The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

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ngsilver
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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by ngsilver » Wed Jan 12, 2011 9:34 pm

Am I part of a dwindling contingent that doesn't bother to preview vids and just downloads every announced AMV so I can watch at full quality at my leisure and catalog and save it myself? Preview isn't really a feature that I use. So I don't really care which way this goes. Though I can see a benefit if we want to grab new users in opening up preview to non-members. Though in this day and age of gimmie-now attitude on the net is this really going to bring in new members or just bring in more leechers?
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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by 8bit_samurai » Wed Jan 12, 2011 9:44 pm

I also download videos, but that's mostly because if I want to stream a video, I would have to pause it from the beginning and wait for it to be about 75% done to play it if I don't want any interruption during playback.
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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by EvaFan » Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:45 am

I really don't think we can do anymore harm legally unless we allow embedding for previews anywhere on the web which we won't do or if we have, I'm unaware.

I really think making previews viewable without signing up will help ALOT more than the amv spotlight for getting new members... Another way it would help, people wont be forced into star rating it. A star rating based on a preview is bad anyway cause, while im not dissing it in anyway, they occasionally have defects compared a downloaded viewing. The org needs to understand that not everyone wants to be a critic or rate a vid, a vast majority just wants to watch and enjoy amvs without any hassles.
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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by JCD » Mon Jan 17, 2011 3:57 pm

<-- Just found this sub-forum. Good way to hide it, heh.

I do agree on above posts. If we want to make this site more well known and bring it back to being _the_ place to go for AMVs, enabling no-signup previews of videos (entire video, not just 30 seconds) is going to be unavoidable. C&D is a risk to take then for sure, but hell, even if some more AMVs get disabled downloads from this, it's a rather small price to pay IMO.
If you want to be on the safe side, make no-signup-required streaming (and prehaps downloading too) available for GPL'ed or free music, or music where artists explicitly permit non-profit use. There's TONS of music qualifying for that out there, and I'd be happy to see its use for AMVs being more encouraged.
I really don't think we can do anymore harm legally unless we allow embedding for previews anywhere on the web which we won't do or if we have, I'm unaware.
Donators can embed their own videos anywhere. People can watch them without signing up here (or even knowing it's from here unless they click on the chain symbol). I use it quite frequently frankly, as easy way to show my videos around.

Un-related, but on-topic, one thing that desperately needs to go is mandatory star ratings. Giving out star ratings after 10 downloads just keeps me from downloading an AMV here but instead watching it on YT sooo often. To people who bitch about not getting any feedback otherwise: Just make your videos suck less. If the new design will make the QC and star options more prominent, they will get used more often automatically.

Other than that, mentioned often enough: Entering and uploading need to get massively trimmed down to a max. 3-step process: Choose Anime / Song, enter Title -> OPTIONALLY enter additional crap noone cares about -> Select file, upload through web-based interface.

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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by Warlike Swans » Wed Jan 19, 2011 2:34 am

I too dislike the mandatory star-rating system. I don't want to discourage people who seemed to worked hard to mediocre results. I don't want to rate videos that I only watched half of because it didn't seem worth waiting through a painfully slow internet connection just so I could feel fair. Etc, etc, ect.

I also think that people should be able to change how many stars they give a video, w/ only the most recent rating given being counted toward the stats.

And as an extremely minor point, I wish the forums used a serif font.

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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by godix » Wed Jan 19, 2011 10:23 am

Warlike Swans wrote:I also think that people should be able to change how many stars they give a video, w/ only the most recent rating given being counted toward the stats
You can. If you have rated all the vids you've seen, that link will be a list of all videos you've watched and rated. Just click on the star rating and it'll clear it so you can enter a different rating.
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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by McDirty » Wed Jan 19, 2011 11:52 pm

I actually have no useful suggestions to give so I apologize. :sweat:

But I do want to give a sincere appreciation to the org staff and everyone who's involved with the hard work of redesigning of the org. You guys are doing us all a huge service and I wish more people could give you more appreciation rather than bitch and moan. :D

I guess if I were to suggest something for the redesign, I would say go with "simplicity". One of the complaints I have with other AMV hosting sites such as Akross would be the mass clutter of things and the feeling that there's "too much" to go through. Grant it, the org in it's current state might as well already be in the simplest it can get. But perhaps the new look just might help things out.

Sorry for not suggesting anything useful. But I just wanted to thank all the hard work you guys put in and I'm excited for the new redesign. Keep it up. :up:

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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by dj_ultima_the_great » Tue Jan 25, 2011 2:30 am

JCD wrote:Un-related, but on-topic, one thing that desperately needs to go is mandatory star ratings. Giving out star ratings after 10 downloads just keeps me from downloading an AMV here but instead watching it on YT sooo often. To people who bitch about not getting any feedback otherwise: Just make your videos suck less. If the new design will make the QC and star options more prominent, they will get used more often automatically.
Wow, way to be elitist there. All videos deserve feedback, not just the good ones, and it's arrogant to think otherwise.

I'm bothered by the couple of occasions that I've seen in these threads where editors have suggested promoting our "bestsellers" (like getting rid of New Vid on the Block in favor of advertising the highest rated recent videos, for example) instead of focusing on the site content as a whole. This isn't a masterpiece gallery. Get out of that mindset before we turn even more people away from our hobby.

Anyway, since many of my concerns have been addressed already, my suggestions are very small ones, and probably not relevant to the overall design.

- I'm not sure why I'm still being directed to another page when I click Local on a video download page. It seemed logical when I was a non-donator, but didn't I pay money for increased functionality? Okay, so it's a one second wait instead of a ten second wait, but that adds up over time.* Moreover, it navigates me away from the video information page, which I could really use when saving the video, since "Movie_0001.wmv" is terribly unhelpful when trying to remember what the hell it was supposed to be when I go to watch it. (And just looking at my stars-yet-to-give on the main page doesn't help if it's something that I'm re-downloading, like right now, when I'm trying to reclaim my entire collection after an HDD crash.)

I think that this complaint is a part of a much larger concept that we've all been talking about in these threads: simplification. Why does uploading require so many steps? Why is there an extra page load to endure when downloading, even for donators? Why are there so many menu options on the members' main page when half of them could be (and should be) put on your profile? Things like that. What most people seem to be calling for is a sleeker, easier-to-use .org. Technically speaking, we could keep all of the current functions and still manage to trim away a lot of the fat cluttering up the site.

To be honest, I'm kind of indifferent to a redesign. As long as the .org keeps hosting new videos, I'll stick around - but I support anything that draws in more people to our hobby, so if this is the way to do it, then I guess I'm all for it.

I don't know if any of that was really helpful. It's late and I'm sort of just going stream-of-thought here. :roll:


- Jen

*I've downloaded 8245 Local videos. Most of those were as a non-donator, but even assuming that they were all from a donator's status - thus the one-second wait - I have wasted over two hours of my life minimum just clicking away to another page that shouldn't have been there to begin with.

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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by BasharOfTheAges » Tue Jan 25, 2011 8:36 am

All videos do deserve feedback, and a high rating means nothing if we don't also give out enough low ones to accurately create a scale.
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Re: The Org Redesign - New Features and/or Function...

Post by Corran » Wed Jan 26, 2011 1:27 am

dj_ultima_the_great wrote:
JCD wrote:Un-related, but on-topic, one thing that desperately needs to go is mandatory star ratings. Giving out star ratings after 10 downloads just keeps me from downloading an AMV here but instead watching it on YT sooo often. To people who bitch about not getting any feedback otherwise: Just make your videos suck less. If the new design will make the QC and star options more prominent, they will get used more often automatically.
Wow, way to be elitist there. All videos deserve feedback, not just the good ones, and it's arrogant to think otherwise.

I'm bothered by the couple of occasions that I've seen in these threads where editors have suggested promoting our "bestsellers" (like getting rid of New Vid on the Block in favor of advertising the highest rated recent videos, for example) instead of focusing on the site content as a whole. This isn't a masterpiece gallery. Get out of that mindset before we turn even more people away from our hobby.
I don't believe that certain videos deserve feedback more than others and am inclined to think JCD doesn't think this either. If a video is popular due to being considered "good" among a large swath of people, receiving favorable reception at a convention, or otherwise having the attention of large subset of users then it seems reasonable to expect that the video will garner more feedback than a video few people are aware of.

As such, how can this issue be addressed?
  • On a site with 144148 listed videos, 87981 of which are local, how can you guarantee that the majority of users will actively rate and comment on videos that have fallen to obscurity?
  • If the problem (videos not getting a fair share of attention) exists because users have a prevalent desire for "the latest and greatest", how do you change their mindset using site design and policy changes in order to increase their willingness to explore the catalog? Can you change this mindset?
  • Last month the ratio of (OPs + QC) to (downloads + streams) was 0.00968 If users largely only consume content, how do you increase feedback in general for the videos that people are already devoting their attention to?
  • How do you get users to watch "yet another" video with "done-to-death" sources or concepts?
  • In any system you devise that encourages public posting how can you keep the feedback meaningful to the editor? (editor-centric vs viewer-centric discussion/feedback) Should that even be a goal?
I personally have no specific ideas in mind, but I think the answer lies in some kind of reward system. Maybe using meaningful badges or achievements as incentive to participate in feedback mechanisms or site activities in general.

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