by Zarxrax » Sat Oct 30, 2010 11:22 am
Here is something that I already posted in a private section of the forum before:
First of all, the opinions system. Opinions were originally supposed to be a way for people to leave critical feedback on AMVs, so the creator could learn from it and improve on future AMVs. However, opinions rarely serve this purpose. In fact, even in the original days of the site, opinions rarely served this purpose. One of the biggest problems, is the coupling of the top 10% with the opinion system. Any time someone is able to rate something, and have that rating affect a ranking of some sort, many people have a strong urge to try to affect the ranking with their vote. As a result, people end up giving videos straight 10s, not because the video deserves straight 10s, but simply because they want to see that video move up in the ranking. As a result, this creates useless feedback for the creator.
Furthermore, many of the categories on the top 10% are utterly pointless for actually trying to find AMVs. For instance, trying to filter by audio quality? What does this even mean? Is the top video really going to have better audio quality than a video 100 spots below it? About the only meaningful score on the top 10% is the overall score. The rest just adds useless complexity.
My proposal here is simple. Stop making opinion scores affect any sort of scoring. Opinions should simply be for giving the creator feedback, and nothing more. The ability to make opinions public should also be removed. The creator should have the option to disable opinions, if they dont want to receive feedback.
Next, I want to focus on the star scoring system. I think people should be able to leave a star rating for any video, regardless of whether it has a local (or other) download link available, and regardless of whether the system thinks they have watched it. Likewise, I don't think people should be forced to leave a star rating.
The star scale scores need to replace the top 10%, as far as being able to find top videos. There need to be many many more options. Top videos in the past 24 hours, past week, past month, etc. Top videos as rated by creators only. Top videos by genre.
Next, the comment system. Replace the quick comment system with a youtube-like system. Comments should be public. Give the creator the option to disable comments, or make them private only. Should not be anonymous.
Donations. The "pledge" system is extremely confusing, and I believe it actually turns off many potential donators. Get rid of "pledging" altogether, and just let people donate straight up. Make it clear that recurring donations are extremely important. There are so many people who default on their pledge and are then PUNISHED, because they simply did not understand what they were doing. It's not helped by the big wall of text and the fact that many people may not speak english as their native language. Plus, potential payment methods are not even mentioned until after one makes a pledge.
The text that appears begging people to pledge when you download a video is tl/dr; Vastly simplify this, and instead of having 3 buttons to choose from, make a temporary waiting period of about 30 seconds, like you see on many file download sites.