks.

Now, if you're capable of such a thing, let's all try to move forward, shall we?

CaptWillard says...

You were the who one first insulted me, lucky, when you slammed me for awarding gorgonheap a star. If you're capable of such a thing, why don't you admit it? Or are apologies beneath you? What names did I call you? A SiftGod? Chief Justice? Ouch, sarcasm hurts! Just like you calling me an "intellectual", I suppose. Touche. And calling MG a brown-nosing hypocrite isn't name-calling; it's the truth. You've seen how he's talked to others from what I've linked, and now he acts like he's Miss Manners. That's a textbook example of hypocrisy. Are you going to tell him to discontinue his offensive remarks too?

Don't act like you're a victim and try to paint me as someone just itching for a fight, lucky. Maybe you're tired and stressed out from all the work that you've done, and so maybe you're not in the mood for someone's gripes after you've busted your ass. We're all human, so we all go too far some times. And maybe I have too tonight, but I didn't come here looking for a fight. I expressed a concern, and you basically painted me as a nimrod for agreeing with gorgon. That doesn't sit too well with me.

Enough said. By now we obviously are aware of each other's opinions on this matter, even if we can't respect our differences. Still, I'll drop it for now. However I'll continue to speak my mind if I feel something needs to be said.

dag says...

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

We do discard technical support type ST posts when they have been addressed. GorgonHeap's post while kind of emotive- was related to an issue that was addressed and fixed. His sifts were returned to the queue and the issue was closed. Leaving that kind of post up can sew confusion during the transition. So not out of line at all really to discard.

IF GH would like to provide feedback about the policy itself for the long-term, rather than his Sifts - this thread is the place to do it.

joedirt says...

GH responded down thread from my post -- "And everyone acting like your life is over because your TWO DAY OLD submission is gone, calm down. It can be saved and I'm sure the admins will gladly reinstate it. So quit talking about how upsetting it is. Either drop the admins a msg, or see the other sifttalk thread for the do-it-yourself approach." (Is all I'm saying)

----------

Lucky, not that you haven't done enough coding for a month. What about something like the "P" goes away if you have X comments and a member for a month, or something like that. I mean BillO should be a member by now.

dag says...

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

A few more votes and BillO loses his P ... oh the irony. Actually, I'm not sure that will work when he gets 15 comment votes. Let's find out.

>> BillOreilly:
Great, now because of InstaBan (sounds like a Metamucil competitor), everyone will be racing to get a star, even me. Wait, no I won't, I refuse to be bullied by the threat of banishment! I will fight the good fight! I will stand up for the little guy! I will take my InstaBran with every meal to stay regular! Hear Hear!

joedirt says...

Dag, I don't think photos get used that much. Seriously, first of all people have to figure out the HTML code above... And secondly, even a place like dailykos which is probably THE most active comment thread type blog. Heck, go look at fark. images are not used that often and not often abused. Heck they could have a (INAPPROPRIATE) link next to them that removes the img html automatically.

P.S. Upvote for BillO comment

gwiz665 says...

I have no beefs with the changes; all good, except I miss my vote-box.

joedirt 'n dag: I would be saddened by the use of images in comments, because it would be abused. And I really don't like haveing the choice of NOT seeing a screenshot of 2girls1cup that someone else thinks is fine. If it's just links then fine, but full-on images in comments - no thank you.

Thylan says...

>> Issykitty:
Hey! So I see Bill O has exceeded his 15 comment vote requirement to lose his P, yet I still see it. Someone remove the scarlet P!


Nah, let him earn it or not earn it as he wishes.

Thylan says...

>> dag:
A few more votes and BillO loses his P ... oh the irony. Actually, I'm not sure that will work when he gets 15 comment votes. Let's find out. >> BillOreilly: Great, now because of InstaBan (sounds like a Metamucil competitor), everyone will be racing to get a star, even me. Wait, no I won't, I refuse to be bullied by the threat of banishment! I will fight the good fight! I will stand up for the little guy! I will take my InstaBran with every meal to stay regular! Hear Hear!


The star point is pointlessly awarded, but the P is still there. Joy and Justice

my15minutes says...

>> MarineGunrock:
>> raven: Instaban: I don't know how or why you guys came up with this but I don't like it... I think it will be too easily abused.
No, it won't. There has yet to be any gross abuse of goldie powers (to my knowledge). [[snip]] There is zero potential of abuse as far as I can see. I think everyone here would tell you that our userbase is far too mature for that, especially the diamonds. No, earning 250 points doesn't instill you with any wisdom, but it shows that there is a commitment to this community, and that they aren't about to fuck that up. I think if there was potential for abuse of powers, we would have already seen someone * discard other member's videos. Raven, you have 271 posted videos. I can almost guarantee that someone could discard every single one of them before anyone was able to stop them, or even notice. So no, I don't think there is any potential for abuse of instaban.


yeah, i don't see anyone that's actually earned that power, here, abusing it. srsly.

for all the reasons mg mentioned, and a couple more that are probably just as obvious to him, and most everyone else reading this, as they are to me.

>> Issykitty:
Hey! So I see Bill O has exceeded his 15 comment vote requirement to lose his P, yet I still see it. Someone remove the scarlet P!


upvote for hawthorne reference.

choggie says...

posted this to Mr.Bill 2 days ago.......
Member Stats
Rank: no rank yet (but there is an odor)
Rating: 0 star points (legend in yer own mind)
Votes Cast: 2104 (spurious mouseturbation?)
Comments Posted: 589 • browse-but why fucking bother when there's candy wrapper ingredients lists
Profile Views: 4635-when a bitch-slap just can't be performed


wear it like a junior achiever badge, eh????...may I use you as an *instaban test subject???? C'mon, yer monkey brethren went to space and they came back, innit??

MINK says...

>> dag:
I too felt that the consensus was 2 days. But consensus is a moving target. We can only do our best to interpret, and also add our own judgment... No matter how popular a change is perceived to be- there will always be people unhappy with the outcome.


monsieur, vous etes un homme tres colbert, l'expression de la "truthiness" vraiment frappe le nail sur la tete.

dystopianfuturetoday says...

I've got absolutely no problems with the changes whatsoever.

The dupe killer is a nice added feature.

It would be nice if we could mass-murder all of the Simpsons/Family Guy clips in the dead pool. Trying to fix the embed code on a S/FG clip is an exercise in futility, which is why they take up 50 percent of the dead pool.

I killed my beloved 'Radiers of the Lost Fridge' clip last night. Poor little clip just wanted to tend the rabbits....

raven says...

I agree on the decision not to allow images in comments... while sometimes I find that it might be handy in the course of discussion, to illustrate something or the other with graphical evidence, I have noticed in other forums that the general quality of discussion seems to fall when people have that power... instead of bothering to type out thoughtful (or at least amusing) replies, they tend to resort to communicating via LOLcats and those godawful animated .gifs that have been floating around the internets since its inception. For Example:

Farhad2000: The GDP is down because... {blah blah blah, more long and extensive background on the matter given in economics-speak Raven does not understand.}

Raven: Okay, but what about the preservation of feminist rights in a country so consistently run by neo-conservative billionaires.... {blah blah blah blah lots of paranoid menstrual ranting}

Choggie: I do likes me some wimmin'... {blah blah blah blah all in choggish and illustrated with a neked pic of Tura Satana.

Farhad2000: {pic of O RLY? Owl}

Raven: {LOLcat Invisible Buttsecks!}

Ant: {proceeds to downvote all comments}

Raven: {Animated .gif of vengeful Jesus flanked by fireball animated .gifs circa 1994, hunted down especially for ant} Oh noes indeed!



Y'all see my point? This is somewhere we don't want to go

Also, I have to agree with CaptWillard that * quality stars are incredibly overused... currently they seem to be handed out like condoms at an AIDS awareness rally.

raven says...

Plus, images in comments will slow the load time of pages way the hell down, and older threads will likely become littered with 404 errors after a while, as images hosted on other servers are taken down or deleted. All in all, a bad idea. Let's keep this place classy.

kronosposeidon says...

>> dystopianfuturetoday:
I've got absolutely no problems with the changes whatsoever. The dupe killer is a nice added feature. It would be nice if we could mass-murder all of the Simpsons/Family Guy clips in the dead pool. Trying to fix the embed code on a S/FG clip is an exercise in futility, which is why they take up 50 percent of the dead pool. I killed my beloved 'Radiers of the Lost Fridge' clip last night. Poor little clip just wanted to tend the rabbits....


Is it possible to mass murder something that is already dead? Or do we have to double-kill them like zombies? Hey, double-killing the living dead reminds me of a Simpsons Halloween episode. Ooh, I'm going to hunt it down and post it!

kronosposeidon says...

Seriously, has anyone besides dystopia and me thought about euthanizing all those Simpons/Family Guy/Futurama clips in the dead pool? Or how about this: If any video has been dead for over a year how about automatically * killing it quietly in its comatose sleep? After a year it's probably suffered irreversible brain damage anyway, so pulling the plug on it is probably the only humane thing left to do at that point. Maybe that's something to consider for VS 3.2 or later.

Let's not let this end up in the courts, people.

kronosposeidon says...

>> MarineGunrock:
^Good idea, but the deadpool is only a few months old.


Therefore that gives everyone with Dead Pool videos a LOT of time to try to fix their videos before they get Kevorkianized. Anyway, it's just a thought for now. Everyone keep that idea in the back of your video-addled brains for a while. Next time there's a round of suggestions hopefully one of us whose cerebrum hasn't completely rotted away from viewing Chris Crocker's music video (thanks a lot, Mycroft) will have the mental wherewithal to suggest this. Me, I'm already using drool buckets. (Thanks again, Mycroft.)

rembar says...

>> kronosposeidon:
Seriously, has anyone besides dystopia and me thought about euthanizing all those Simpons/Family Guy/Futurama clips in the dead pool? Or how about this: If any video has been dead for over a year how about automatically * killing it quietly in its comatose sleep? After a year it's probably suffered irreversible brain damage anyway, so pulling the plug on it is probably the only humane thing left to do at that point. Maybe that's something to consider for VS 3.2 or later. Let's not let this end up in the courts, people.


I disagree. Maybe we could have a graveyard or something to put the kinds of dead sifts that are constantly cluttering up the dead pool, but there's no reason to remove the sifts altogether.

JAPR says...

Hm, on second thought, I agree with rembar. When a video gets saved, you get your star point back, but if it gets tossed out completely, you lost a point forever and somebody can sift it later and get the point that was rightfully yours.

joedirt says...

Lucky,
- The Your Comments - threaded is broke (not threaded)
- I recommend after like 100 comments, the comments(121) changes to the same function as "add comment". The reason is the AJAX gets kind of hairy when a thread gets this long (like this one).

sometimes says...

I still think the missing carrot that VS needs is statistical awards.
I've covered this here:
http://www.videosift.com/talk/awardsmedalsetc
I think I posted a comment on the what-do-you-want-to-see-in 2.0 post, or maybe it was the "hey, look, 3.0 is out" post.


The way I see it, there are user-stat ratings, totas awards, and video post ratings.


--- user-stat ratings:

High posts-to-votes-received ratio. i.e. ranking by sum-of-votes-received / number-of-posts
High total votes-to-views ratio.
necromancer: high number of, or ratio of dead pool fixes.
chatterbox: high number, or ratio of quality sift talk posts.
etc.


--- Totals awards:
again, covered in the above post
# of videos in playlists
# of videos saved by other uses
# of videos promoted
# of videos discarded
etc....




--- video posts stat awards:
These are awards given to video posts, which would also have totals listed on user profile.

video made top 15
video made top 15 in 2 days
video made top 15 in 1 day
video made it out of queue in under 6 hours
video made it out of queue in under 12 hours
video made it out of queue in under half of queue length
video made it out of queue in under 1/4 of queue length
heavily playlisted
heavily bookmarked.
heavily commented
above average for week
etc.

lucky760 says...

Out of curiosity, how many people would prefer the "quote" function to not jump down to the comment form?

I find as I have been quoting multiple comments in one reply that I click "quote" get shot down to the bottom, scroll back up and click "quote" again, then repeat. Kind of annoying.

Would it bother anyone if you click "quote" and it doesn't jump to the form and you instead just have to scroll down (or hit the end key)?

Doc_M says...

Image posting in such a large "community" is a bad idea. Ask anyone who has been tricked into witnessing a certain "citrus festivity" let's call it... Image posts are too easy to abuse and as they say, "what has been seen cannot be unseen."
Anyway, it'd be annoying and would clutter everything up. I have a HUGE collection of goofy forum-pictures, and I might on occasion feel the urge to rain them down upon thee in torrents.

And after a few days now, the shorter queue time is... less unattractive than I'd first thought.

dag says...

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

>> ^JAPR:
Yeah, I agree, it seems like votes occur faster for stuff that's actually good.


I agree also. I think we have eliminated that 3 day "queue doldrum" between first submitting and it landing in the "expiring soon" list.

lucky760 says...

>> ^dag:
>> ^JAPR: Yeah, I agree, it seems like votes occur faster for stuff that's actually good. I agree also. I think we have eliminated that 3 day "queue doldrum" between first submitting and it landing in the "expiring soon" list.


Good call.

So how many of you are using the new default sort method of the queue? To me it keeps stuff always fresh. Almost every time I go to the queue, I'm seeing something different.

lucky760 says...

>> ^JAPR:
Ah, lucky, just noticed, on the quotes, when you have two or more quotes, it doesn't separate them out, so the two quotes get mashed together (as seen in your post above).


Yeah. That's okay isn't it? Perhaps we will increase the font size though.

I think given the new state of the queue, we should redefine the downvoting mission statement to essentially say that while in the queue, you should downvote any video that you do not want to get published. If we did that, the weeding out or "sifting out," if you will, of all the clutter in the queue will be cut down. Perhaps the no-vote should be the infrequent option with most getting either an up or a down vote.

JAPR says...

>> ^lucky760:
>> ^JAPR: Ah, lucky, just noticed, on the quotes, when you have two or more quotes, it doesn't separate them out, so the two quotes get mashed together (as seen in your post above). Yeah. That's okay isn't it? Perhaps we will increase the font size though. I think given the new state of the queue, we should redefine the downvoting mission statement to essentially say that while in the queue, you should downvote any video that you do not want to get published. If we did that, the weeding out or "sifting out," if you will, of all the clutter in the queue will be cut down. Perhaps the no-vote should be the infrequent option with most getting either an up or a down vote.


Well, it makes it hard to see where the one comment ends and the other one starts. I guess you could just use the link to jump up to them, but it looks a little bit messy all jumbled together.

Doc_M says...

>> ^lucky760:
>> ^JAPR: Ah, lucky, just noticed, on the quotes, when you have two or more quotes, it doesn't separate them out, so the two quotes get mashed together (as seen in your post above). Yeah. That's okay isn't it? Perhaps we will increase the font size though. I think given the new state of the queue, we should redefine the downvoting mission statement to essentially say that while in the queue, you should downvote any video that you do not want to get published. If we did that, the weeding out or "sifting out," if you will, of all the clutter in the queue will be cut down. Perhaps the no-vote should be the infrequent option with most getting either an up or a down vote.


If you decide to do that, it might be a good idea to up the DV requirement for discard to 5 or more... It's at 3 right now right? 10 UV to publish, 3 DV to kill seems a little hasty on the kill side.

jonny says...

Props again Lucky for all the caffeine fueled, blurry eyed, late night coding sessions. IIRC, dag had originally said something about a february release for 3.1. Nicely done.

Got some more lucid thoughts on the changes.

The vote box seems fine to me. I see what people mean about it being a smaller target visually and for the cursor, but that should be easy to get used to (like when downvotes were first introduced).

The usability improvements (recent comments, search, quoting, post snipping, channel list, and kill) are all nice improvements. I recommend some sort of regular expression searching or better matching be a top priority in the next release, though.

Instaban I'll reserve judgement on. I am optimistic though.

The 2 day lifetime for the queue is fine. Honestly, my impression of the consensus was 3 days, but I don't really think it's that big a deal. So far, it seems to have improved the situation, but it's way too early to tell.

The requeue invocation, though, seems kind of ludicrous to me. I can requeue every twelve hours but if, as eric says, I'm away for the weekend, I get screwed? What's the rationale there? Why not allow a requeue every 2 or 3 days (or even a week) on any of your previously queued vids? As long as it doesn't increase the number of vids allowed in the queue, what's the difference? It would be far more useful, and would alleviate one of the possible problems with the new promote (see below).

The new default sorting is a good idea, but I don't think it's working properly. Go to the middle of the queue, and you will find lots of posts where they don't belong. Also, the original submitter's initial vote/view is not being counted. And lastly, since no cookies were invalidated on the changeover, it's likely that very few people are actually using it, which will limit its effectiveness.
(As for sorting by views coming up before - it did. I'm pretty sure MINK initially proposed the idea before 3.0. That got mutated into votes-to-views in discussion, the rationale being that the really popular vids would pop out of the queue very quickly and the crap would quickly get pushed to the bottom. I think the problem was that not many people used that sort mechanism, and most posts don't get that many unique views before being published or discarded.)

The new promote invocation is an interesting idea, but may have some serious flaws. Joedirt already pointed out one of the potential problems, i.e., with enough gold-100s around, the promotion box is bound to get crowded. Also, now that it can be used every two days, it will almost certainly offset some of the benefit of reducing the queue lifetime.

I expected a much bigger outcry that you were taking the most popular pair of invocations away from one of the larger groups of users. It's only been a couple days, so I guess you'll just have to see what kind of reaction you get. Replacing them with the ability to post from "unblessed" hosts might appease the masses. I don't understand the rationale though - the latter ability definitely requires more experience. Shouldn't that have been the gold-100 ability?

jonny says...

>> ^lucky760:
To me it keeps stuff always fresh. Almost every time I go to the queue, I'm seeing something different.


I think that probably has more to do with requeue and new post frequency increased as a result of the shortened queue life. I've been using newest and see pretty much the same deal.

>> ^lucky760:
I think given the new state of the queue, we should redefine the downvoting mission statement to essentially say that while in the queue, you should downvote any video that you do not want to get published. If we did that, the weeding out or "sifting out," if you will, of all the clutter in the queue will be cut down. Perhaps the no-vote should be the infrequent option with most getting either an up or a down vote.


That's been my position all along, but I can't say it's ever been met with much enthusiasm. In fact, it typically engenders some rather nasty responses.

JAPR says...

I sift a lot of music, and I think that if we went downvotes as opposed to no-votes on the songs we personally didn't like, about the only thing that would get through would be maybe a Beatles vid or two. I guess it would represent more accurately the community's common taste, but it would also get rid of a lot of the interesting diversity in the Music and Rock'n'roll collectives.

edit: I mean, the typical video in the rock sift will have about 10-15 votes with over a hundred views. Imagine if all those no-votes turned into downvotes

jonny says...

One other thing about the new promote invocation occurred to me. Because of the small window that vids will be put in the promoted box, I expect most people will tend to use them during the high traffic times of the day to maximize its effect, with obvious consequences.

legacy0100 says...

I personally believe that all variation of reviving powers (save, requeue, notdead, promote etc etc) should be tweaked around and be achieved more easily for the greater public sifters.

There are billions of discarded sifts out there that are being wasted and same contents being overlapped by different users submitting the same thing over.

By allowing the discarded bins to be included in the search fields and having regular users to be able to revive them (and reward them somehow) would not only prove to be more traffic efficient but also encourage sifters to be more active around here.

Just my two pence.

Krupo says...

*sticky

Can someone please clarify that earlier comment that caused some controversy before we unsticky again -> is the recommendation to view by default, downvote only when you really want to raise the queue limit (my understanding BEFORE coming here), or was a new convention just proposed?

The suggestion is so radical (to downvote by default rather than just watch and ignore) that I wanted to get some confirmation that it was maybe just a typo...?

choggie says...

so hey, why can't you dismantle the alphabetical order thing for channel tags, and let us order the channels??? I wanted "spacy-mystery-art for my tags and got art-mystery-spacy....."What the hell does that make sense worth a rind of Earnge!!!??"
fix this and make mai de

I reckon "Change, please?!" is much better a way to axe for summpthin'..

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