Take a look at my queue. For probably the first time since I joined this site a few months ago, it's pretty much empty: there's one video in there. Tomorrow, there will be zero. And I'm not going to refill it anytime soon. This is my call to all the other sifters who feel that this is a worse place without the requeue function -- Join Me. Our empty queues will speak volumes. This is non-violent protesting! We'll be like Gandhi, only instead of fighting for freedom, we'll be fighting for videos on the internet. It's pretty much the same thing, right?

But seriously, I think this is important, insofar as anything can be important on a website dedicated to wasting time.

What are the main arguments against the requeue? Allow me to show you why they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

1) "It allows anyone with enough patience to sift up any crappy video they want." Really? Is this seriously a problem? I don't recall seeing an epidemic of unworthy videos on the front page. Do you? I don't think this argument gives the site -- or its community -- nearly enough credit. If a video has made it to the front page, that means that nine other people aside from the original submitter found it interesting/funny/worthwhile. Nine people. Who are you to say that this video isn't worthy of being on the front page? And remember when someone tried sifting a bad video on purpose to see if it would make it to the front page with enough requeues? He failed miserably.

2) "It clutters up the comments." I'll give you this one, but what's so hard about implementing a requeue button, as several people have suggested? This way there wouldn't have to be any requeue-related comments.

3) "The requeue was only around for four months, and we were just fine without it!" Maybe so, but who cares what we did or didn't used to have. It was an improvement. It was progress. Most importantly, it made the site better. It allowed more obscure/interesting videos to make it to the front page. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but getting rid of it altogether is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

This is actually kind of long, so more after the jump:



Here's my suggestion (well, mine and a bunch of other people's): bring back the requeue. Give it a limit of two or three, and make it a button. Perhaps put a little requeue timer below the button (something like "Requeues left: 3"). Without the requeue, it is much much harder to submit interesting, different videos. Getting rid of the requeue has taken this site one step closer to becoming exactly the kind of bland, run-of-the-mill video dumping-ground that I know we all want to avoid.

I think the lack of a requeue will ultimately change the kinds of videos that people submit, if it hasn't already. People will think: Hmmm, I could submit this clip from an old black and white movie that I love, but it'll never make it to the front page. I'll just submit the millionth video of a cute cat instead. Hmmm, I could submit this music video by this great obscure band, but it'll never get enough votes in one go. It'll just submit this video of a lady with a huge rack folding some clothes. Hmmm, I could submit this interesting short film I found, but what are the odds of this making it? I'll just submit this video of stuff exploding in slow motion.

If you agree with what I'm saying, join me! Let your queue empty out. There's no point in working hard to find interesting videos only to see most of them die in the personal queue. It's stupid, it's pointless, and it goes against what this site is about.

P.S. Could some kindly diamond please sticky this?