Sympathy For The Devil
posted by max on January 23, 2009 at 11:07:01 PM
Hello Folks,
Here's an update I should have posted a while ago. I went home for the holidays and one thing led to another so not much has been getting done around here recently.
First up, I'll be making an appearance at roflcon nyc tomorrow. I will most likely be in the bathroom hyperventilating due to the terror of being surrounded by hundreds of basement dwellers. If you make it out, buy me a drink and maybe i'll sign your chest or something. Next up, the new preloader is coming along, all that is left is hammering out the remaining issues with the gif conversion on some of the larger animations. I'll be posting the entire project on google code on Sunday if my hangover isn't too mean. This means you will all get a chance to dink around with it if you wish before it goes live.
The refactor has been keeping me somewhat busy. I've been working on the new commenting system, you can play with it here (click "show html"). The new comments will be able to nest to 5 levels, allow you to collapse/expand wherever and let you page through them without having to load a whole new page. I want to add some neat stuff to site profiles that works like the current comment-age-highlighting but since your last visit. More on that later.
Finally, Federated Media has inked an ad deal on our behalf with Cheetos. Starting in February once a week for six weeks, I'll be choosing a YTMND to highlight on the front page for a "Cheetos Break". I think it will fit in nicely with our current color scheme. This isn't a contest, but if you'd like to make a YTMND that focuses on "breaking free from the constraints of an overly stuffy adult world where we should all play more, and have more fun", I'll be keeping an eye out for them. They obviously need to be SFW. After all, this website is a little too serious sometimes.
Also big-ups to Mark Gormley.
Here's an update I should have posted a while ago. I went home for the holidays and one thing led to another so not much has been getting done around here recently.
First up, I'll be making an appearance at roflcon nyc tomorrow. I will most likely be in the bathroom hyperventilating due to the terror of being surrounded by hundreds of basement dwellers. If you make it out, buy me a drink and maybe i'll sign your chest or something. Next up, the new preloader is coming along, all that is left is hammering out the remaining issues with the gif conversion on some of the larger animations. I'll be posting the entire project on google code on Sunday if my hangover isn't too mean. This means you will all get a chance to dink around with it if you wish before it goes live.
The refactor has been keeping me somewhat busy. I've been working on the new commenting system, you can play with it here (click "show html"). The new comments will be able to nest to 5 levels, allow you to collapse/expand wherever and let you page through them without having to load a whole new page. I want to add some neat stuff to site profiles that works like the current comment-age-highlighting but since your last visit. More on that later.
Finally, Federated Media has inked an ad deal on our behalf with Cheetos. Starting in February once a week for six weeks, I'll be choosing a YTMND to highlight on the front page for a "Cheetos Break". I think it will fit in nicely with our current color scheme. This isn't a contest, but if you'd like to make a YTMND that focuses on "breaking free from the constraints of an overly stuffy adult world where we should all play more, and have more fun", I'll be keeping an eye out for them. They obviously need to be SFW. After all, this website is a little too serious sometimes.
Also big-ups to Mark Gormley.
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hmm... gifs don't play the same in the new beta player. For example, a gif made in microsoft gif animator (yeah, shoot me) that uses functions such as "restore previous" on individual frames works just fine in the current preloader, but in the new beta loader it will ignore functions such as these and mess up the whole gif. Example: http://howispentmywater.ytmnd.com (sorry to use such a stupid site). I dunno, maybe its just my browser or I should find a better editing program.
various incarnations of ffmpeg which did surprisingly bad, i cant remember what else, this is a culmination of a few years of work on-and-off, the best (and current) encoder i've found seems to be a piece of proprietary software called turbine by a company called "blue pacific software". it hasnt been updated for a few years and they've made it clear they dont plan to update it ever again.
But I'd have to say a lot more users participated when you actually changed the front page and added different sections like "Scientology YTMND's" and "HOLIDAYTMND's" Try adding a "breaking free from the constraints of an overly stuffy adult world where we should all play more, and have more fun YTMND's" section
hello this is Boris from Russia and we my family love ice cream we buy the Bryer vanilia every 3rd tuesday of every 4 month when it come to market. on some special time my wife she freeze yogurt made from our goat and we have ice cream made at my home yes. My daughter natalia wants flovor of straws berrys and my son he wants the exsotic chocolatee and my wife she want a mule.
Everything looks like it's coming along fine. Have fun at yer BREWHAHA. I thought about attending just to observe the social behavior of these ummmm...'basement dwellers' when they are out of their habitat. I asked gr33nscr33n if he would attend with me, but the L train doesn't run to Brooklyn on weekends and his wheelchair won't fit on my bicycle.
Anyone notice how lately you need a 4.3 to get on up and coming? What's with the voting inflation? All the sites probably look good with Worthwhile right next to it. You need to fix that, max. Make sure it only shows good sites, so people will realize these UaC sites are not groundbreakingly amazing. They must appear so to new users, when compared to screenshots, movie rips, and stolen GIFs in "Worthwhile YTMNDs" I know the section must be broken, and I know you must know it, max.
People have mentioned it several times before, but instead of addressing it you seem to care more about making a new commenting system that allows us to reply to replies so that we're able to say "lol, 3rd" Let me reiterate the problems with the Worthwhile section now: Every site is from 2005. Almost every site is around a 3.8 rating. Almost all of them have hardly any votes or views.
I know 2005 is said by some to be the "Golden Age of YTMND" But is that any reason to make every site in Worthwhile be from that year? Judging from the quality of the sites in Worthwhile now, no it really isn't. Since then, we've found new fads and thoroughly wore out fads from 2005. We've raised our standards (somewhat). We aren't as impressed at a movie rip or a stolen GIF. Now we need edits as well to make us happy.
I know that rating cannot always determine how good a YTMND is. But if that's true then why settle for ~3.8? I'm guessing that any site with a high rating, say 4.00 or above can be worthwhile. That's usually about the score needed to get on Up and Coming anyway. If most of the voters have voted 5, as a rating of 4.0+ might indicate, then a site could more easily determined to be Worthwhile.
And of course, I can see how you might like to try and give sites a "second chance" as could be your reasoning for putting up sites with low views and votes. But how can a site that hardly anyone has seen be considered "Worthwhile" until enough people have seen it? How many Worthwhile sites have people seen where they could say "Ah yes, I remember this site. Those were the days." If a site has 1,000 votes then wouldn't it more likely be Worthwhile? Each additional vote would reinforce its worthwhile quality
So: Have 4.0+ sites from any year, with any amount of votes or views. Preferably a minimum number of votes of about 50 or 100 or so, just so it's more likely to be good. . . Oh, and I know another reason ratings might be so high on UaC now is because there aren't enough people to get the 350 votes necessary to get a site off UaC quickly. Hopefully this new Worthwhile section might bring in some more people as well. (Which is also why I asked if this Cheetos thing would do the same in a previous comment)
"Anyone notice how lately you need a 4.3 to get on up and coming?" It's something I've been noticing and pointing out for almost a year. People think five is the only star available. Also people seem to be more wowed by "nice edits" instead of good concepts. Sure Nitesky and fearcondom are great at photoshopping, but they don't always have good ideas and often rely on regurgitated jokes (Kool-aid man, Koen) we've seen hundreds of times already.
max, you ever think about making the votes out of 10 stars instead of 5? in 2005, highest rated sites were roughly 4.40. in 2006 they were 4.50, in 2007 they were 4.60, in 2008 they were 4.70-4.76ish. see a pattern? in about another year or 2 sites will have like a 5.00 star rating (if this site even exists) so this way if it was out of 10 stars, users can vote 1-10 and maybe that will fix the problem with all the overrated sites and tone them down a bit.
nooo, I'm sure you remember we had 4.7 sites in 2007. We even had them in 2006, although not as often. WDSTW was made in 2007 and 60 minutes in 2006. But anyway, for a 10 star system the problem would either be the same or worse, once people get in the habit of voting 10 on everything. Someone should make a site telling people to vote 2, 3, and 4, but then people would start with that site and then nobody would see it. lol