Details about how views function here.

Whole post about the last major queue adjustments here.

To summarize, one view per logged-in member is counted toward votes-to-views ratio. Hover your mouse over the number of views of an unsifted video for tooltip text showing # of unique views as well as actual votes-to-views ratio.

The text in profiles has been adjusted. Thanks.

sorry for the noobstyle questioning, i did search a bit first! i'll check it out.

ok i am still not sure how the votes to views works, and the fact that it is confusing is a bit of a problem, but i guess you've dealt with it so at least it IS working fairly.

about the "queued by" and "published by" ... that's actually pretty neat now, even though it's not called the queue any more, i think it's good and explanatory. i certainly can't think of a better way.

so apologies again and thanks

No worries at all mate. Yeah, the Unsifted area has a queue of videos, and it would be too confusing to say "unsifted by MINK" because it would look as if you removed it from the Sifted area or something.

Let me explain how the votes-to-views ratio works. Currently the top of the default Unsifted tab is Midnight Oil Blue Sky Mine which displays 7 votes and 11 views. If you hover over the "11 views" for the post, pop-up text displays "2 unique (3.50000)". So let's break it down.

• 7 = votes the video has received


• 11 = total times the post has been viewed at all by anyone (except the submitter); this is for informational purposes and not used in any calculation; it may include logged-in and non-logged-in users


• 2 = unique members who have viewed the video; this means the 11 views include a maximum of 2 logged-in users (but does not necessarily mean those 2 caused all 11 views)


• 3.5 = votes-to-views ratio; calculated as 7 votes / 2 unique viewers = 3.5

hover you say?
*pennydrop

ok so then i think my confusion is that kneejerk votes (by people who haven't even watched the thing) keep some videos on the front page of the queue, which i wouldn't think is a good thing.
but i guess you already went over that, and maybe i am being a noob again.
does this mean i can help a video out in the queue by voting for it but not viewing it? if it's anything to do with airplanes for example
why should this advantage exist? (it's 3am, i am probably talking rubbish)

I'm glad someone else has brought this up. You're not talking rubbish at all MINK. As I see it, the votes-to-views ratio still has a major problem, namely the ability for that ratio to be greater than 1.0. This can happen in 3 different ways:

1. a video is saved that was discarded prior to 3.0 - it will have 0 unique views regardless of number of votes
2. upvotes without corresponding views
3. assuming the submitter votes for his/her own post, every new post will start with 1 vote and 0 unique views.

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

I like the simple idea of incrementing the view count from a vote, as long as it's not counted twice (the viewing impression and the vote impression).

i'm not talking rubbish? cool!

i guess another way to put it is why are you allowed to vote on stuff you haven't viewed? siftbot knows if you have viewed, and can hide the vote buttons if you haven't...? maybe NOW i am talking rubbish.

Exactly Dag - the idea is to record the unique view for a particular user when they vote or view it. There must be a list maintained for each post while its in the queue of exactly which users have viewed it which is checked for every view, so check it again when voting. Should be a pretty short list and thus minimal overhead added on the db. (Not the clearest of explanations, but hopefully you get the point.)

My only problem with disabling the vote buttons is that it (I think) it would require more work (for Lucky) and shift the processing load to the browser, which given how long the javascript takes to render now, would not be welcome.

Updated algorithm to include votes as views. Thanks for the suggestion.

ace!!

er, i checked and there's still vids with ratio>1
is it going to take some time to work thru the system or is something else going on?

I think it'll take a couple days to work through the system - it would probably take some excessive hoop-jumping to apply it retroactively.

Someone should slap some *quality on this for MINK.

Anyway, I hope the folks who had reverted to using the sort by newest option will give this a try again. It really should keep that first queue page fresh.

A "hide videos you have viewed" filter option would seal it.

^ oh, oh, last sentence, nice.

is it true that now i can punish a video by clicking on it and not upvoting... kinda half downvote?

i kinda like that but it seems a bit glichy...? what do you think? (or am i talking rubbish repeatedly?)

oh, er, and another thing, isn't self upvoting a bit silly?
can't it just start on one vote (your own) instead of zero?
i just had to profile message a new user "yo man, upvote your own video or it will be at the bottom of the queue!"
isn't that silly?

Still not rubbish.

I was thinking the same thing about the quick view and no vote. But I think that now that no post can get higher than 1.0, it should keep that front page really fresh and the "damage" that can be done is minimal. After all, you only get one unique view. Either way, it'll be obvious in a day or two if it's problem.

As for the auto-vote for the submitter, if they don't vote for it, then it doesn't get a view count increment either. I guess the question is how does the system handle 0/0? It should definitely go straight to the top and not the bottom!

Some people submit videos and do not want to vote on them, or at least they like to wait to see other people's reactions before voting.

The case of 0/0, it already adds 1 to views count if 0 when calculating ratio. So doing the same for votes would make any 0/0 equal 1.

Saved vids are still starting with zero unique views. This is one of the bigger causes of ratios > 1.0, but now that I think about it, there may not be any way to fix this. I guess when a video is discarded, so too is it's unique view list? I guess that will take quite a bit more code to rectify.

ok so now we have a default front page of the queue with still some getting more than 1.0000 votes to views?
also, if i see 3 Steve Vai videos with one vote at the top of the queue, and i quick view them all and don't watch them, because i don't like steve vai, they go straight to page 8 with a ratio of 0.5

this is a bit out of order because it values the first person's vote more than subsequent people...i.e. the first voter has the power to banish the clip to page 8 without even downvoting, or keep the clip on page 1.

this means that obvious upvotable clips will dominate, and other good stuff will be randomly lost, based on the opinion of the first voter. It's ok for obvious stuff to be on top, but not to get such a huge advantage which it doesn't need...? The "expiring soon" list is great, but maybe not as great as the front page of the queue.

http://www.videosift.com/talk/Dynamic-Queuing
i still dream about this...

this means that obvious upvotable clips will dominate, and other good stuff will be randomly lost

I thought about that, but the theory was/is that the obvious upvotable vids will never be in the queue for that long, and thus not dominate the front page. The remaining vids would hopefully be viewed on average a roughly equal # of times, thus balancing out the excessive influence of the first viewer. I'm not so sure it's working like I hoped.

Also, I think a lot fewer people are using the votes/views option, which definitely makes it less effective in keeping the front page fresh. A number of "oldtimers" have said they preferred the newest first option. But that was when the ratio option wasn't working properly. Perhaps a new talk post asking everyone to try out the new and improved votes/views would help?

i think the algorithm's not working anyway, i saw a ratio of 4.000 yesterday, 6 votes and 3 views or something... nonsense!

my point originally was that each video should be exposed to the same number of potential voters before moving off a "recently queued" page. that is the only fair way i can think of doing this. right now it's a bit of a lottery.

I think the only vids that are getting ratios that high are saved ones. As I noted above, I don't think there's anyway to fix that without a good bit of work, since the system would have to save the unique view list for every discarded post.

I remember your dynamic queueing post. And I generally like the idea, but (obviously) it would require allowing the front page of the queue to be arbitrarily long. That may or may not be acceptable, but it would be weird in that it would be the only listing page that would not allow the user to specify how many videos to include. Might be a problem for people with slower connections and/or slower computers.

oh man - I meant to put *quality on that a while ago.

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

fuck slower computers!!! this is a video site.

i mean, you want a bullshit queue that isn't fair but at least has a fixed number of clips per page?

i know you don't.

i am talking about a special "birth pool" i guess, i.e. making the front page of the queue special and fair. there could still be options for filtering any way the user wants, but the default should be fair and the votes/views thing has unforseen problems that have put me off the idea.

what's interesting is... how hard this is

I have a video with a ratio of 2.0 and it's not a save... 4 votes, 2 views.

something happened with the site yesterday morning - I think all of the ratios got reset.