Its a shame when you see a Probationary member with a three year anniversary badge on his profile. Here is a random example http://videosift.com/member/philippeoc
A solution to that specific problem could be to gift everyone ten points for each year they are here. The poor guy has been here for three years, submitting videos and not getting into trouble and yet he still has that damn red P. There are LOTS of members in that situation.
I wonder how many have given up even trying because its like purgatory you never escape from

It took me a long time to find the tiny FAQ link at the bottom of the page, which led me to this page http://videosift.com/starpower

The system is unbalanced. Members who have a the Related invocation (silver star and above? its not listed when this ability is granted) are able to very quickly accelerate the number of points they are getting.

Reaching a star is difficult, having uber powerful members stealing all the thunder makes it even harder.

I would ask one of you high level members to consider creating a second account and try to reach gold star. With your well honed internet kung fu it should be easy right?

I certainly second your point about standard members being able to mark their own videos dead if they can't find a fix. I can't see any way to abuse that feature.

I'm not as sure about uber powerful members stealing your thunder... and we can't create second accounts - that would violate section 6 of the faq

I agree that submitters should have more control of their videos.

Maybe some of the SIlver abilities could be moved down to Bronze as an incentive to get to that level.

I think everyone should be able to call a dupe - this has to be confirmed after all by a Gold star or greater.

Being able to dead other videos is a bit too much power for a probie in my opinion.

I think the overall consensus is that it's something to aim for by helping sift good videos. With that incentive you'll earn those invocations. That said, some tweaks as mentioned above might improve the lot of probies/non-Golds in a way that makes sense.

I agree with you, @braschlosan. we have to improve the current system ...
*frontpage

Printing this post atop the VideoSift homepage - frontpage requested by kulpims.

Hey now! Some of us like those, you know.

I think a review of the star powers and number of sifted videos required for each level is definitely in order. A few points...

The star level at which the different invocations become available was decided and set when the number of videos to reach those star levels was much lower (bronze used to be only 10, silver 25, gold 50, etc.). When that change was made there was concern about star point inflation, but I never did understand why a 10 star level was not kept.

Some probationary users just don't care to submit videos for whatever reason, and prefer to interact solely through comments. Some of the non-P, non-starred members also take this route. Others don't really interact at all (no submissions, no comments, no votes even) which makes no sense to me. Why bother creating an account and logging in if you're not going to do anything?

For a few reasons, there are some users that dominate the sift submissions, especially the front page. First, charter (i.e., paying) members get to submit twice as many videos as everyone else (and crown members get another one on top of that). Second, some users have all of their posts immediately upvoted by one or more other users the instant they're submitted, boosting hotness and visibility. This does make it difficult for everyone else's posts to get noticed as the default setting for the frontpage is hotness. Third, some folks spend a lot of time sifting videos. The result is that several sources of videos are also dominated by certain members due to availability of slots and time spent posting.

Every user can call dupeof on their own posts (even probies I think), but no one can call a dupeof on a video that duplicates one of their own.

I do agree with you and the others about users having more control over their own submissions. It is pretty silly not to be able to use dead, notdead, backup, and findthumb on one's own videos. Many of the other invocations, though, are essentially available by editing your own video (blocked, nsfw, etc.).

Lastly, getting videos sifted does seem more difficult now than it was when I first joined, especially for non-P and non-starred members. (Probies actually have a little bit of an advantage here by being more likely to get a helping hand from starred members.) I think this is partly do to the changed nature of the community and some of the reasons noted above about dominance. But broadly speaking, we've all been there. It seemed to take quite a while for me to get to a bronze star (when it was 10 videos) and I was submitting videos as fast as the system would allow.

oh, and *quality.

Awarding braschlosan with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by jonny.

Hopefully newbies/probies keep submitting videos, and will be noticed at least enough to get rid of the 'P'. Unfortunaterly lots of 'P' submissions get lost in the pool of spam or self-link, and get unnoticed.

I thought anybody could do a dupeof if they were the submitter of the dupe, but then, dupeof was not around when I was a newbie. I do think anybody should be able to to do dupeof and dead to their own submissions.

I do think that calling dupes and dead on other's submissions should take a level or two.

But, if you can kill and discard your own videos, you should be able to call them dead and dupes also.

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

The reason for the dupeof restriction is because of the havoc produced if it's used incorrectly. It's a pain to undupe.

As for the star points for other activities - I was for that, but we had a poll a while back - I believe and the community said no.

Getting rid of the P isn't hard.

I've been a visitor from near the beginning (and registered for nearly 4 years). I probably got here from a link sent to Bluesnews by Ant. Anyway I've been meaning to make this rant for a long time; I probably should have done it before 5.0, but c'est la vie. I mean it in the best possible way...

I have 8 power points and a rating of 6 stars.

I'm not confident in describing what either of those things are, or are for.

The faq is a tiny link hidden in the footer, when it would be better as a help link on the main menu.

The answers in the faq itself contain assumed knowledge and lack context.

The member privileges page is given much more prominence than the faq, in a Useful pages list. It tells you abilities that require a star level, but doesn't tell you what a star level is, how to get stars, or link to the faq.

The rest of the page reads like it was written by a programmer (probably because it was).

The faq needs to be given to someone who has never used Videosift, and ask them if they understand Videosift after reading it. They won't.

Obviously some people have persisted with it, that's why about 500 people have a Bronze star or more; but I don't think it does much to encourage new users.

I'll never be a user that submits a lot of videos; that's just not my behaviour here. I actually watch almost all my online videos here, so of course... they are already posted

I get that Videosift should be designed to encourage people to submit videos and help out but a system that is hidden away and takes more than a few minutes to understand isn't going to encourage many people no matter how well it's designed.

My suggestion would be to make everything discoverable in the UI itself. "Possible *Invocations" under this box shouldn't give me a list of random words, none of which that I can use anyway (and no indication that that is even the case).

Nor should I be given Power Points if there is no way to use them; it only serves to add to my confusion, and will frustrate other users who think they just got something interesting. In reality they've been given the opportunity to either frustrate or embarrass themselves with a few "User could not X because X is not privileged" messages from Siftbot. Again, this only discourages people from taking part.

I can't flag a post as spam, so why show me the link to do so? Same with downvotes on videos and comments. Inviting a user to read an error message isn't very encouraging at all; it makes Videosift feel like a minefield of punishment. I follow the Sift Lounge link out of curiosity, and again computer says no.

The bookmark and playlist buttons under a video should be words rather than obscure icons.

Showing me things I can actually do will make me feel more useful and encourage me to contribute more. Making those into buttons would be even better. Making those into buttons that tell me what they do and how it helps would be perfect.

This isn't coming from a point of stupidity. I'm a software architect that spent many years developing one of the world's largest community platforms - so I get this stuff.

Mostly I come here for the videos and the comments - I read a lot more than I post. Sifters are not unfriendly to new users, and unlike the train wreck of youtube, they provide their reasoning; so no matter how much you may disagree with someone you can still learn something.

However it feels like a local pub; a small community where everyone knows everyone (except you); and everyone is doing something (except you), and that's because the barrier to getting that community feel is just way too high.

Anyway, I'm done with my rant. To be more on topic; I don't think there is much danger to the Sift if I could declare a video *dead. It seems the sort of thing someone should be able to do as soon as they're out of probation.

For now, I'll just stick to my usual behaviour of watching the videos and reading the comments.

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

Really good feedback. Thank you.

Would it be better if, instead of just saying user is not authorized, @siftbot said "pending review" with a link to click to allow privileged users to complete the action?

In terms of actual effect this might not be too different, since quite a few people read the comments and will make the invocation that siftbot refused... I'm just wondering if it would look better?

p.s. Actually, the cranky bot is a sift institution... how about if it just adds a note along the lines of "well I won't do this, but some insignificant human will be along shortly to review it"? Or a mention in the FAQ that the bot is cranky so don't worry about the rude messages, but the humans are usually friendly?

"The rest of the page reads like it was written by a programmer (probably because it was)."

I was going to chime-in to make a similar point-The site would benefit greatly from a re-tooling from a marketing standpoint-The place has been online long enough to have attracted more regulars-Most of the tweaks initiated here come from the realm of the programmer(s), formula-over-function....

There's plenty of talent and appeal available on the site to tap into when you find it's soul-The preeminent users here, so tenured through charter or stamina can do a lot to encourage fringe participants to broaden the appeal of the community-

One user in particular whose submissions and personality added some quality weight to the place is Arvana.... His fare was mind-expansion² with never a mundane cat fart, car wreck with or without human injury, or unkind word for anyone. A few real pieces of amazing work have floated through here.,.,.

I'm fine with powers pretty much as they are.
The key powers that make this site are: being able to submit (Video), and being able to vote (Sift).
I have no problem with members who have not invested much time submitting videos being severely limited in their ability to tinker with other people's submissions. Perhaps they should have more control over their own submissions.
..and since we are all airing our grievances: The biggest issue I have seen with the site lately, is that videos that don't immediately shoot to the top of the hotlist get lost in the ether, and end up getting P-qued. I'm pretty sure that has something to do with the loss of the Top Ten Expiring Soon list. I'd love to see that come back. Without it, members need to think a lot about what time of day they submit a video, lest it be lost forever. That is not only annoying, but it probably biases submissions from certain global timezones. The alternative is self-promoting, which I've been doing a lot lately, but that feels dirty.

Sounds like a good idea. Sometimes I post *dead or *blocked in the hope that another user will notice, and if they do they've usually upvoted my comment before doing it themselves; then I upvote them back.

Perhaps points can be given for a senior member invoking an action on behalf of someone else.

At a minimum Siftbot should let me know why, and what I can do about it. "not privileged" on its own isn't very useful, and I'm not told beforehand that that would be the result of my actions, so it's all friction.

I'm not saying Siftbot needs to change its cranky ways, but it could be a little more helpful:

Invocations (dead) cannot be called by L0cky because L0cky is not privileged - L0cky needs to get some more stars.

Something that someone once pointed out to me in a private message is that the real incentive to get silver/gold was always the ability to promote someone else's post, and also that point gifting now almost removes the need.

I am happy with my powers right now (And I will sift my first video when I find it).

But I sense that a lot of people put time in thinking about improvements on the sift. Maybe a change/feature - request page would be a probable solution ( votes and discussions set the context and weight to the request ) in order to utilize these willing forces. It will give users a place to put and discuss requests. And the developer party the option to respond directly to given requests (yes / would be awesome but we have no rocket ship / next version / no).

That being said I am unaware of the current life/release cycle of the sift and manpower behind it. So someone may apply a sanity check to my suggestion.

Still 21 power points I can't really use

I agree with @grinter. I think it might be a good idea to bring back the top ten expiring soon list.

I must say I'm sympathetic to the OP. I've never been able to find a satisfactory explanation of what 1 star point is equal to.

I stopped trying, I just lurk

tons of vids I wish I could downvote, but it's not worth the hassle and hoops to jump through or "pay to speed up the process"

so I just treat it the site as an oddity to see if I missed any funky videos, since most things here wind up trended on youtube trend site anyhow.

plus after the site's new change I definitely had to put adblock in place

One star point is equal to having one live video sifted, although there is at least one other way of getting one, see above for qualitied sift talk example. It is mentioned in section 8 of the faq, but perhaps not terribly clearly?

If your sifted video goes *dead, or if you *kill or *discard it, your star points go down by one, and you can, as a result, lose your current badge and go backwards.

I had a P going on six years. I almost want it back .

You can dole em out to anyone, use em to promote or doublepromote or quality or beg....all kinnna stuff to do with those-Cast that bread on the water and watch it sink!

Good post, L0cky - I definitely agree that the FAQ is hidden away - if I want to get information regarding how to post videos, how to troubleshoot problems etc, I just have to google with site:videosift.com and hope I find anything useful - like this page regarding various hosts, but I still don't know how to get to that page from elsewhere on the sift. A link to that page from the FAQ might be a bit helpful...

As well, the submit page itself should have a lot of helpful links - the Video Embed Code field should have a link to the aforementioned page explaining how to embed from various sources, the Tags and Title fields should have helpful texts as to how to write good titles and tags, the NSFW checkbox should link to guidelines as to what exactly is considered NSFW.

If one wants to attract new sifters, then it's not enough to explain guidelines for what you shouldn't post, if it's not explained how to post!


The FAQ should be displayed prominently at the top of the page, easy to find for new (and potential) members, and should include friendly step by step instructions on how to post videos from various popular sites - how to set keywords and channels. The only friendly stuff about that in the FAQ is in the posting guidelines, with the text "Search the site before submitting to see if your video is already posted." - but no hints as to how to do that properly.



Or did I miss the first rule about Videosift - that one does not talk about the sift.

Of those, only gift, promote and beg are available to standard members... and promote only in the context of self promote. Quality and doublepromote require silver and gold respectively.

Of course, if they have 2 pp's, then opening an extra queue slot to post a 4th vid is another option (just not when using the submit bookmarklet, that doesn't seem to work).

A few inputs for consideration, largely to do with making this site more inviting:

- Re the quoted point - this is true if someone is heavily motivated to do so, and has the right habits (routinely visiting video sites, knows what the community will like, understands how to position and title a sift for best attention, knows how to efficiently do the complicated process of sifting, is motivated), but might not be for occasional users like myself that do a fair bit of browsing and only a little contributing.

- The term "probationary" is a little negative in connotation and not really welcoming. From an online dictionary, the definition that best applies is "A process or period in which a person's fitness, as for work or membership in a social group, is tested.". Feels like applying for a job, and is not exactly welcoming new members with open arms. It's easy to understand why new members need a special differentiating status to prevent people from creating lots of vote-spamming accounts and the like, but that word and the accompanying big red stamp sends the wrong signal to those that are first checking out how this site works.

- All that being said, getting rid of the P isn't really the point. It's being given the privileges that most membership-oriented on-line communities offer for being a member in good standing, even if that member has a low interaction count. That includes doing more self-care on one's own videos (as already mentioned), reducing the thresholds at which increased privileges are opened up, and - dare I say it - having the ability to contribute a dissenting opinion (i.e. a downvote) more readily.

- Conversational threads like this getting promoted to the front page are an excellent sign of a healthy attitude in this community.

To a large extent I agree with you. The Scarlet P is a little daunting for a new person and that part could be lessened.

The main reason, in my mind, that a user that doesn't have some sort of star can't do the bigger things, is that if they have nothing invested there is no consequence for abuse. Also, it attempts to incentivize posting to the site.

While I would like to have had comments count the same, like they used to, there we are right now.

I think it's a good discussion to have in here though.

@grinter, @eric3579
Top Ten Expiring Soon List still exists:
Videos --> Upcoming Videos --> on the right side (just scroll a bit)

Wow how stupid do I feel

I think the video hosts link used to be on the vidpost page in v4.2, but it's a bit outdated and has been replaced by the link to "install the post to videosift bookmarklet". I also think the FAQ used to be more prominent in v4.2... it is still there, but you do have to look for it.

I'm pretty sure there is no rule about not talking about the sift, and there have been sift talks on some (most?) of the subjects you mentioned... but perhaps not all.

oh well, as the gate is open, I'll admit having a bit of frustration with the whole thing too. I've been here for 5 years, submitting cool stuff when I can find some. I'm nothing but a small drop in the water of users here but tbh, I feel that wether I contribute to the sift or not, it won't make big difference either for me or the site, so why bother. Most of the time, when I see a dupe or something alike, I invoke it, even while I know I can, with the hope that some member with enough power will do it in. Lately, I stopped doing that.

For me, when I got my first powerpoint I was so excited to finally be able to do something more than before. But then I discovered that when you use them, they go away. Now I'm keeping mine for the day it will matter (meaning that I probably will never use them). Finding a video not submitted is so hard lately...

I would definetly recommend having a look at how stackoverflow.com (if you never had the chance to) privileges and reputation works (ie, when you're granted a privilege, you keep it). Maybe invocations here could be more hard to get, but once you get one, you keep it. Or you could buy some (if the money support is actually used), like specific ones, in case of need. Maybe get some "fraction of a star" on comments or whatever. Something that would filter spammers and morons, but rewards users. Anyway, you get the idea. At worst, I'll keep watching the vids

Ironically the suggestion I'd put at the top of the list has little to do with my post:

Put a big button on the top right of every page that says to the affect 'Submit a Video', with negative space to the left and below.

This will encourage brand new users to contribute, and draw existing users to take part. It will also instantly communicate what Videosift is. It's not simply a site with videos on it, it's a site that people post videos to.

It's a well proven design idiom. Have a look at the call to actions on the following sites:

Stack Overflow - Ask Question
Youtube - Upload
Github - Fork

That's a fine idea. I like it a lot.

It sounds logical but I have been trying hard to reach a gold star and it feels as if I will never reach the goal. I am abnormally stubborn and have stuck around, making it a goal of sorts, but the regular Joe would become discouraged.

I didn't mean to cause a stir! Sorry everyone

I want to point out to everyone that I am not an achievement hunter. If I could have all the most powerful abilities while having no icon next to my name I would be just as happy.

In a round about way my intentions are selfish but not how you'd think. I want the community to grow. If we have more "fully active" members posting videos that means its more likely for the quality stuff to be posted. If there are more quality videos posted then i can spend more time here being entertained


L0cky Thank you for the great comment. I too feel as you do. The insurmountable barrier to becoming a "normal" member is ridiculous.

I know its not your intention but I am slightly offended by the idea that non star members have "nothing invested so I might as well abuse the website."

I can say with certainty that in the past year I have visited videosift and "contributed" in one way or another on more than 275 of those 365 days. What if my contributions were only upvoting good videos and posting humorous/useful comments? That wouldn't get me points but it is contributing right?

Would you be against a combination of time limit and point system? Like my example above if we received ten points for every year we are registered it would take THREE YEARS to reach bronze star if we did nothing else. Would you imagine that someone would register an account and wait three years before using it to troll around? (haha)

After long periods of trying hard to be the best sift member I can and getting NO WHERE I have too felt the same.

After a week or two I always come back. I guess I am a glutton for punishment

I used to send a private message to the submitter telling them the video was dead or like you making a broken invocation hoping a powerful member would see the failure message from the siftbot and do it himself.

I wonder - maybe the Star members were regular users in a day when the site was very different so their experience with being a peasant isn't the same as ours?

Either way its disheartening to spin your wheels

You are not far from bronze.

Everyone - When do you receive the RELATED ability? Its not listed anywhere here http://videosift.com/starpower


I feel extremely far from bronze. I only have 17 points and Bronze takes 25. I have been here for two years so if the pace continues I won't reach bronze until February of 2014!!

Haha I feel even MORE discouraged now. At this pace I wont reach gold star until 2017...

Bronze. I did a search and looked for the lowest ranked member who didn't get denied (or ignored) by the cranky bot.

It's a new feature, and the documentation is lagging behind.

Sweet. At least I get one cool feature when going to bronze

Feeling your pain, as active here as I can be and it's like hammering nails with a rubber mallet inching my way up from a second, Ahem, third, ahem, fourth, ahem...beginning.

choggies' tired-these youngsters have no respect for us codgers....

Each feature of this site on its own sounds logical (and usually is) but the combination of features makes it extremely unattractive for new people to try

For example the limited power points, combined with the reduced number of queued videos, combined with the lack of tagging related or promoting all come to together to give a newer person an extreme disadvantage on gaining points. There are other disadvantages to being a low level member which feed into this that I cant remember at the moment. Think perfect storm.

It reminds me of the idea that the "rich get richer" in economics

I like the visual

If anyone is still reading this topic please see the comments on this video
http://videosift.com/video/Cartoon-Real-Life-Backstreet-Boys-Synchronisation

I can't mark it dead (it is) and I cant give backups.

I still don't get why these commands are restricted. They don't have any personal gain...

I don't think it's about personal gain, I think it's about how much trouble it causes when people inevitably get it wrong! The people who have done the most deadpool fixes are actually the most cautious, and also the most accurate.

Any user can now add a backup backup embed by deliberately duping it, and using dupeof= to put the backup embed on, even though you can't use the backup= invocation until gold star.

Any star bellied sneetch (as @chingalera colourfully described us) can call dead and put in fixes after two days once the vid gets moved from dead to deadpool.