The next version of VideoSift is slated for release on our 2nd Siftiversary this February.
I'd like to take this chance to ask all Sifters for help in identifying the things that irk you about the site.
Lucky is making some small structural changes to the interface - but in this release, we're most interested in ironing out problem areas that have been identified from our last, very major update.
Now's your chance. Let the whinging commence!
I'd like to take this chance to ask all Sifters for help in identifying the things that irk you about the site.
Lucky is making some small structural changes to the interface - but in this release, we're most interested in ironing out problem areas that have been identified from our last, very major update.
Now's your chance. Let the whinging commence!
I already gave a few suggestions in an earlier Sift talk, so I won't rehash those here. However I have come up with a few more ideas to improve this site:
1. Make the default search include all videos in the Dead Pool. I think that the primary use for the search engine is to look for dupes, so the Dead Pool needs to be included.
2. When an an account is banned, automatically switch the video tags to just "banned" or "redacted", and then lock them out to prevent further changes, rather than allowing them to be switched to "has no dick" or "rapes dead sheep".
3. Create a new invocation called *destroy. I would like for this invocation to only be used:
a. For a video that's already been discarded, and
b. It can only by invoked by the user who originally submitted the video, that way no one else can mess with your discards.
Why have a *destroy invocation? Mainly to remove all the discarded dupes from the system. It cleans things up a bit, and also precludes the possibility of a discarded dupe being * saved by a well-wisher who didn't notice that the video was discarded for being a dupe.
4. Ditch V-Social from the Sweet Sixteen list of approved video hosts. Who really wants to sift a video about a marketing or promotional campaign? And I can't even find where their damn videos are anyway. I'm also inclined to suggest ditching Fora.tv because it also is rarely if ever used, but I do realize that they have some quality content so I'm not going to push hard for that. Possible replacements for either or both of these sites:
- Megavideo
- Funny or Die
- Veoh
- Glumbert
- eBaumsWorld
- Mojoflix
- SuperDeluxe
None of these sites are going anywhere any time soon, so I think they're acceptable.
5. Happy Hour from 5 - 7 pm every day.
That is all.
The iphones are coming. I mean, I may be on the front of the wave now, but the bulk is coming. I won't be the only one who would like to use VS from an iphone. (Honestly, this is the only site I visit where I really can't do crap--I bank, enter grades, fill out surveys, etc. on other sites and it all works.)
Oh, and I am an American in America, and I use "whinging" all the time. No one has any trouble understanding me either.
The reason to have them still available is so you can see how many times a single video died in queue.
Otherwise, excellent suggestion list. Especially happy hour.
A more important improvement would be to change the restriction on requeue. I think being able to requeue a discarded video every N days would work well and not interfere with or detract from the use and benefit of saves. It would also allow the amount of time vids spend in the queue to be changed without complication - another potential big improvement.
From a design standpoint, the lists in the right column don't seem to have a coherent plan. I find I have to occasionally bounce around a few pages to find particular links that I don't use often. I think user customization of that column would be a massive improvement, but I suppose that's a 3.5 or 4.0 kind of feature request.
and there did seem to be consensus on allowing 100s to post from any host.
I.E.: A comment gets over 15 votes and it gets a star? Or maybe no matter how many votes, but five or more from goldies = star?
Instead of dating videos and comments with "published (or written) by so-and-so X months, X weeks, X days ago", could we simply use "published (or written) MM/DD/YY, military time, Pacific time"? I suggest Pacific time only because that's the time zone where the servers are physically located, correct? I realize that one of the many things that makes VideoSift different from other sites is it's fairly unique time stamp, so I know I might be messing with a time-honored tradition. Therefore I'm not going to go down in a blaze of glory to defend this idea. However, for me it's just easier when I see the date and time of publication rather than the time span that separates me from the event. Because I'm stupid.
2. All Comments -> Threaded view is gone, I really liked that featured, especially following discussions.
3. The improved way of telling apart dupes as mentioned by others, so many times... OMFG cool video! Search! Nothing! Discard post! Post! OMFG ITS A DUPE... *smash computer screen*
http://www.videosift.com/talk/Searching-before-video-vubmission-is-a-crap-shoot
How about you change the views logged for a video to just the member views? It gives a much more realistic look at how the video has fared, since it only counts the views that could possibly vote for the video at all. This'll bring the viewed numbers on the videos down, but should massively bring up the views/votes ratio, which has been a rather depressing thing to see lately (just look at any of the top fifteen new videos).
How about I can submit even though its not VS kiddy approved VS embedabble
How about you pay us since we submit content that generates views to your site.
drattus: it might be nice to have the "your comments, threaded" option back again.
Farhad2000: 2. All Comments -> Threaded view is gone
On edit, more than possible. It's there, when I'd tried it a while back I must have forgot the thread on top and assumed it was the full listing. Early senility setting in.
E.g., here's yours: http://www.videosift.com/usercomments/drattus?sel=allth
Drag and drop reorganization, through Ajax a la Facebook application list, would be hugely useful, as doing it by any other method would be complicated at best for regular sifters and impossibly difficult for newbies.
Also, not to beat a dead horse, but it would be nice if another look could be taken at comment voting, to either make it have some weight or to remove it altogether.
I'm against removing the time stamping saying how long ago something was published, but it might be nice to include an actual date alongside the current stamp.
Fix the freaking comments list so that "Your Comments" isn't in some bizarro world separate drop-down down and list. WHy the hell can't you have ONE LIST of sorting options like it originally used to be?
I would like to see your profile page look more like a response center. You do this everywhere but the profile page. It should have your last 10 comments (threaded), any comments posted to your last 5 posted videos, profile comments, etc.
It should not take 4 clicks (ie. My Profile -> published -> expand video's comments) IT should already be there for say, anything newer than a week old?
Also why not allow Recommends / Invites inside videosift, like a list of "Check this out" videos that users could send within Videosift. I'd rahter they have their own list and interface, then just be simple comments left in my profile.
Because there needs to be a page to display a specific user's comments. Such functionality works very differently than the main listing for everyone's comments.
>> Also why not allow Recommends / Invites inside videosift, like a list of "Check this out" videos that users could send within Videosift.
I guess one thought on this is that people could easily abuse such a thing and just go around spamming everyone to check out their own videos. Of course if there was a friends-like feature, you might be able to send suggestions to people in your friends list, but as many recall that idea was shot down, drowned, dismembered, and barbecued.
(for the record, it's mainly spamming them with links to videos I found hilarious/retarded/etc, and rarely whoring out my own sifts).
And VS 3.1 needs to have more boobs.
It's not my birthday though.
Playlists (Definitely have asked for this before)- Would be useful to help organize things. Either the owner can add playlists to it (like we used to be able to do with collectives) or the playlist creator can append their own somehow and then the group of them can then be managed by the channel manager (ie. removed from the channel, ordered, etc).
Video Tag Cloud- Would also be good for organizing the videos within a channel... and it would also be interesting to see the clouds generated for the various channels as the tags used and their frequency would be specific to the content.
Top Users- Would be nice to see who the main patrons and contributors of a channel are, much like we used to have with the collectives.
Recent Comments- Keep these specific to the channel, so monitoring the chatter related to a specific topic is easier.
Top Rated New Comments- Would also be nice if these were channel specific when viewed from the channel's main page, because this would highlight particularly active threads within the channel and sticking to the subject matter.
As the channels stand now they are about half-way to really, in my mind, being completely content specific channels. It would be great if you guys could take it the rest of the way so that when a viewer is actually viewing a channel, all the content is specific to that subject matter.
In keeping with that I'd like the removal of the Link Partnership Feeds from within the channels... because really, it seems odd to have links to completely non-related, and often seldom updated material within a subject specific channel... its tolerable for the main area of the Sift, but I'd like to see the channels function better as content specific realms.
I'll try not get hyper and fall into a tree if i get to unwrap it
somehow make people tag better, including things in the title
allow searching for long vids only (or tell me how if i missed it)
free beer for all gold stars
- allow more tags
- invade Poland
As the traffic increases, it becomes irrelevant to the point of being "here's some random videos, yay" ...that some random people happen to be watching... It might be worth extending the "new sift-talk posts" panel to include all channel sift-talk posts in place of the "videos being viewed right now."
2) With everyone on broadband, we might up the default vids/page to 20 and top 15 to top 20. This can also allow the additional channel Sift-talk posts in the side-bar.
3) I wouldn't mind giving the "diamonds" the ability to * destroy a vid from the deadpool if it is obviously one of those ones that will never come back, e.g. simpsons or anything comedy central. We don't need to continually seek ways to avoid the law and their copyright permissions to keep 1 minute videos circulating on the sift "illegally." If "destroyed," they're gone from the deadpool and people can re-submit them anyway if the legal issues get sorted out in the future.
Encouraging more commenting and Sift-talk participation might make the community more vocal. For now, we have a very limited group of regular vocal posters. As much as I enjoy the "small group" mentality, it doesn't support dissension very well. I guess I'm concerned about the sift just becoming another marginal and unimportant one-sided group-think forum. If everyone thinks the same way and they all only let certain vids through, then it's not what it seems it was meant to be and it loses HALF its potential audience. It'll just be another Drudge or Moveon. Encouraging commenting by some means might incite some better 2-sided discussions.
Let's think of new ways to gather new traffic. If it means Google Ads, how much does that cost? If it means stickers for colleges, what will that run per hundred? How about widgets for bloggers' web-pages: "Top 10 videosift videos today" widget? etc. etc. Where are we linked back? Have we ever sought actual MSM attention?... Neatorama recently got a spot on CNN online... How can we venture into that realm that is the top 100 visited websites?
We are the youtube sifted to finer purity. If youtube can wind up on the mainstream news, we can too.
Allies such as Neatorama and such will also be valuable in that sort of outreach. We should reach out to the other major blogs that each of us knows of to spread.
Anyway, a community-wide ad-campaign would obviously benefit. We have enough dedicated contributers to initiate more widespread advertisement to blogs and independent free advertisement.
Very often, that is how I view new videos.
Also, the ability to *destroy one's own stuff.
a. Make this page http://latenight.videosift.com/
look more like this page http://waronterror.videosift.com/channels
b. Make this > http://latenight.videosift.com/ <
look like > My channel * (of course you could click on them both to get to my channel)
c. learn how to utilize this..
Custom Profile Styles:
view the default charter CSS file
Upload new CSS file:
d. Understand how to utilize this fully - http://blog.videosift.com/blogpost
2. I would also like the ability or option to view, Top Users, Playlists and channels in a simple list with minimal info but max quanity. One page with minimal scrolling.
this is fundamental.
at the moment the "discarded" category is a jumble and choosing stuff to save is hard.
i like the idea of *destroy.
oh and do something so that the title isn't more important than the video. i don't know what, but do something, because at the moment this is blatantly "titlesift".
many in the top 15 needed requeuing. why? find out, and sort it out.
also i am requeuing a shit video repeatedly at the moment and eventually it will escape the queue. that's weird.
problem at the moment is the bookmark button is at the top, and when i comment i am at the bottom.
just need a little tickbox, either a general setting in my profile or a tickbox for each time i comment. u can have it unticked by default if u like.
and about searching for "long" i mean without a keyword. i just want e.g. all long videos in comedy channel in reverse date order, etc. right now i search for "e" or "the" and that's silly.
Pretty please?
I apologize if this confused any one, so ill try to break it down.
I can have 3 videos queued, and in the Unsifted Section on VS. But under those i can have say, 2 or 3 more videos in my own personal queue. And once unsifted video #1 gets sifted, sub-queue video #1 moves up onto my queued list and the unsifted section of VS.
It might look something like this:
Arsenault185's queued videos:
1. ok video a. 7 votes
2. Decent video b. 4 votes
3. Great video c. 2 votes
Sub-queue:
1. totally kick ass video with *awesomesauce on it a.
2. Almost as good video b.
Then once ok video a gets out of the unsifted queue, the #1 video in the sub-queue moves up. And while a video is in the sub-queue, sifty treats it like a sifted video, to prevent others from sifting it. does this make sense to anyone?
How about we make the invocations clickable? Typing up requeue is always a bitch, lol.
and would it be so terrible if bronze star members or higher had say 5 vids on queue? in the end it's all down to sifter votes anyway. maybe we could raise the bar to 12 votes?