I too dislike the new promote mechanic. I had no issue previously with the number of promoted videos that were there.

I've just in the last week or so allowed myself to 'discover' reddit, and now I'm spending time there that I used to spend here... and so I offer some comparisons:

Videosift Pros:

* Huge pro is the lack of duplicates. Repetitive content on reddit is really quite tiresome

* Tight community, we 'know' each other moreso than the huge mass that is Reddit


Videosift Cons:

* As of the update in particular, a loss of focus on comments. It used to be that the number of comments and link to them was large and below the text description of the video, now it's gone from there and only shown as a tiny icon under the thumbnail. I'm FAR less drawn to the comment sections here now, I just don't notice the link any more.

* The promote system used to be a great way to get an old video and bring it back to people's attention, and without fear of stuffing up other people's videos that were there. I used to wait if there were already heaps sitting in there, for a time when it was less crowded, and I think this worked well. Now that there are always three videos there there's no real idea of how 'busy' it is, and I'm not going to check how long any of them have been up there, that's 'work' to find out. Basically it's broken. A queue system where you're told that your video has not yet made it to the front page, but is queued to be shown in 'x' hours or minutes would be great. Then any video gets a minimum of time in the promote spot, but can potentially stay up there longer if no videos are in the queue. And yes, the way they're currently displayed is lacking compared to 'normal' videos.

The main reason I really come to videosift is for the discussions, and with them being pushed to the back now in this design, I am feeling less and less inclined to come by.

Very sad and pathetic.

'The most messed up thing I've ever seen'

Really? A small spider on your wall minding its own business is 'the most messed up thing' you've ever seen?

And then you feel you have to punch it?

If this is not fake, then this guy is really quite pathetic.

I'm constantly taking ones that big and much bigger outside in cups... no need to kill them, they keep your insects in check.

Huh... big old pile of meh.

The first one was great, this one just lacked... anything, it didn't have any spark to it

Yeah, the concept is fine, it's the execution, framing and composition. The mist looks nice, the colour is nice, the bird is in a great pose, but there's so much uninteresting frame at the bottom, and the right side.

Yeah, as far as nature photos go, I'd rate it pretty damn low.

The setup, and how he does it is amazing, but the end result... 'meh'. He has a lot of better ones in his gallery

Yeah, it works ok, except that for invocations that need specific formatting, it could pre-populate with a guide. Like the length one, while it shows you in the tooltip for it what format it needs, it'd be better if it inserted into the text length=HH:MM:SS so you know exactly what and where to type. Same with other ones, like dupeof and the like.

And yeah, it's missing quite a few entries.

I have no idea who this person is or why we should care about a masculine looking female?

Possible invocations again misses the opportunity to list everything that can be done and help with more guides as to how to use the various features.

Just then I was trying to second a ban request on a self linker. Sifty said that if the ban was seconded then it would stick... I couldn't remember what one did, possible invocations was no help, didn't list ban or anything, so I tried 'seconded' as that seemed to be the thing to do based on his message, but alas, it was not correct, I just had to ban again.

Big opportunity to make invocations much more user friendly missed I'm afraid.

Is that not it? Erm... *ban again then? Why is the invocations thing not more informative damnit!?

*seconded

hrefs in comments appear broken. Let me try...

link back to vs

Ahh, no, it's not any link, it's this particular archive.org link, I'm guessing because of the extra http:// in it

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110204071026/<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/">http://videosift.com/">BROKEN!

Hey, my link didn't work, wth? And what is that which it's turned it into in the comment? That's not what I typed, it's stripped the closing quotes from my link and lost the quoted text out of it.

OK, just posted it in the bugs, it's to do with the http:// on the end of the archive.org link

Ok, after checking <a rel="nofollow" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110204071026/<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/">http://videosift.com/">an archive version for comparison... the thumbnails really are bigger... weird, must be something to do with them being framed as they are (which looks great)... don't know about that.

The comment thing though, is valid. In the old version the comment link is quite large text. I NEVER used the icons under the thumbnail, didn't even notice them until now really.

I initially thought you'd removed the ability to comment at all from main page.

I _think_ the solution _may_ be to make the thumbnails 16:9 rather than 4:3, as virtually all content is 16:9 now, so you're getting black bars on everything. And then make the icons under the thumbnail be about half as big again. Or, bring comments out again as a link, because that's what a lot of us go straight for here, the comments to a video.

After using it for a bit now, I find the video thumbnails too small and the row of icons underneath them minuscule.

I can't, in good faith, upvote a video which spells worlds that way, and doesn't have a possessive apostrophe either.

And yeah, blatant ad for nVidia