To-do updates and discussion.
posted by max on January 17, 2006 at 09:27:01 PM
I'm glad you guys have been giving so much feedback on the feature list. Please note these are nowhere near final, I just want to throw ideas out for discussion. Don't get too worried!
For those of you who haven't been around a while I suggest you look at the TODO list to get up to speed.
Read more if you care.
For those of you who haven't been around a while I suggest you look at the TODO list to get up to speed.
Read more if you care.
[ PAID ACCOUNTS ] Paid accounts will be a reasonable one time fee. The idea is not to take away any privilege from unpaid users, just to give some more powerful features to the people who are willing to throw down some cash. I really doubt that the money gathered from paid accounts will actually be a substantial amount so it's more to pay for the extra server hardware that these features require. One other major possibility is to have dedicated PAID servers so that paid users experience less lag and faster load times. [ MODERATION ] Moderation has been going on for some time now. It's a necessary evil. At first it wasn't needed but as the traffic grew the need for advertisers grew so as the site could pay for bandwidth. As many of you can guess, advertisers aren't pleased when you have animated pictures of gay men having sex on your domain. If moderation stopped, advertisers would drop the site, and the site would shut down. It has to be done in order to keep the site alive. The honor system doesn't work on a scale this large. YTMNSFW is required. The idea is to allow anyone to do moderation and require a majority vote. If people moderate at the same time they are looking at new YTMNDs, it shouldn't really get backlogged. [ SITE DELETION ] One of the main reasons I have even included auto-deletion is the sheer amount of awful sites that are made on a daily basis. There have been 280,000 sites created, of those, 180,000 still exist. The majority of content complaints I get are from people who have had a site made about them. Girls who have angry boyfriends, high schoolers who want to pick on someone, etc. There are a huge number of sites with inside jokes and pictures of people that aren't noteworthy, people's personal information etc. There are tens of thousands of duplicate sites (ie. needs more cowbell syndrome). If users don't police the content of the community, it's going to continue getting worse. This causes a problem as each site (even if it doesn't get viewed) adds to the load and storage space across all servers. The more gunk clogging up the system the slower the YTMND engine will run. Sites are currently being made at up to 2500 per day. [ SUGGESTED CHANGES ] Again these aren't set in stone and I am throwing out the TODO so you guys know what's going on and what I'm up to. The 2.5 score/100 views/10 votes thing was totally pulled out of the air. I obviously want to keep the "instant on" aspect of YTMND and the ability to see the most recently created sites in as "real -time" as possible. It was definitely a bit over-zealous, and I realize how many sites would be affected by using this method (70,435 to be exact). I want feedback from you, the user. We have to figure out a suitable way to keep the site clean enough for advertisers without holding people back too much. We have to focus on quality over quantity. [ ANOTHER POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOR MODERATION AND DELETION ] User would create a site as normal. Upon creation the site has 2 weeks to receive 5 moderation votes. Anyone can see recently created sites, and logged in users are prompted to choose between a few moderation votes. Users can only vote on a site once one of two things happens a) they have made a moderation decision on that site or b) 5 other people have already made moderation decisions on that site. If after two weeks the site still hasn't managed to get 5 moderation votes it's priority will raise in the queue. At this point only registered users will be able to see the YTMND until it's been moderated. The queue would most likely be displayed on the front page. Another possible idea is do away with the recently created list and come up with an "unknown ytmnds" list. Initially it would be seeded with a number such as 50. It would then cycle through every site that has less than 50 total views starting from the oldest and working its way to the newest. The exposure on the front page would give a lot of old and unknown sites some fresh traffic. At a certain point once the older sites have been viewed 50 times, only new YTMNDs will show up in this area, and it would solve the problem of people making YTMNDs at reset time to inject their way into the Top 15. The possibilities are endless. Below are some new suggestions and things I forgot to add. Again, please comment on this stuff as it is the only way I can get feedback. [ FORUMS ] Regarding the forum goers who want things back to the way they used to be, it probably isn't going to happen. The forums are a free service which are offered to members of the site. It's meant to be a community area. The main users of the forums don't even visit the main site and usually shun away any user who mentions the site. I am adding a sub-forum to appease you, but I'm not going back to the old way it was because it was hurting the community and only benefited a minority of the community. If you are looking for that type of forum there are multiple that have started in response of YTMND enforcing it's rules and I am sure you will have no trouble finding them. [ SITES ] +- Build a protection mechanism to keep sites from being accidentally deleted +-- (especially useful for hall of fame). @- Possibly require sound and image origin fields. [ FLASH ] @- On upload make a copy and convert sound files to SWF (has to be done for mp3) @- Write a flash/JavaScript player and preloader. @-- This will more or less end all sound compatibility options, end the need for (refresh) etc. @-- This would require a major change of infrastructure and the need for a lot more hardware. [ SITE TEMPLATE ] @- Allow users to use the "# !" style on the site template instead of the corner image (not sure if this @-- should be paid or an available feature for all users). The corner image is mainly to draw the @-- attention of www. to people that aren't members of the site so it serves little purpose to non-paid @-- users except for the advertisement. [ STANDARDIZE SITE LINK DISPLAY ] @- Go through and make sure every link that links to a sub-domain opens in a new window. @- Standardize the way a site title and votebar is displayed. @- Possibly make icons for the site list which show sites that are ws/nsfw and sites that are in the HOF. [ SEARCH ] +- Make the search more powerful, make an advanced search. @- Possibly a paid feature to add filtering. [ CONTENT BOXES / FRONT PAGE ] *- Don't show the Top Viewed box at reset, causes some skewed results. +- Write some code so that sponsored sites get an amount of front page time equivalent +- to the percentage of money they have contributed to the total. [ WEIGHTED VOTING ] @- Create an algorithm based on each user's vote spread and the average votes of @- the site's they have created to create a multiplier. @-- This would mean someone who only votes 1 or 5 on everything would have @-- less voting power than people who spread votes around. [ COMMENTS ] @-- Possibly open this feature up for people who have a large number of comments on one site @-- (ie popular sites) for free. [ DONATIONS/SPONSORSHIP ] +- Show users contributions on user profiles. +- Show breakdown of contributions on site profiles.
Add a comment
Max, I think that deleting sites with a low vote could cause trouble. If person A doesn't like person B, then person A can have all of their friends 1 star person B's site. (I hope that wasn't too confusing.) Also, I think it'd be a good idea to allow non-paid members the ability to edit their comments; I hate it when I miss an error and can't change it. Also, would it be possible to allow a "never log-out" function? I don't know about everyone else, but it'd make my YTMND experience a lot easier. Thanks, Max!
I love the weighted voting idea - as it is now, it seems the vast majority of votes are either 5 or 1 - might as well be binary. I thought a "voting pool" might be a solution (where each voter must use their alotted 2-,3-, & 4-star votes before getting a new set of 1- & 5-star votes)... but this weighting system sounds reasonable.
I like it, except for one thing. There ought to be a way to counter poor moderators. The most automated way I can see working effectively is to add a report function to each moderator so that other users can report that moderator for acting immature, etc. Under this system, admins would need a way to view poor moderation reports and block certain users from moderating, or automatically prevent users from moderating after a certain number of reports. Additionally, this number could decay over time to allow the moderator a second chance.
I don't like the idea of paid accounts. It still feels like free account users has privilges taken away. I'm sure most of us is willing to accept a lot more ads on the page (like what Newgrounds does) in order to keep our accounts free. Oh, and please don't delete any YTMND hentai unless it is yaoi. LOL!!!!1111
hey I REALLY like the T-shirt idea for raising money for the site, kinda like Halo did with their fight the flood T's...except we wont donate the money. We could either get a poll going of the design to go with, or use the Sean Connery one, or even use a design from one of the "all the fads" ytmnd's... just a thought, but I know I wanted to buy a Fight the Flood T just because it was badass, but it was too late by the time I had heard about it.
Well...one problem might be the whole profitting off of someone else's image. You'd have to look into that I guess.
Small problem with the T-Shirt idea...
aside from the website logo, EVERYTHING else on here is copyrighted (At least anything that people would recognize/buy), and they'd want a piece of the profits for the T-Shirts, I'm sure (or just skip a step and sue you for making money off of them without permission), so I think we might want to save that for a last resort.
I like these ideas. I haven't been here long, but this has quickly become one of my favorite sites to use and visit. The site deletion bothers me only because often good sites get buried and not seen. I like the idea of having a queue of sites considered for deletion which we can then vote to ditch or save. The rest of the ideas sound good. Especially the weighted voting.
Except.. now that I look at my recent votes.. I see I have voted all ones and fives. There are a couple of reasons why. One is that I often don't bother voting on pages I don't understand. Just because I don't get it doesn't mean it isn't good. I will also vote 5 to counter downvotes on a site I think deserves a better rating.
I like this moderation scheme better than the last one. I think most people can generally identify which sites are appropriate and which ones are not. Also, the weighted voting system is genius. If you are really going to do all this, it looks like you've got your work cut out for you. I'd pay for it, though.
oh ya, i forgot that thing, the preloader would also be an extremely important improvement for it would allow users to watch an image/music synched sie withou having to reload it. I think this pre-loader should have two bars - an image loading bar and a sound loading bar with the percentage and image/sound total size and downloaded so far, like "X Kb of Y Kb" so a user can know if the site is huge or not in order to a void heavy (and sometimes useless) downloads.
Alot of your ideas sound good, but the auto-del takes this site out of the hands of its users. Humour is too subjective to be trusted in the hands of a select few. I understand the need for moderators but they shouldnt be all powerful, or their word final. I dunno, its really tricky, cause of the volume of new sites. But change is good, all power to you.
In re: mods - you have already set out criteria for the kind of sites YTMND doesn't need - as long as these terms are clearly spelled out, & the mods are made to give a reason why they nix a site, & there's provision made for user feedback if they feel their site has was treated unfairly... that should be fair enough.
another suggest which i rly think will be a good idea....ive said this before, and i will really appreciate it if you consider....
For "USER LEVELS" I think that you should allow for user rankings. This can be done with pictures, letters, or numbers. In which case: LEVEL 1 -
You have made a site. LEVEL 2 - Your site has made it to "Up and Coming" LEVEL 3 - Your
site has made it to "Moderator's Favorites" LEVEL 4 - Your site has made it to "Top 15
Viewed" LEVEL 5 - Your site has made it to "Top 5 Rated" LEVEL 6 - Your site has made it
to "Hall of Fame" -Just a suggestion. It is a motivation for people to make better
sites. Also, it will add a fun and exciting element to ytmnd. I hope you will consider.
-dr-nick
This sounds really good, much better than the auto delete feature for sites with an average vote of less than 2.5. I think the "# !" should be an optional feature available for people who have a YTMND account, and the "YTMND" logo should be the default view for anyone. (Including people logged in who haven't chosen the "# !" view option. Alot of these options are good ideas, but I think the flash sites should be optional for those who want a site where a refresh should be nessisary. People sometimes download the image or sound to modify it. I think you mentioned some sort of fix for this in the last post. But I'm really liking the weighted voting.
Oh, also, I HIGHLY suggest you don't give users privelidges (sp?) based on popularity of sites. You and I both know that 95% of popular sites are total sh*t. I'd say let the moderators have some say in what sites are good, since moderators aren't as f*cking stupid as most YTMND users. Of course, you'll have the final say, but a parliamentary kind of thing would work quite nicely, methinks.
Requiring sound and image origins is a great idea. Weighted Voting sounds good but there really is a lot of crap out there and I've become less tolerant of sites that use the same damn sounds over and over again. I'm frugal with 5s, too. But I do give more than 1s and 5s regularly, so I guess it would balance out.
Seeing as so many sites use the same fad music, wouldn't it make sense to have the option of choosing from existing fad music, rather than having one hundred different sites with the same mp3 of the Super Mario credits? Sure, it might be encouraging bad sites, but with autodeletion those will go away fast enough. Also, in the meanwhile, you've saved all sorts of room on the server by not hosting duplicate copies of the same file.
Origin requirements really are necessary. At present, creators go to all the work of assembling a good website, but as a user, it still infuriates me when they don't cite their sources. Am I to assume that they're lazy? Am I to assume that they did every single piece of creative work on the website? f*ck that.
That might be a good idea, Mech. Then again, it might not be. Logistically, it's an awesome idea. Realistically, it enables people with even less creativity create spam sites. With moderation this would work out better, but I believe that if you use fad music, it should be more difficult to avoid auto-deletion (i.e. double moderation requirements). That way, we don't see a dearth of creativity inflating the site and making it less interesting.
I definately intend on being a paid user whatever the benefits are. I spend so much time on YTMND, any benefit at all will mean a lot to me. Of course, that's only if the fee is reasonable. I'd like to pay no more than 15 dollars, although I'd expect the fee to be around 5-10. You can keep your automatic site deletion idea, but change it around a bit. Instead of 2.5 being the cutoff rating, make it 1.5. Instead of 1,000 views being the cutoff rating, make it 2,000 views...etc. About the forum, I'm one of the veterans and I disliked the fact that the other veterans shunned the main site. I think that's foolish of them. It's extremely nice of you to give them their own subforum, when they're a bunch of jerks. The Flash idea sounds great.
*Correction, I didn't mean to make the number higher, I meant to make it lower (1000 to 500, not 1000 to 2000). I think you should give underviewed and underrated YTMNDs a chance, because I think a lot of the popular sites are crap, and a lot of the unpopular sites are way better. I approve of the 'Unknown YTMNDs' idea.
I'm 100% behind an "Unknown" list. That's a great idea. As to the forums, the old "Darwinian nightmare" system did cover YTMNDs. It was only when the front page became fad-hell that the anti-frontpage sentiment began. If you pursue the quality over quantity thing you were talking about the forums would talk about it. sh*t, even almightylol (wonder if that's censored) posts YTMNDs in their forums. It was never about a "secret internet club." It was about having a spot where people have some damn STANDARDS. The flash idea is neat, but it'd be a sea change in content. I imagine you've got at least SOME beef with the "f*ggy short film" format if you made my site a mod favorite. Flash is only going to accomodate that ugly trend further.
I think you guys misunderstand what he's saying about SWF. He's talking about doing a server-side conversion of audio and using that to develop a pre-loader for those long loading pages that always have (Refresh) in the titles. That way we don't have to sit and watch a choppy, crappy version of a fairly short gif, like (and this is opinion) "G-man is having a wonderful time," etc.
I'm not entirely familiar with the previous forum situation. However, from what I've read on the forums and the events that took place, it seems like the forums were more about controlling the standards for websites rather than allowing the system to resolve its own problems. The main site always had standards; it's just that they weren't the standards that some people liked (fads, anyone?). Everything is subjective.
By the way, user moderation doesn't work. My average SFW site has like... seven times the NSFW votes. Why? Because raged little kids aren't happy enough with one-starring. Also, for an immediate improvement to the site, ban everybody who's ever said "ban downvoters." If they don't understand the value of standards, f*ck 'em. They're just the "quantity over quality" crowd, and YOU KNOW IT. SEARCH YOUR FEELINGS.
AmonPaaradul, sure, it's all subjective, but not to the point of total equality and loss of all value judgments. To use an example I used before, the vast majority of people still think Mozart is a better composer than anyone in A Simple Plan. Sure, there's going to be some dissent, but who's it coming from? Is a 12-year-old girl the best authority? Is "Because the singer's so hot" a respectable argument? There's always room for differing opinions, but it doesn't mean that some opinions aren't strictly for retards.
It sounds good and everything, one thing that i would add if i were you is a better rating system. Don't get me wrong, the 5 star method is good but kinda too low of a range. What i mean by this is that about 2/3's of the sites are 3 or 4 star sites. This means that you have thousands of ratings that are 3.56,4.57,3.89,4.23,3.76,3.39. For a better rating system, use the old school 1 through 10. With this said in mind, it would be easier for users to view the high rating sites that they want to. If you had the ten star raiting system like i said, you can view all the high rating videos which would be in the 8's, 9's, and 10 area and would be very easy for user's to find. Everything with the 5 star rating system is good but like i said before, not a large enough range to rate these sites. Thats all i gotta say and if you want to see a really funny video, type in "Ernie commited Suicide" its a good site...later Max
Max, what about a hall of fads. If you were to put all the sites that started fads on a single page (eg. Inkdrinker's Gay fuel, wtfuxz's OMG, Secret Nazi... etc.) it would make people more aware of who introduced them to the site. Then people could stop saying stuff like '- 4 for overused sound' on a site that was the first to use it.
Might as well. That's all the Hall of Fame is right now. Though more accurately it's the "Hall of the First 2 Fads and All Fads Made After, Like, September 2005 and, thus, Benefited From the Massive Influx of Users." Blue ball machine? Distant memory. People are STILL making Gay Fuel sites. And I've seen some in Up and Coming and Top 5 in the past week, too.
tehpwner: "they're upset that someone told
them the truth about their site." - oh screw you and your 'truth', with people like me you've put a grudge in your head that isnt there and just 1 everything in site. inkdrinker is honest, you're not. you get off on being the one everyone hates and its just sad. i dont hate you, i just think you're pathetic, and the reason you dont make sites is because, unlike inkdrinker, you probably couldnt make a good one if you tried. if you gave a crap about ytmnd you'd make one despite getting it downvoted to hell... you can make fun of Chav-Slayer all you want but theres a reason you had your account deleted.
actually, yes you did, before your last account got banned... i remember it well "took me forever to 1 all yoru sites"... took a look at your recent vote history, and surely enough, you did... anyways - the point is, and let me make it clear, is that if you honestly think something sucks, fine - but unlike adverb or inky, i dont believe you - you just downvote to get off. if there were less people downvoting for fun like you, other people might be more honest about their votes. instead, people like me are more generous because we know there are too many people like you out there.
This is like me vs. syncan - comments like a couple weeks ago. I don't think it's possible for anyone to vote with 100% neutrality, but I'm going to have to point out that pwner has voted sites higher than 1 that aren't part of the "jocks club." Does he hold grudges? There's no way for me to know. But he does occasionally boost things that aren't by me or my fellow iconoclastic hate-sponges. (And he doesn't 5 all my sites either.)
no net fight here... re: vote weighting... so are some peoples votes going to be worth more based on seniority or by how they vote? or would it be something like you start off only being allowed to vote a certain range and you can 'earn' the right to downvote when you become a regular user? i never could understand the multiple account moderation, how fast people get caught or if the votes they made are truly deleted. sometimes i think , for better or worse, an all paid ytmnd could be in the future, like the SA forums are. it keeps people from making multiple accounts, or abusing the one they have. no matter which direction it goes theres bound to be bugs and problems... my only other concern is that if there are changes in voting, etc that benefits new sites, the old classics will get unfairly buried. que sera sera.
^what do you think the risk of an all paid YTMND would be? i dont think we'd lose the more popular posters and addicts, and i think it would affect the overall scores of a lot of sites in a positive way, but so many great sites come from 'idiot savants' who stumble upon something great who otherwise might not sign up, or make two sites and then disappear... that rkelly/milton remix has half a million views and that user has only two sites and barely any votes... begs the question - does the site success really depend on the number of members?
I'd say that up to a point, the site's quality is INVERSELY proportionate to the number of members. You can't nurture a subculture into growing new ideas when every week, a thousand more people think 175k Star Wars is this amazing brand new joke and register because they have this awesome idea to use the Dragonforce wav over it instead. You just can't nurture the development of new stuff on a site this big. We've reached fad overkill phase 2 now where not only is original content easily outpopulated by fads, but even new fads have the damndest time picking up. We haven't had anything positively huge since Brian Peppers. Future Conan was a flash in the pan, Yiddish Cup is fading (and just isn't made of the stuff that has any permanance.) The last huge thing we had was Brian Peppers. Notice how the popular sites right now are almost entirely conglomerates of old fads - sites that try to sum up YTMND via its fads? That's because rehashing the old is all that's left to do now.
There are just too many users pushing the site to too fast a pace for anything to possibly get traction now. To get another site on the level of Picard now (in terms not just of visits but of respect, longevity, influence, etc) would require days and days of forum whoring. That or the memetic force of 10 Gay Fuel fads. Basically we're at a point now where even the "pop" sh*t is being destroyed by numbers.
^i agree with you there. i like my Runaway YTMND and everything... but I know I have sites better than that... when a newspaper clipping about a ytmnd fad in a student newspaper is a bigger deal than supporting something new... problem... its why i had to bribe people to be in "lounge club"... at least its something new. i dont want to compare to WWF/WWE wrestling because someones jsut going to say 'huh huh wrestling is gay'... but i think it holds water: wrestling was able to get big in the late 90s becuase since there were smaller arenas, characters got over easier... smaller crowd = easier to get a chant going and make someone stand out. YTMND is like wrestling in the sense that characters need to 'get over' for a fad to be thrive. Milton or Khan or any of this stuff wouldnt survive long being introduced today, just as in wrestling new characters dont do well in WWE because their crowds are too big for a chant to stand out... now things get chewed up and spit out in weeks. remember Marguerite Perrin?
the other problem (or is it a problem?) with all these users is that if a fad does start, theres enough people that someone can make something popular enough right away that it basically 'ends' the fad. you know... why bother when soandso did it as good as its going to get... as for the forums, so long as i've been on ytmnd i've never ever found them useful for anything other than having to scroll through several pages of bill cosby's head and pictures of the french chick from harry potter. was there ever a time the forums actually helped ytmnd?
Yeah. The numbers not only discourage quality, but reward worse stuff. Sitsu DOES have better sites than Runaway. And I have better sites than my highest rated ones. (Some of my best aren't even 2 stars.) To look at it another way, look at the scores of sites in the top 5. It used to be pushing over the 4 mark was enough to get there. Now you have to have like a 4.5 I saw a guy with a 4.49 get pushed off the top 5. That's not a reflection of higher-achieving sites. It's a reflection of just how powerful a wave of idiots can be. Weighted voting can be nice, but you'd have to give people who vote a variety a HUGE extra weight in order to offset the people who think a 5 isn't a reward, but a common courtesy - an entitlement. See the sites of people complaining about "downvoters." Some mention "now I think I'm a good site maker and I upvote everybody," like that was some kind of positive. Like never telling someone that they suck is some kind of community service. Like a 5-star is a natural right from birth.
As to the forums, I'd say they offically went downhill right after the Natalee Holloway "raids." It simultaneously recast the forums' purpose as something seperate from the front page and also brought in a lot of wannabe e-soldiers from the front page. (Yes - all this ebaums garbage was amateur hour, and six months late.) Gay Fuel? Forums creation. Asiacopter? Forums creation. I ran a thread telling people what tons of YTMND sound origins were. Site critique could give a site a second chance after it was bumped from the Last 5. Front page mods? Pulled from the forums. The forums didnt' become a wasteland until the front page did. They're just easy to single out because fixing them involves pissing off way fewer people than fixing the front page.
its hard to hate the Upvoter because he has no illusions about he's doing. he upvotes without even looking... some of the downvoters though, like i said, i just dont believe some of them. in some cases it is a matter of taste or disagreement about what ytmnd should be about.. but when i see a site that has a good amount of craft put into it, i will probably NOT 1 it even if it isnt funny or rewatchable at all. but then again, i'm a professional illustrator (secrets out) so i'm just that way when it comes to work. i'm easier to please than say... you. :P i see ytmnd as art and dont think anything with a lto of care put into it deserves a 1. but i do also miss the days where 4.2 - 4.3 was the high mark... a lot of true classics are treading water at 4.15 right now and have been ignored by the new wave of voters. if "stop the rock" or "wheres my burrito" were out today things'd be pretty different... in december 'burrito' was still around the top 5. now its like... page 6 or so of the top rated...
okay, my last comment of the night (oh late night conversations): my biggest pet peeve of ytmnd lately though is that classic style ytmnds are not appreciated. sure i think they were starting to get tapped out, and while i'm certainly no purist, its sad to see people leave comments now like 'wheres the animation' or not understanding the original ytmnd site or some of the other mod faves. sync has to be PERFECT. i'm not saying 'we must make more classic style ytmnds!' but it would be nice if more people at least respected ytmnds roots...
The only problem I have with the weighed voting idea is that most times I only vote on sites that I have a strong opinion about. I will vote a five of sites that I love and typically a 2 or a 3 on sites that I find dumb and the occasional 1. From what I understand, the fact that most of my votes are 5s with 2s and 1s mixed in, my votes will count as less. I find that unfair. Should I?
this all sounds great, with the exception of flash support. one of the things that makes ytmnd ytmnd is that its strength is drawn from its simplicity. picture. sound. text. works on old browsers. works without plugins. a bunch of vector animation and loading screens would rob ytmnd of its quintessential charm.
And for once I agree with KingCrimson. A "Top Users" list is going to lead to more bitter kids backstabbing each other to climb the list, and more people being rewarded for sub-par work because they're recognized on the list. Being recognized ANYWHERE on the front page is your ticket to undeserved accolades. But every improvement and tweak is just a stopgap measure to dealing with the real problem: the place is just too damn big to sustain a creative culture. As I'm posting, ALL FIVE top 5 are related directly to YTMND. We've got so many people that the lowest common denominator is pushed all the way down to "YTMND." It's the only thing we all have in common, so it's all that succeeds anymore. Do we really want a site where 100% of the content is totally self-referential?
no top users list... ever been to that RateMyBody site? ranking users will not only create bitterness, it will cause top rated people to probably whore themselves out for votes so they can keep their spot... "top users" - bad bad idea... if YTMND wants to create some users hall of fame or something, do it in wikipedia, not here.
I'm still sicking with my "shout-out" box idea. An alternative would be a box on the first page with 10 YTMND which would have to fill the requirements: 1) To be more than a week old, and 2) To have the least views (zero usually) of all YTMNDs, so as not to make the sites fall into oblivion too quickly the list could be updated only in a 5 minute interval. (btw, max, you should encourage users to watch and rate these YTMNDs asap)
I must agree humbly with inkdrinker here...the fact that a lot of original good ytmnds (which mine aren't, so don't come back with that) are buried under a massive pile of fad rehashing and conglomerates of YTMND. Don't get me wrong, some of these more original ones are fine. Its when you see random badly done photoshopping of brian peppers onto other people's faces with the annoying as hell fad music 99 out of 100 times a day on ytmnd, you know a site is stagnated. I think limiting site creation after certain user requirements are met is a great start to fixing this
I don't think site creation should be limited to those who've been members for a month or whatever, that means new members will lose interest and the site will stagnate.
It is sad, though, how much crap is produced. We need an updated "guide to making sites that don't suck." I'm so tired of ytmnds that consist of old pics from fark or something awful w/ requiem for a dream music.
i nkow i'm a little late on the "tehpwner2" barrage, but like honestly. He 1'ed a good site that most people 5'd, i think it was "spy on your friends" or something. WEll anyways he says "not top 5 material" so he 1's it. Now with that said, woudl he have oned it if it had a score of like 3 and not popular? i don't think so. Would he say "kiron = auto 1) on all my sites after i called him out for it? i don't think so. You say you vote everything fairly and crap, but the fact of the matter is, your a grudge holder and if anyone pisses you off in the slightest you go on a downvote rampage. 1 all my sites if you want, but to 1 truely great sites like "willy wonka's acid trip" is just plain stupid, how can you justify a 1 rating....
Oh hey, I just had a good idea regarding sponsoring. Make it so there's a "sponsors" box somewhere on the front page. In said box will spawn 5 random YTMNDs from sponsoring users. The likelihood your YTMND will pop up will be your total donation amount divided by the grand total donation amount, minus yours (max's) of course. That way the more you donate, the more hits your sites get. Of course, this should probably be split into SFW and NSFW categories.
Kiron! I don't hold grudges at all! Yes I said Kiron = Auto 1 on a couple of your sites but that was a joke to annoy you and it obviously worked cause of the attitude of your post! I haven't oned all your sites infact I think I 4ed one of them! I have oned all of some users accounts but I make sure to check them before hand to see if it is fair of me to give that rating!! If you're a c*nt to me like you have been it is harder for me to give a good rating!!
Things I'd like to see:
Submission
1. Accept Ogg Vorbis for audio, and limit the size of WAVs because they could be made much smaller with any compression.
2. "PNG files (transparency only supported on Firefox)" isn't true; transparency only isn't supported by IE.
3. Suggest optimizing with something like OptiPNG before uploading/linking.
4. You could take bandwidth of YTMND by allowing to link to images/sound from places like ImageShack instead of uploading.
5. Perhaps when support is better accepting SVGs and MNGs.
Commenting:
1. Make the comment box bigger.
2. Add editing for everyone.
I think Flash would be horrible until Gnash (http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnash/) fully supports SWF7.
Max, there is one thing that needs to be addressed. Habitual Downvoters/Up Voters. In order to prevent abuse of a potential delete by low ratings system, there needs to be some sort of weight to a vote. Similar to what Newgrounds employs, to avoid people making accounts for downvoting/upvoting, by making newbie votes worth less, and YTMND veteran votes worth more. Also have some sort of 5 or 10 vote limit of any one type of vote, for a certain period of time. This will prevent a user from making too many 1 or 5 votes within a certain length of time. Finally, there needs to be some final review of a site by an unbiased/non 12 year old admin who'll seriously consider the truth of the matter over a rating.
Well, I've had a few that were ranking 3+ with one that was actually sitting at 5 for a few days, then someone downvoted it hard to a 3, and now it's a 3.9
Like I effing care right now, but if the new rules Max proposes comes into effect, it'll be just like when NG didn't have tight controls on voting, when a good flash went 1 and out in a matter of minutes for all the wrong reasons.
Just need some safeguards in place.
Here's a way you might be able to turn the petty bickering *ssholes into some cash. Allow people to "unsponsor" a site. Let's say there's a site sponsored to the tune of 20 bucks right now. If I really hate that site, I can pay like... 25 bucks to unsponsor it off the list (and 5 bucks for good measure.) That could be cool.
Okay, how about this then. For the first 6 minths, a member has his voting habits monitored. If there is an excess of 5 or 1 votes in a row, or it looks like it's all 1s or 5s, that person loses voting priveledges.
In other words, only people with actual votes get their votes in.
Also, there needs to be a report function for any critiques. Simply put, there are too many f*gs leaving their crap in the comments. Well, f*gs and illiterate morons who forgot their yiddish cups.
hmmm... a lot of people say you should have to leave a comment, but the problem there is that its not worth commenting on everything... what if you had to hit the 'enter' button on the comments section to make your vote count? it would get rid of anonymous downvoters, but at the same time, every new site would have a high rating because everyones scared to openly downvote popular sites.
Something you'll have to take into account with weighted votes, though: They'll have to be weighted so that the norm is very bottom-heavy. Think of it this way: 90% of the sites are total sh*t right? (Closer to 99, but let's say 90.) Then the truly balanced voter is going to give 1s to 90% of sites. If votes weigh more for users who have a normal distribution of votes (averaging 3 stars,) then you're giving extra voting clout to people who reward mediocrity.