Agreed

I'm not so sure about extending promote benefits to charter members. Most charter members have relatively high star ranks anyway, and then it would be giving disproportionate power to any charter members with only a few star points.

I'm fine with giving it to gold stars, but the system works well already.

yeah, the promoted videos area doesn't have enough videos in it right now.

>> ^Fjnbk:
I'm not so sure about extending promote benefits to charter members. Most charter members have relatively high star ranks anyway, and then it would be giving disproportionate power to any charter members with only a few star points.
I'm fine with giving it to gold stars, but the system works well already.


The 50-stars idea works too.

Keep in mind this is to encourage promote-sharing - since the 'wasteful' self-promote options already exists.

It used to be available to gold stars, so I wouldn't mind seeing it return.

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

I wouldn't like to see the promoted area used much more than it already is, when there is 5 posts in a row it's looking a bit crowded.

Of course if we had stuck to the single line method of display it wouldn't be such an issue ... (grumble grumble)

-

>> ^dag:
I wouldn't like to see the promoted area used much more than it already is, when there is 5 posts in a row it's looking a bit crowded.
Of course if we had stuck to the single line method of display it wouldn't be such an issue ... (grumble grumble)

Post a poll.

>> ^dag:
I wouldn't like to see the promoted area used much more than it already is, when there is 5 posts in a row it's looking a bit crowded.
Of course if we had stuck to the single line method of display it wouldn't be such an issue ... (grumble grumble)


I voted for letting gold stars promote.

I would have agreed with you if it were not for the fact that now only the first page shows the promoted videos, which makes it much more tolerable during the days where numerous promotions occur.

Yes, there is sometimes a long list of promotions, but I have never seen a row of 15-20 videos. I assume there is a reason for this, think about it. You want to promote a video because you think it deserves more attention. You see there is already more than 5 videos promoted, such high numbers make it less desirable for you to promote it, and in turn you prefer to wait for some of the promotions to expire. I don't promote much, but when I do, I act in this way for two reasons: Because I know no one likes a mile long list of promotes, and because it would be silly to put a video I feel deserves attention, into a situation where that 'attention' gets to be shared by other 6 or 5 promotions.

I tried filtering the top users page listing members by the most starpoints. There are like 150 members capable or promoting right now, some active some are not. With such a high number you would expect tons of promoted videos but that's not really the case. On the other hand there are only 78 gold stars (more or less, I was rushing through the list). out of those 78 how many are active? I doubt all of them are. (assuming that about 50 are active right now) Do you really think letting those users to promote would change the current situation significantly?

I never consider what other stuff is promoted when I promote something, I just do it. I suspect that if we lower the requirement to gold or charter, we will see many more promotes.

I think that the new promote system was good, but had some flaws. I could see a different version being more successful. The old version that's here now is hard to get an overview of.

While anyone can self-promote, which is ridiculous, it doesn't make sense to limit promoting other videos at all. P and above.

Allowing more people to promote will only further clutter up the front page. It's fine the way it is.

As much as I would love to be able to promote, and have often found a video I would have promoted, I agree with disco. I think that the whole first page would just be promotes, and you'd have to go to page 2 just to get to new stuff. Furthermore, there would almost certainly be situations in which the promoted videos would require a second page. This would take away from the "spotlight" effect that promote videos should have, and currently do.

Forget about gold star promotion (sorry paul). I'd give it to charter members tho. It'd be another incentive to go charter and there can't be enough.

I can't believe mine is the only vote for that option. I also can't believe that my stupid script doesn't colorize vote options that only have one vote, argh. Well it's fixed now, sorry guys if I made anyone download it twice

>> ^gwiz665:
I never consider what other stuff is promoted when I promote something, I just do it. I suspect that if we lower the requirement to gold or charter, we will see many more promotes.
I think that the new promote system was good, but had some flaws. I could see a different version being more successful. The old version that's here now is hard to get an overview of.


(in the case of goldstars) 'Many' more promotes? and this approximation is based on what? There are less gold stars than members capable of promoting right now and on both sides a good number is no longer active. How would that cause many more promotes? We simply don't know until it is tested. For the ratio between members able to promote VS. gold starts is about 2:1 right now.

"I never consider what other stuff is promoted when I promote something, I just do it"

Then you might want to start considering it. Because this is part of what causes the problem of having a long list of promotions.

I think if you have earned 50 star points, you have worked pretty hard to be part of the Sift Community. And if after that you are nice enough to want to promote something, I think it is great!

I don't promote too often. Yes, I am cheap and I usually save points for the beggar's canyon. But every now and then somebody promotes my videos, and it makes me so happy, and I swear I am going to be better and promote stuff too.. as soon as my personal queue gets below 70.. or 80.. or 90! 90 qould be good! Better than my current 97..

ANYWAY, I salute the less selfish people who actually want to promote others instead of just begging for their own video Yes, I know, the list in the front page can get long, but still, I think it is just NICE to have somebody promote your video, and we probably should have smiley points in addition to regular points!

A smiley point for every promote, and any other really nice thing people do in here!

Oh, I have no solid data for my approximation, but I already think that there are too many promotes, so more would not necessarily be better. And no I'm not going to start considering anything when I promote a video. If I promote it, there's reason for it, I don't want to have to consider what others have promoted at that time as well.


>> ^mauz15:
>> ^gwiz665:
I never consider what other stuff is promoted when I promote something, I just do it. I suspect that if we lower the requirement to gold or charter, we will see many more promotes.
I think that the new promote system was good, but had some flaws. I could see a different version being more successful. The old version that's here now is hard to get an overview of.

(in the case of goldstars) 'Many' more promotes? and this approximation is based on what? There are less gold stars than members capable of promoting right now and on both sides a good number is no longer active. How would that cause many more promotes? We simply don't know until it is tested. For the ratio between members able to promote VS. gold starts is about 2:1 right now.
"I never consider what other stuff is promoted when I promote something, I just do it"
Then you might want to start considering it. Because this is part of what causes the problem of having a long list of promotions.


In a sense, I agree with campioni, that charters should be able to promote other users videos. Though I think that the self-promote should be removed from them instead.

But alright, let's do some napkin math.

Right now there are 142 users with gold-100 or above. There are a bunch of them that aren't here anymore, but let's leave that out for now.

There are 78 users with gold right now.

Every user has 1 power point (or more) available every 2 days, but we are obviously not seeing over 100 promotes every 2 days.

In the last 7 days, there have been 292 promotes: http://www.videosift.com/search?q=%28promote+requested+by%29&t=c&u&o=new&vmin&vmax&sh&l&n&b&submit=Search&pg=9

292/(7*24) =~ 1.7 promotes per hour.

In seven days there are potentially 142*3.5 + X = 500 minimum
(X = (# of charters + # of bought power points + power points awarded by everything else))

Now obviously, there a many more power points floating around, because of X. We also have to take into account how many of the 142 are active and while I don't really want to go through them all, let me just throw an estimate out there ~100 are active.

Now we have to consider the people who just store their power points and those who use them on other stuff, such as quality.

In the last 7 days there have been 11 sift talks that have received *quality: http://www.videosift.com/search?q=%28declared+quality+by%29&t=c&u=&o=new&vmin=&vmax=&sh=&l=&n=&b=&submit=Search

In the last 7 days there have been 141 *begs: http://www.videosift.com/search?q=%28beg+requested+by%29&t=c&u&o=new&vmin&vmax&sh&l&n&b&submit=Search&pg=5

Quality and beg are tainted, because anyone can do those.

I'm not sure what we can conclude from the data, though. 1.7 promotes are pretty OK, I guess, but given that every promote lasts 2-3(?) hours they can accumulate.

Keep it as it is. I don't like the promote system being messed with because I like promoting other submissions and I think it currently works well.

Clearly there would be more promotes and more clutter.

But the two main points for me is that a promote is a powerful invocation and should be the reward for dedicated sifting. Secondly you lose an incentive for getting to 100 stars and I wouldn't want to take that away from people.

If you wanna go the MMO way, you could remove power points all together for users without stars, like talents in WoW. This would make it super simple in the beginning, and grow more complex when you advance in "levels". It already does this to some extent, but it's not super clear.

I could see some possibilities in expanding the siftbot message when you "level up", so he lists the new things you can do, and how you do them.

The end game content could be the great dupeof war of 2009.

One of my favourite things about this site is seeing an old vid, from months or years ago, reappear on the front page. Sometimes you saw it; other times you did not. Often, I'll search for an old vid to share with a friend, or just to watch again myself.

If I could promote, would I? Yes - probably 1-3 times per month.

All I use my power points for now is * begging. If I could, I would love to bring nifty content back onto people's radar.

That's why I voted for Kodos.

The toys should be pay-to-play to encourage more charter memberships.

I see non-self-promote more as a content optimizer, more than a power bonus.

Promoting other peoples stuff adds value to the sift in a way that begging and self-promotes do not. Since nobody, except sock puppets, has a vested interest in promoting somebody else's video, it seem that it will generate better promotes.

How about move promote down to silver and self-promote up to gold so that other peoples stuff can be promoted before you can promote your own, but still high enough to defuse sock puppetry?

I vote for having promote available to gold-100s and charter members. Then it would be an incentive for continued sifting AND for signing up and donating money. It is always good to have something to strive for. I know I grinded obsessively to get to 100 stars just to be able to promote, and I enjoy this power immensely. Not only that, but I value it more because I worked for it.

Self-promotion should however be moved up to at least gold star level, maybe even gold-100. It was a good thought to have it available to everyone back when all new members had only one power point to spend, so they would be encouraged to buy more. But now that it is much easier to gain power points, either by commenting or fixing dead pool videos, that purpose has vanished. I suspect that everyone having self-promote power is the reason for the frequent clogging of promotes of unsifted videos.

Voting for this poll ended with the majority of users voting it's fine as it is now (100 starpoints).

math master siftbot, i'm proud of you.

for now, ill just keep promoting & begging for my own queue. but it's good to see some very interesting ideas on changing (or not changing) the promoting-option. (and even about a MMO-style videosift, gosh! )

and, if you do even more counting than siftbot is capable of, you see goldstarpromote actually has 35 votes. i'm not 100% sure about lowering the promote to goldstar anymore (i haven't changed my mind about charter though), but the selfpromote vs promote-others ideas by people like Ornthoron seem to make sense. Maybe something to keep in mind for vidsift 3.4

(or something just to try for some time, for a beta of a new sift version for example, to see how it works out)

thanks everyone for your votes and sharing of ideas.

good idea. Increase activity as well as let quality vids get more votes while avoiding obvious dupe submissions