The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Fall_Child42 » Sat Nov 06, 2010 10:39 am

DriftRoot wrote:
the AMV hobby isn't just about the editors.

It's fine to ask the a-m-v.org community for ideas about how to accomplish its goals, but don't do that until after the goals have been defined. Don't put the cart before the horse.


These two things.

Also, I'm not sure youtube style comment system will really be all that great. Has anyone actually read youtube comments and found a discussion about the video on it? I usually just see comments about justin bieber, comments about the amount of dislikes, or people being racist, ignorant, and brain-cell-killingly stupid.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Enigma » Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:02 am

Dr.Dinosaur wrote:
DriftRoot wrote:
the AMV hobby isn't just about the editors.

It's fine to ask the a-m-v.org community for ideas about how to accomplish its goals, but don't do that until after the goals have been defined. Don't put the cart before the horse.


These two things.

Also, I'm not sure youtube style comment system will really be all that great. Has anyone actually read youtube comments and found a discussion about the video on it? I usually just see comments about justin bieber, comments about the amount of dislikes, or people being racist, ignorant, and brain-cell-killingly stupid.

Discussions usually end up being on the users channel comments or through PM's.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Nya-chan Production » Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:09 am

OtakuGray wrote:and the sub button is at the top of every channel/video and same with the search bar :shock: yeah subs are like alerts. You get videos on the front page and it shows what they made recently. It can get a little unorganized at times...and you HAVE to watch the videos to make them go off the FP. Its not fool-proof but it is a good way of showing people when videos are made at times.

Have you ever noticed a small cross next to the videos in your subscription panel when you hover over a video? Try clicking it, it makes it disappear magically, WITHOUT watching it.
And they also disappear over time, if you ignore them long enough.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby OtakuGray » Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:28 am

Nya-chan Production wrote:
OtakuGray wrote:and the sub button is at the top of every channel/video and same with the search bar :shock: yeah subs are like alerts. You get videos on the front page and it shows what they made recently. It can get a little unorganized at times...and you HAVE to watch the videos to make them go off the FP. Its not fool-proof but it is a good way of showing people when videos are made at times.

Have you ever noticed a small cross next to the videos in your subscription panel when you hover over a video? Try clicking it, it makes it disappear magically, WITHOUT watching it.
And they also disappear over time, if you ignore them long enough.


I didnt know this D8!
godix wrote:Like this one amv. It was all like woosh, zoom with effects. And I was all like whoa awesome. Then that guitar thingies popped up and went dun dun DUN dun then those box thingies went zooming by and twirling around and shit. Oh god, then the hexagons popped up and I was like 'I just got a stiffie'. Then there was the circle with those thingies going around and I blew my load.


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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby DriftRoot » Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:46 am

Dr.Dinosaur wrote:
Also, I'm not sure youtube style comment system will really be all that great. Has anyone actually read youtube comments and found a discussion about the video on it? I usually just see comments about justin bieber, comments about the amount of dislikes, or people being racist, ignorant, and brain-cell-killingly stupid.


On the other hand, this is not the Tube. If it were set up like the Tube, yeah, that would conceivably foster similar results, but I wouldn't advocate that it be set up that way. If you designed the comment area to look less like a YouTube comment list and more like a forum thread (with some direction as to what's required), that would help a lot, I think, in terms of encouraging people to post more than one-liners. How to remind them to do this...current QC system makes it really easy, that would have to be revamped as well if more extensive feedback was desired.

Coming at this from another standpoint (and to address the topic of this thread):

This site has a very difficult time putting new videos front and center, and we've got all sorts of manual workarounds for it which don't really achieve the best results. People make announcement threads, yet anyone who isn't aware of that forum (or doesn't the forums themselves) will never see that thread. The New Vid on the Block area on the main page is very hard to see, plus it can only handle a handful of videos. If you want to find more "new" videos (or even figure out what is defined by "new"), it essentially devolves into a Super Search, which is cumbersome and really, really asking a lot of people who just want to see what "new" action videos have been released in the past week. The New Vid area also gives you absolutely no information on the videos other than their titles, which is generally useless for figuring out a) what videos you want to watch and b) whether they're worth watching. Again, there are workarounds for most of this, but should there really have to be?

What if the New Vid on the Block concept was really buffed up and made a section of the site in and of itself - a place not only to find new vids, but also discussion about them? If that New Vid section had an option for how it was displayed (by Genre, by Date, by Comments), then choosing to display videos which had the most recent comments easily replicates the ranking of announcement threads in the forum. It could be broken down further by timeframe, just like the star ranking system, so that - if someone wanted to see videos which had the most comments from the past week, three months, past year, etc., - that would be their option. The announcement threads themselves could then be eliminated - if people want to pimp their favorite videos, do so in the Recommend Videos forum.

Oh yes...and a few years ago there was a "Site Layout Suggestions" thread in which I (and others) made a lot of points which still apply today. Whatever the fallout of all these discussions about goals and community identity, the site itself has a lot of room for improvement in terms of design and usability, and those things will go a long, long, LONG way towards making a-m-v.org a better place than revamped mission statements or new comment areas ever will.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby JaddziaDax » Sat Nov 06, 2010 2:35 pm

Dr.Dinosaur wrote:
DriftRoot wrote:
the AMV hobby isn't just about the editors.

It's fine to ask the a-m-v.org community for ideas about how to accomplish its goals, but don't do that until after the goals have been defined. Don't put the cart before the horse.


These two things.

Also, I'm not sure youtube style comment system will really be all that great. Has anyone actually read youtube comments and found a discussion about the video on it? I usually just see comments about justin bieber, comments about the amount of dislikes, or people being racist, ignorant, and brain-cell-killingly stupid.



This is what I get in Quick Comments as well, so I don't see how making them public would change anything for me... I'd love to change out QCs for something that is more public and not anonymous.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Qyot27 » Sat Nov 06, 2010 3:25 pm

With the info page/forum announcement disconnect, that could ostensibly be solved by a function which automatically inserts the link to the announcement thread into the info page when the vidid bbcode is used in the announcement post.

Although I would suggest there be a second option - 'vididcrosslink' or something - dedicated to this available only in the Announcement forum...otherwise threads in General AMV or the Recommended AMVs sections would conflict with it. On the other hand, there could be a new section on the info page where forum thread links are listed, based on the use of vidid. That way you could also see any thread in General AMV or Recommendations that might be relevant to the video. Whether the info page displays such forum linkage could be at the discretion of the editor themselves as an opt-out.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Qyot27 » Sat Nov 06, 2010 3:30 pm

Gah, double-post.

Or, have an option in the user's profile (which would be opt-in, rather than opt-out, to avoid forum flooding) to automatically generate an announcement thread when a video has been entered into the catalog and has a download link available. This is then automatically added to the video info page since it was created at the same time.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Corran » Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:26 pm

Why not take it a step further and have true forum integration with the thread's posts visible on the video profile page? Members could also make new posts to the forum thread directly from the video's profile page. The first post of the thread would have the vidid tag and perhaps the editor's comments so those finding the thread via the forum will have the context.

Qyot27 wrote:...have an option in the user's profile (which would be opt-in, rather than opt-out, to avoid forum flooding) to automatically generate an announcement thread...

Instead of opt-in/out to prevent flooding, perhaps the automatic threads could have their own subforum within the announcements forum like the Video Software Help Archive is a subforum of the General Video forum. This way every video can have a thread regardless of availability and threads do not need an auto-lock to prevent comments on old videos pushing down threads in the amv announcements forum. Feedback on old videos is expected. If people want to see the most recently commented videos they could pop-up into that subforum and start reading/participating.

Having integration like this also helps the moderators since the moderation tools already exist and don't need to be created, just extended. (i.e. if a video gets deleted the thread gets locked or moved to a hidden forum. If the thread gets locked the ability to comment on the video profile page disappears, etc.)
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby JaddziaDax » Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:50 pm

^ I like Corran's idea >.>
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Qyot27 » Sat Nov 06, 2010 6:05 pm

Corran wrote:Why not take it a step further and have true forum integration with the thread's posts visible on the video profile page? Members could also make new posts to the forum thread directly from the video's profile page. The first post of the thread would have the vidid tag and perhaps the editor's comments so those finding the thread via the forum will have the context.

That would definitely work well too. Going back to a tabbed interface idea, the video info page could have a Feedback tab which then shows the forum posting options. That way the forum integration wouldn't stretch the page way out of shape.

Qyot27 wrote:...have an option in the user's profile (which would be opt-in, rather than opt-out, to avoid forum flooding) to automatically generate an announcement thread...

Instead of opt-in/out to prevent flooding, perhaps the automatic threads could have their own subforum within the announcements forum like the Video Software Help Archive is a subforum of the General Video forum. This way every video can have a thread regardless of availability and threads do not need an auto-lock to prevent comments on old videos pushing down threads in the amv announcements forum. Feedback on old videos is expected. If people want to see the most recently commented videos they could pop-up into that subforum and start reading/participating.

Having integration like this also helps the moderators since the moderation tools already exist and don't need to be created, just extended. (i.e. if a video gets deleted the thread gets locked or moved to a hidden forum. If the thread gets locked the ability to comment on the video profile page disappears, etc.)

I'd guess that in this scenario, the regular Announcements forum would be for those editors that prefer to announce videos themselves with availability, even if there's a auto-generated duplicate in the subforum?

Or would it be handled like - user has ability to move thread from auto-announcement forum to main announcements, and when enough time elapses, it gets moved back?
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby godix » Sun Nov 07, 2010 2:38 pm

Corran wrote:Instead of opt-in/out to prevent flooding, perhaps the automatic threads could have their own subforum within the announcements forum like the Video Software Help Archive is a subforum of the General Video forum. This way every video can have a thread regardless of availability and threads do not need an auto-lock to prevent comments on old videos pushing down threads in the amv announcements forum. Feedback on old videos is expected. If people want to see the most recently commented videos they could pop-up into that subforum and start reading/participating.

Having integration like this also helps the moderators since the moderation tools already exist and don't need to be created, just extended. (i.e. if a video gets deleted the thread gets locked or moved to a hidden forum. If the thread gets locked the ability to comment on the video profile page disappears, etc.)

I like the idea of a secondary forum, but not as you describe. If threads started in it, the entire forum would quickly be ignored and forgotten and few would ever actually view the threads. I prefer an opt in choice to automatically create threads in the regular announcement forum (for text, it'd just copy whatever was entered into the vid info). The fact it's opt-in will probably prevent flooding, I imagine most editors who upload probably don't look at the options available and would just go with default opt-out. Once the thread hits the automatic lock time, have it be moved to a subforum instead and remains unlocked. That way it can still get the attention of an announcement thread yet still could be commented on even years later.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Zarxrax » Sun Nov 07, 2010 3:34 pm

Why go with this clunky forum thread stuff as opposed to a true comment system? I dont see what advantage it offers.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby Corran » Sun Nov 07, 2010 4:27 pm

godix wrote:I like the idea of a secondary forum, but not as you describe. If threads started in it, the entire forum would quickly be ignored and forgotten and few would ever actually view the threads.


This was actually one of the reasons I described it the way I did. My suggestion was that we ought to maintain the current amv announcement forum and a new subforum dedicated to all video comments simultaneously. Duplicate threads? Perhaps, but making it a sub-forum rather than something separate is to intentionally reduce it's visibility. I believe that most posts to the threads would primarily come from the video profile pages rather than the forum and that if users can post from the video profiles without much difficulty that there will be a lot of activity. More so than there is now with quick comments since the general user base will see discussions and want to participate in them. The ability to view the threads on the forum would just be there for those that are curious about what is currently being discussed by the org as a whole or to search through the comments by keywords, number of replies, etc. Users could still make announcement threads as they do now and link to the sub-forum topic if they like.

Godix wrote:I prefer an opt in choice to automatically create threads in the regular announcement forum (for text, it'd just copy whatever was entered into the vid info). The fact it's opt-in will probably prevent flooding, I imagine most editors who upload probably don't look at the options available and would just go with default opt-out.

I'm not sure about this. Most people post their videos I presume for two reasons: To make their videos available to others, and to get feedback. If we are trying to encourage more participation then it would not make sense to bury an announcement-related feature so user's overlook it and I would imagine that most with at least a little bit of self-esteem and eagerness to participate will enable it.
While I doubt this site will ever have the traffic it once had, take this for consideration. At the site's peek 4273 videos were entered in the catalog in one month. If just one third of those people opted to enable feedback, about 47 threads would be created per day. Even if the site traffic were a third of that, about 15 threads would be created per day meaning that a new thread may disappear from the first page of threads within 24 hours or less when you consider people bringing second page threads back to the top with new replies. Would it be fine for current org activity levels? Maybe. I just don't think it scales well.

Zarxrax wrote:Why go with this clunky forum thread stuff as opposed to a true comment system? I dont see what advantage it offers.

Some forum software (I don't think phpbb does...) provides integration APIs and data objects to make embedding forum posts into other areas of your site ridiculously easy. You can style things how you want and have the advantages of a tried and true back end. Moderators won't need new tools built for them, they can just moderate comments through the forum interface they are already used to. You don't have to worry about handling special characters as much. You don't have to perform much testing for bugs. Users can use existing bbcode instead of asking you to implement hyperlink, formatting, and image handling.

Are these good enough reasons? I'm not 100% convinced myself. I'm just suggesting that you don't reinvent the wheel if something that fits your needs and license already exists. Make sure you are unable to find a good, existing piece of software that fits your needs before trying to make something from scratch.
Last edited by Corran on Sun Nov 07, 2010 11:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Org Redesign - What's wrong with the org?

Postby OtakuGray » Sun Nov 07, 2010 9:56 pm

Comments with moderation sounds like a good idea to me... :up:
godix wrote:Like this one amv. It was all like woosh, zoom with effects. And I was all like whoa awesome. Then that guitar thingies popped up and went dun dun DUN dun then those box thingies went zooming by and twirling around and shit. Oh god, then the hexagons popped up and I was like 'I just got a stiffie'. Then there was the circle with those thingies going around and I blew my load.


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