Great documentary

Looks like this vid was submitted to vSocial by TayTV and links to The TayTV blog. I'm all for righting wrongs here, fedquip, but this is clearly against the posting guidelines.

*blog

Sending this video to Sift Talk for discussion (sent by Gold Star member mlx)

That's about as self-linked as they come...
*ban

Fedquip cannot be banned because starred accounts are immune from banination. If you feel this account requires banination, please contact the administrators (ignoring banination request by gold star member raven)

oh that's right... well, what do we do about this then?

I have room to re-post. poor fedquip, he had been lobbying so hard for the vSocial.

*discard

Discarding this post (discard called by gold star member rickegee)

Hey rick, you gonna re-post and cover up for the five newbies that got banned yesterday? Or is once again fedquip the only exception to the rules that all the rest of us follow. I really want an explanation to this so I'm going to try to *blog this one again.

Siftbot won't blog again....this cover up goes higher than I thought.

I found the loophole that everyone is going to let fedquip fall through. From the 'submit a video' page:

Please do not submit self-promotion of any kind.
Read the posting guidelines before posting for the first time. Violation of these guidelines will result in a permanent ban.

Notice how it says for the "first time." So the loophole is, after one post then you are free to break the rules.

That's really lame. And I am going to express some pre-emptive disappointment because I feel the admins and everyone else are probably just going to stay silent about this and hope it goes away.

it's a self-link but i don't think we need a witch hunt. it's not like fedquip's just come on the scene.
more careless i think.

I should have re-posted with sterner language. Bad fedquip, bad bad fedquip.

But you can't seriously be comparing a productive and provocative member like fedquip to CBSStarsWithGuns or BambooBoyz or any other recent members of the ban hall of fame.

mlx caught it and correctly interpreted the rule. The video is not totally specious like a commercial for tax products or boys beating each other with bamboo sticks. In fact, it is a fairly compelling vid that I believe belongs on the Sift.

In the Gwaan post, I found that this segment had very little to do with the anti-globalization argument that Pilger was trying to make and was an enormous and misbegotten stretch on Pilger's part. As a stand-alone piece, it is much, much stronger and focuses the proper attention on the 'silent' massacre of Chinese citizens that occurred.



I do like the idea of siftbot covering things up. Siftbot! Produce Hoffa and the reason for the WTC7 collapse!

deputydog: "more careless I think" - so he had a brain fart and didn't notice the BIG RED DO NOT SELF-LINK that was there for his previous 175 posts?

rick: "productive and provocative member" - anyone can peruse com central for clips from last night's Colbert and Stewart. Maybe if he didn't throw away his tv he could enjoy Stephen, John, and Bill (Maher) on their respective networks like the rest of us. Instead of wasting his internet time catching up on what he's missed.

deputydog: "witch hunt" - this isn't a witch hunt, it is a cry for a reason why for one certain member the rules are continually bent and forgotten.

I missed the original post from long ago, but fedquip should not have been given a collective as a bronze star, I don't care how many years he's been running his own blog, we earned our stars and collectives, his was given to him out of some bizarre twist of entitlement. Admins aside, no sifter is better than another, rick. And the way that TAYTY is treated like its own seperate animal from the rest of the sift with fedquip's little clique of members that he brought in when he finagled his own collective it was then no wonder how he shot up the ranks so fast and became one of these prominent members you spoke of, rick. Before the collectives he barely participated in the sift, he was a member for so many months and only had a bronze star. But now that we have collectives there is a new playground for everything from Attenborough-to ren and stimpy-to Kevin Smith-to whatever nonsense they think their little friends are going to upvote into their insular little playground.

Productive sifters are better than unproductive sifters.

And I think we all have certain sifters that each of us gravitate to due to friendships, shared sensibilities, and common interests. In this sense, VS is no different than other communities.

I also disagreed with the decision to make TayTV a collective when fedquip only had a bronze star, but it only hastened the inevitable because fedquip would have been a gold star two weeks later with his smart choices of very popular sift.

I do enjoy the TAYTV collective and I have never ever personally communicated with fedquip. TAYTV's reliance on the Stewart/Colbert for vote pimpage will indeed kill it when Viacom murders all of the clips and/or the Motherload eats them due to expiration dates. However, TAYTV has very well-defined content and I like the links I often find there.

Why the sour grapes, Wildman? This isn't Brook Farm. And this isn't the first time that a gold star has been caught dipping into their personal stash. You regulate, discard (and re-submit if you actually want to reap the whirlwind), and move on to the next video.

And we are all superior to those lousy admins like dag and James Roe (lucky not included because he can destroy us all with a keystroke).

No I disagree for cutting corners for people just because they submit good content.

We went over this rule when self-linking was re-dressed by MLX herself, I came forth and vouched all my self-linked posts. None of them were commercial either (Robert Johnson doc and a doc on Robert Capa), this is not so much about content as setting a precedent for other users that come to the site.

The moment we start to be lenient on users, for submitting content is the day the entire dynamic of this site unravels. If I can post anything just because it's awesome and then link my own website. Am I really self-linking? Am I self-promoting?

I rather not get into discussions over details, and rather have a blanket rule for all posters.

Because I know it would make us look rather stupid for banning other self-linkers, some who don't just come posting garbage, but good content that simply violates the rules of the site. Should we give them a break as well?

And you know, farhad, how much it hurt me to have to sacrifice that Robert Johnson documentary...but you're right, it's the integrity of Videosift we're talking about.

This particular situation smacks of favoritism and elitism. I don't think this was careless: I think this was very well planned out. And since Rickegee is a member of the collective the presence of the TayTV icon (and link to the blog) the reposted video is still in violation of the guidelines.

# You are in any way responsible for or involved in marketing, promoting, or any other manner of proliferating the video.
# You could receive any form of compensation (monetary or otherwise) as a result of the submission or subsequent views.
# You are somehow represented in the content of the video whether photographically, artistically, audibly, or metaphorically.

This video cannot be saved by mlx because mlx saved another video less than four days ago - sorry.

Well . . .my earlier comments in this thread came before I knew about the sheer breadth of the problem.

I still don't think that every instance of self-link merits the ban-happy banhammering, although with Lucky's recent font changes, it is getting more difficult to call it an innocent mistake.

Nonetheless, there has always been the confusion about what constitutes self-promotion. Does the posting of an Attenborough vid from your own YT account promote you? For the purposes of Videosift, it does, but it is not the most intuitive conclusion.

So I still prefer a system of first warning where a newbie posts something spectacular from their own account. And I support bans when the goal is clearly commercial spamming.

And, in the case of fedquip, I would have to vote ban, because lawd have mercy . . .

and I'd have to second that *ban

Fedquip cannot be banned because starred accounts are immune from banination. If you feel this account requires banination, please contact the administrators (ignoring banination request by gold star member raven)

rick...I knew you'd come around eventually...I third the ban.

I go away for a month and you guys decide to have a big huge row? Cool, it saved me a lot of reading/writing/thinking time.

My position on following the rules and upholding the precedents, of course, continues to stand unchanged.