Where is our world going?

[Qyot27]

Yes, AMVWiki did go down the crapper, although from what I can remember of it (and I even contributed, but that was what, 2005?) the larger focus of the site was less about theory and the community, and more about scripting examples - not to say those weren't addressed, but the encoding-related and series-related AviSynth examples outnumbered them by a large margin. It was also brought down by spambots and technical problems which caused images to crash and burn horrifically, but I'd hope those issues would be relatively easy to avoid now, what with the popularity of Wikia.

I actually like the idea of having a new Wiki established, but citing the fear of vandalism and what-all, that can be addressed by simply not allowing just anyone to edit it. Have a selected team that manages it, and is punctual and attentive enough to edit in the necessary info when it becomes relevant (or have a set review and update schedule, say, every six months or so). As far as reader feedback, have it concentrated in the Talk or Discussion areas, so that the management team knows what needs to be put in. In other words, operate under the condition of all articles being locked with only admins (the management team) able to edit them.

For instance, I tried (and eventually grew bored with) writing up a guide on how to do DVD-centric encoding with HCenc, as it offers a much newer, less restrictive - read, totally free of cost - way of encoding MPEG-2 than TMPGEnc, with practically equivalent quality to boot. A Wiki format would allow that info to disseminate much faster and perhaps more efficiently than a monolithic guide would.

If the management team was selected here on the forum, I don't see how that drags the discussion away from the Org, save for maybe the thing being hosted on a different server or host (but that's already the case for some guides around here anyway). If everything on the Wiki refers strictly back here, I'd say that's plenty.

[Corran]

It is interesting to note that Bewbtube went live in November of 2005. Look at the dramatic fall off in video uploads to this site the following year. The tube one shotted us. It wasn't even a slow decline.

The stats for peak activity and pre-phpbb3 are three years apart.

[JudgeHolden]

It is interesting to note that Bewbtube went live in November of 2005. Look at the dramatic fall off in video uploads to this site the following year. The tube one shotted us. It wasn't even a slow decline.

The stats for peak activity and pre-phpbb3 are three years apart.

Didn't notice the stat shift ... at all other points in the chart it's roughly one year increments.

So, what was the drop (if any) for videos and regs in '06?

[Enigma]

Now that i think of it,The "Journal" System reminds me of Tube's old Bulletin system

[LittleAtari]

There's a ton of noob guides out there, anything from Read ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides to how to use FTP to how to be an org asshole. Problem is they're spread all over god knows where; some aren't even hosted on the org. New users have no chance of seeing them until they do something wrong/ask a noob question and someone points them to it. Some putz should gather those up, write a noob faq linking to all of them, and make the faq a link on the new user registration page. Just use your female wiles on Otohiko to do it or something. Perhaps a better idea would be to have the system automatically PM the noob faq to users on joining. That way they get an email pointing to PM system, which indirectly brings them onto the fourm and once they're there then they might stick around.

I agree with godix on this. Why are most of the recent guides in the forums when we have a guides section on the member's page? They should be there. PMing the newly registered users about the guides would be pretty good too.

Make preview not require being logged in. Let viewers watch without needing an account. Would probably end up with more viewers. If you assume the number of viewers who then become editors or active in the community is stable, more viewers = more active users. Keep uploading, commenting, etc. requiring registration. I doubt that'd require much change on the coding, perhaps just disabling QCs on preview so people not logged in can't spam QCs or something. On this one the tube has the right idea.

If possible, I think this is a great idea to implement. Just have downloads be restricted to members only. What we've seen with previews is that current members do watch and download more AMVs. I believe that making preview public will attract people to become members. Think of it. Someone gets to browse the previews freely and then becomes a member to download the videos.

The boochsack filter is just stupid. It's not effective, it causes confusion and questions, and it's easily bypassed by anyone who really wants to say youtube or knows about tinyurl so it doesn't even work for what it is supposed to. It's not an issue affecting the future of the org, but still, just kill the stupid thing.

I think my main beef with the boochsack filter is that I think that it only fuels the hate for the new kids that post it. People still need to catalog their videos to announce them and while the filter does let people know what's up, it seems to be the center for members to make fun of the new kids. So perhaps getting rid of the filter and the whole YT 'ban' would make the Org more welcoming.

I'm reading this thread and have come across a lot of good points. From an admin's point of view, I've got two (related) questions that I'd really like people's input on:

1. What do you think is the administration's role in sustaining this site and community into the future? Do you believe that the mods and admins should play a big role in this, or that it's mostly up to the members? Or is everything inevitable due to external forces? Do you think that admin involvement should increase or decrease, or stay the same? By admin involvement, I am referring to control of site policies and the enforcement of those policies. Because...

Outside of coding, donation and setting the general policies of the site, I really dont know what the role of an admin of this site is. I guess it also involves listening to the general feedback of the users and developing new features for this site. Also, analyzing trends in the community and seeing how the site can cater to that or shift it? For the general trends thing, I'm thinking more that you guys have access to all the site info and can analyze the numbers to figure out if something should be done or can be done. A specific example would be, if you guys see a general drop in active members, how can you draw more members? Which I guess is one of the results of this thread.

2. There will be no more major code development on this site in the foreseeable future. As I understand it, this is due to a long-running problem regarding licensing and code ownership. Others who are involved may comment as they wish, but with my limited knowledge of the technicalities I'm just going to leave it at that. Yes, we realize that lots can be done to improve the site's design and infrastructure, but that simply isn't feasible at the moment. With this in mind, how would your comments in this thread change, if at all? In other words, how do we work around this issue?

I dont know specifically how we can work around the coding issue, but completely redoing the design, I guess, is out of the question. Well I guess we just have to optimize what we have then. Note that everything I say for this section of my post, I know that there is a chance that due to coding constraints, there is a chance they cannot be implemented, however I'd rather mention the ideas and have some of them rejected instead of not saying any of them.

Just make certain things more obvious.
I've gotten PMs on YT about everything from 'How do I upload to the Org?' to 'How do I vidID?'

FTP
If we're not getting rid of the FTP system soon, make a video tutorial on how to use FileZilla and put it in the guides and link it on the upload page.

VidID
Right now, vidIDs are just a little picture of a chain in the video info. There is no clue about that picture being click-able and actually meaning something. I recommend just displaying the vidID info on the video page, similar to how YT displays the embed code and links for their videos in the video description.

Condense related information
I know I already mentioned the guides, but things like viewing Ops given and received should be, viewing alerts and modifying them, journal buddies and my journal, should be in the same place and not scattered across multiple categories. I find it odd that when viewing other people's journals, that I cant directly go to my own journal or make my own entry. Considering a lot of people post in their journals in response to other journals having that option handy would be nice.

Star Ratings
I've talked to people that didnt even know that they could check the star average on their own videos. The only way it's ever come up is if I mentioned their rating to them. Since I'm a donator, I can see their ratings, but a lot of people dont seem to know that they can find out their own ratings by going to edit their own videos. Make it so that people can see their own ratings on their video pages or something

Social Feedback Outside the Current Features
Any type of social feedback outside the forums, ops and QCs would be good. Right now, the only thing I can think of is for public comments. Basically, I know that there's a lot of people who dont use the forums. Maybe it's because they're intimidated or maybe it's because they dont know about the forums. Either way, I'd like to see something more done for the other 98% of the members of this site to be more involved so that they stick to this site more.

Continued QCs
I already mentioned this before, but I'd like to be able to re-QC a video. Sometimes I'll watch a video and just rate it to get it off my star ratings que, but then later on I find that I have something to say. Sometimes, even if I have QC-ed a video, I find something else that I want to say about it. I look at this as opening up more room for feedback. It also makes the creator feel that their video has gotten more attention.

Get Rid of the Stuff We Dont Use or Revive them
I'm thinking specifically of things like Interviews, Newsletter, and Software Reviews. Those things havent been updated in ages and only add to the clutter on the front page. You guys can have an archive section or something for stuff that is old. Still though, I'm thinking that it'd be great if we actually got this kind of stuff up and running again. They made the site more valuable in that it was more information being put out there. Especially in the case of the Interviews and Newsletter, those represent a part of our community's strength. Getting people who are interested to start working on that stuff again would be great. Reviving #amv-review would also be great. Kio and Godix kinda said that I should try running my own review and I'm going to try it. Mind you that this was just mentioned a few days ago, but I'm looking for people interested in participating. Shoot me a PM, if you're interested in being part of a review session. (I'll probably end up making another thread for the AMV-review bit because i doubt people are sifting through this long post)

Interacting More with the Other AMV Sites
While I'm sure there are people that have pride in their home sites, I'd like to encourage more awareness of and interaction with other AMV sites. The goal of this would be to draw in members from other sites and create a richer AMV experience for everyone. Note that this would require Admin/Mod activity.

Inter-site Competition
One major one that I can think of is any of the award winning videos of each site can be collected and then voted on by all members of each site. Basically, the general thought of the VCAs are that these are the best videos of our community. I'd like to see how the best videos of each community fairs against the other.

Displaying the Top videos of Each Site
It'd be pretty cool if our Top videos were displayed on Akross, AMVFrance, AMVNews, etc. In exchange, we would also display their top videos. The links for the videos on these lists would go to their respective site.

EDIT:
Something else to make more obvious are the URLs of the profiles that contain a person's user name. There is nothing on our profiles or on the site that tells us that feature exists. Just display it on the profile page or something. In general, I think the Org has a lot of amazing features, but I question how many people know how to use them or even know that they exist.

In addition, I noticed that in AMVNews videos a lot of people tend to include the address of the site. Can we encourage putting the Org Logo and Address in AMVs? I doubt that we can actually mod this. So I'm thinking that it could just be something noted on the upload or enter video page. For example, somewhere on the page have it say "Did you remember to put the Org logo and your profile URL in your video? It's not required, but it could be helpful to you to include that in your video so people know where to come back to look for your videos and it helps this site out"

Also, it'd be neat if contests like the ones on AMVnews were organized for the Org. It seems like every 2 months, they have something going on over there. I think it encourages people to make more videos and mini contests like these generate recognition and more AMV discussion.


One last note: I know I'm someone who makes a lot of requests when it comes to the site features and how things work around here. I dont expect anything that I suggest to implemented quickly and neither do I expect each thing to be implemented. I do appreciate the work that the staff puts in here.

[Knowname]

Godix, I think it is a good point that anime music videos may be in decline in general but I don't think that google trends is a good indicator. For example, check out the trends for "music video". I think the decline since 2005 for this particular query has more to do with where people are searching. With so many video sites these days, I would wager that YT, vimeo and other sites are stealing some of these queries from general purpose search engines as they grow in popularity.

so I guess MTV had it right when they stopped broadcasting of music videos... or maybe that is the reason for the fall of music videos... more likely the latter I'd think o.0

I already edit things for godix, and honestly, I am not above writing it myself.

Kio, that may be the WORSE idea possible considering your views lol...

lso, wikis are too easy to vandalize unless you have a highly active team of people with no lives monitoring them 24/7.

highly active anf no life huh?? WHOOOO could he be talking about??? lo

FTP
If we're not getting rid of the FTP system soon, make a video tutorial on how to use FileZilla and put it in the guides and link it on the upload page.

totally agree. a guide like zarx's video guide too making amvs can be made to show just how to ANNOUNCE your new amv. Why not??

Continued QCs
I already mentioned this before, but I'd like to be able to re-QC a video. Sometimes I'll watch a video and just rate it to get it off my star ratings que, but then later on I find that I have something to say. Sometimes, even if I have QC-ed a video, I find something else that I want to say about it. I look at this as opening up more room for feedback. It also makes the creator feel that their video has gotten more attention.

this is what ops are for, next you'll be asking to SEE your prior qc's than you'll have multiple lines of text at your finger tips. That's basically an op. You can edit an op and it even tells the creator that you edited it via the date entered. That being said this procedure can be made simpler like by making an 'amv alert' (those things sent to your email box) that actually points to the edited op like how facebook alerts are.

Interacting More with the Other AMV Sites
While I'm sure there are people that have pride in their home sites, I'd like to encourage more awareness of and interaction with other AMV sites. The goal of this would be to draw in members from other sites and create a richer AMV experience for everyone. Note that this would require Admin/Mod activity.

I once noted that, like how OCRemix artists have profiles at last.fm... it might be nice if a few of us could go 'big' like that though I'd be kind of scared to have my own last.fm profile... it wouldn't work from an amv sense anyway, I mean last.fm plays songs, not videos :/. Anyway something like that. Even if Phade had his own entry into Wikipedia?? C'mon represent guys!! It would have to be under 'Chris McCormik' or however you spell his name. I would go APESHIT!!
Another thought is to link the video profiles TO last.fm (by song) or TO something like Animenfo (by anime). Can we do that? Don't know, but it would REALLY be a HUGE show of cooperation. not sure if Last.fm is a commercial venture or not, if so never mind.

[CodeZTM]

FTP
If we're not getting rid of the FTP system soon, make a video tutorial on how to use FileZilla and put it in the guides and link it on the upload page.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 15&t=93665 <------- Already been done

Edit: Nevermind. Apparently I can't read very well.

[Kionon]

I agree with godix on this. Why are most of the recent guides in the forums when we have a guides section on the member's page? They should be there. PMing the newly registered users about the guides would be pretty good too.

I do not oppose this. In fact, if it really will mean in increase in the number of individuals who follow the rules, I support it.

If possible, I think this is a great idea to implement. Just have downloads be restricted to members only. What we've seen with previews is that current members do watch and download more AMVs. I believe that making preview public will attract people to become members. Think of it. Someone gets to browse the previews freely and then becomes a member to download the videos.

I don't think this is what we're about, but I do not oppose this. You may consider this a vote of "abstains, courteously."

I think my main beef with the boochsack filter is that I think that it only fuels the hate for the new kids that post it. People still need to catalog their videos to announce them and while the filter does let people know what's up, it seems to be the center for members to make fun of the new kids. So perhaps getting rid of the filter and the whole YT 'ban' would make the Org more welcoming.

I honestly think if any word filter were to exist it would replace hosatchel with an entire explanation of why those links are unacceptable. However, I tend to believe that godix's newb PM would decreases the number of newbies posting youtube links.

Outside of coding, donation and setting the general policies of the site, I really dont know what the role of an admin of this site is.

None of us do, and I do think that is an issue that needs to be addressed. There's no transparency at all. I had always believed the role of the admin was, until recently, to safeguard the status quo. The whole "the government that governs least, governs best" mentality. I support this viewpoint, and in fact, recent modifications to the site have given me reason to believe administration may be doing things "behind closed doors" that I would not approve of if I was made aware of what was going on. This concerns me. However, with Jasper's recent post, and Corran and TJ having stepped down, perhaps I have nothing to fear at all. Still it would be nice to know just who controls site policy. Where does the buck stop?

Just make certain things more obvious.

Concurred.

VidID
Right now, vidIDs are just a little picture of a chain in the video info. There is no clue about that picture being click-able and actually meaning something. I recommend just displaying the vidID info on the video page, similar to how YT displays the embed code and links for their videos in the video description.

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Isn't this why we make posters? Why on earth should vidid need a picture at all? I've lost you here.

Condense related information
I know I already mentioned the guides, but things like viewing Ops given and received should be, viewing alerts and modifying them, journal buddies and my journal, should be in the same place and not scattered across multiple categories. I find it odd that when viewing other people's journals, that I cant directly go to my own journal or make my own entry. Considering a lot of people post in their journals in response to other journals having that option handy would be nice.

I do not oppose this. I don't personally care, but I see your point. As long as it does not allow individuals to post on any pages of mine without my expressed consent.

Star Ratings
I've talked to people that didnt even know that they could check the star average on their own videos. The only way it's ever come up is if I mentioned their rating to them. Since I'm a donator, I can see their ratings, but a lot of people dont seem to know that they can find out their own ratings by going to edit their own videos. Make it so that people can see their own ratings on their video pages or something.

Another example of something I do not oppose but do not want anywhere near my pages. I despise star ratings and want nothing to do with them. This is a large reason I will not upload to LOCAL and why I pay no attention to anything I put on hosatchel.

Social Feedback Outside the Current Features
Any type of social feedback outside the forums, ops and QCs would be good. Right now, the only thing I can think of is for public comments. Basically, I know that there's a lot of people who dont use the forums. Maybe it's because they're intimidated or maybe it's because they dont know about the forums. Either way, I'd like to see something more done for the other 98% of the members of this site to be more involved so that they stick to this site more.

This is where I get lost. Who are these people? 98% of them are not editors at all, just casual viewers. Viewers who never comment, never offer opinions, never post, never even use their journal. Can one of the admins tell us how many ACTIVE users we actually have? Not how many signed up, but those that come fairly regularly. I'm willing to bet it's nowhere near the 700,000 members we supposedly have, and I bet it's not even close to the 45,000 editors we supposedly have, most of whom are one-hit-wonders. I'm not opposed to some sort of "outreach," but in my time on this site I have never seen evidence that any of these people are at all interested in being part of a community. It isn't like we hide from them, and isn't like the forums are that hard to find- Hell, it's right under the title bar marked COMMUNITY. It's not that I don't approve of your intent here, it's just that I think your ideas are misguided. These masses of individuals just wandering around aimlessly looking for the community aspect of the site and not finding it... they just don't exist.

And I still adamantly oppose any type of unsolicited public commentary. Feel free to advertise the use of the announcement forum somewhere on the main site, but do not force public commentary on an unwilling populous.

Continued QCs
I already mentioned this before, but I'd like to be able to re-QC a video. Sometimes I'll watch a video and just rate it to get it off my star ratings que, but then later on I find that I have something to say. Sometimes, even if I have QC-ed a video, I find something else that I want to say about it. I look at this as opening up more room for feedback. It also makes the creator feel that their video has gotten more attention.

We have this. They're called opinions.

Get Rid of the Stuff We Dont Use or Revive them
I'm thinking specifically of things like Interviews, Newsletter, and Software Reviews. Those things havent been updated in ages and only add to the clutter on the front page. You guys can have an archive section or something for stuff that is old. Still though, I'm thinking that it'd be great if we actually got this kind of stuff up and running again. They made the site more valuable in that it was more information being put out there. Especially in the case of the Interviews and Newsletter, those represent a part of our community's strength. Getting people who are interested to start working on that stuff again would be great. Reviving #amv-review would also be great. Kio and Godix kinda said that I should try running my own review and I'm going to try it. Mind you that this was just mentioned a few days ago, but I'm looking for people interested in participating. Shoot me a PM, if you're interested in being part of a review session. (I'll probably end up making another thread for the AMV-review bit because i doubt people are sifting through this long post)

Now this I support fully. I will even assist. This is a job for groups of individuals to just DO, and present the final products to the admins/mods, who have been more than willing to do the simple task of putting it up on the site somewhere. This is where energy about improving the site should be directed, not some massive overhaul of the org's political ideologies.

Interacting More with the Other AMV Sites
While I'm sure there are people that have pride in their home sites, I'd like to encourage more awareness of and interaction with other AMV sites. The goal of this would be to draw in members from other sites and create a richer AMV experience for everyone. Note that this would require Admin/Mod activity.

I don't oppose this. I don't particularly care, but I might participate if it happens. I am more curious to ask who it would require mod/admin activity. I don't see why it has to.

[

b]Inter-site Competition[/b]
One major one that I can think of is any of the award winning videos of each site can be collected and then voted on by all members of each site. Basically, the general thought of the VCAs are that these are the best videos of our community. I'd like to see how the best videos of each community fairs against the other.

See above.

Displaying the Top videos of Each Site
It'd be pretty cool if our Top videos were displayed on Akross, AMVFrance, AMVNews, etc. In exchange, we would also display their top videos. The links for the videos on these lists would go to their respective site.

Window dressing. Sure. I don't oppose this. It's not really an issue. I have my doubts the other sites would agree, or that the admins/mods don't have some sort of objections, but I couldn't really care less.

Something else to make more obvious are the URLs of the profiles that contain a person's user name. There is nothing on our profiles or on the site that tells us that feature exists. Just display it on the profile page or something. In general, I think the Org has a lot of amazing features, but I question how many people know how to use them or even know that they exist.

And I question how many of those features are actually ones I ever advocated for or particularly cared about when they appeared. I'm sure the org has features I don't know about. I can't very well imagine they're features I need. All I need is:

Login
Profile Page
Catalog
Opinions
Forums

...Yep, that's about it. Anything else? Pure fluff.

In addition, I noticed that in AMVNews videos a lot of people tend to include the address of the site. Can we encourage putting the Org Logo and Address in AMVs? I doubt that we can actually mod this. So I'm thinking that it could just be something noted on the upload or enter video page. For example, somewhere on the page have it say "Did you remember to put the Org logo and your profile URL in your video? It's not required, but it could be helpful to you to include that in your video so people know where to come back to look for your videos and it helps this site out"

I oppose any undue command influence. Credits are still creative areas. We certainly can't mod this, nor should we. Nor do I believe we should do anything that would imply to an editor that they may find themselves punished for refusing to do so. I have never put the org address in my videos, and I am not about to now. It just isn't how I do things. My videos are not produced for or by "a-m-v.org," I am a private "citizen" and as such see no compelling reason for this.

On a much more personal note, advertising the org at all leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it's paranoia owing from my generation, but the idea of the org being marketed puts the fear of attracting attention of People We Don't Like in me. I'd just as soon avoid that.

Also, it'd be neat if contests like the ones on AMVnews were organized for the Org. It seems like every 2 months, they have something going on over there. I think it encourages people to make more videos and mini contests like these generate recognition and more AMV discussion.

This happens all the time. Iron chefs are all over the place. These things occur at a much smaller level, which is where they belong. Another case of Power to the People. If you want to see more of these, I encourage you to run them.

In addition, I want to ask knowname just what he thinks my "views" are. As stated, I have no problem with new members, I just expect that they be able to meet a certain set of standards or at least do their genuine best in attempting to meet those standards. If sending a general FAQ to every new member helps accomplish this goal, I do not see how it violates my stated philosophy.

[mirkosp]

FTP
If we're not getting rid of the FTP system soon, make a video tutorial on how to use FileZilla and put it in the guides and link it on the upload page.

While I have nothing against a php uploader, I don't think we should get rid of the FTP upload. We should let users be free to use whatever they want. I know that I personally prefer to use FTP whenever possible, because it is faster than http uploads for me... uploading and downloading is what ftp was created for, after all.

[Kai Stromler]

VidID
Right now, vidIDs are just a little picture of a chain in the video info. There is no clue about that picture being click-able and actually meaning something. I recommend just displaying the vidID info on the video page, similar to how YT displays the embed code and links for their videos in the video description.

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Isn't this why we make posters? Why on earth should vidid need a picture at all? I've lost you here.

The issue is that people are bad at getting their video's catalog number out of the catalog entry. I, also, didn't know you could click on the picture of the chain next to the Information header on the video info page to pop a Javascript window containing everything you need to know about the vidID tag, plus the auto-HTML behind it for consistent offsite linking. When I've used this tag in the past, I just looked at the URL of the video I wanted to link and copied the catalog number from the end. When doing links offsite, I know how to write my own HTML. This is the problem; there are features that are unnecessary to the people who implemented them which are unclear to those who actually do need them. The link that pops the vidid window doesn't even have a tooltip. How does someone who can't analyze a PHP url have any idea what a picture of a chain with link content "javascript: void(0)" is going to do when clicked?

--K