rel (Wtf Talk Post)

jonny

says...

oh, and *quality.

Why cant non probationary, non gem, members *dead/dupe/rel (Wtf Talk Post)

jonny

says...

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.