Announcement Becoming the Opinnion Page...

[CrackTheSky]

I stopped leaving opinions long ago in favor of the more public Announcement page. I feel, as others have stated, that the Announcement page is a great place to find really good AMVs that may go unnoticed by the majority of the community because of an editor's popularity factor.

When I watch a video that's really good in my mind and deserves recognition, I write up a short review detailing the things I like and/or dislike about the video. This usually manifests itself in a few paragraphs. Now, this is better than leaving an opinion because it's more public, it bumps the person's thread to the top of the Announcements forum, and people who are curious will see that someone thought it was good enough to warrant a decently lengthy review. If I did this all in an op, the AMV may go completely unnoticed. This is better than a short, one- or two-line review because if the person is some unknown editor and all other people see is "Good job 5/5 ", they're not going to think that the video is anything special. "Good job 5/5 " could mean anything, especially since people tend to hand out 5/5s without even thinking.

I personally look forward to reading the posts in my Announcement forum threads much more than I do receiving ops or QCs. It's true, the Announcement forum HAS become more popular than ops in the past year or so (seems that way, anyhow)...but, so what? What difference does it make the medium through which editors are receiving criticism, so long as they're receiving it?

Well, that's the point and question. If the announcement page is going to serve a dual purpose then adding a link button to the video's opinion form and encourage people to leave the detailed criticism there would help preserve the reason there is an opinion page. Otherwise, you're right, why bother with the opinion form side of this site.

By this logic, the opinion form should have been done away with when QCs were added to the site (which, I should mention, caused a major decline in opinion-leaving themselves). The .org now effectively has three major venues through which viewers can leave their opinion, and each one has its own pros and cons. Leave it up to the viewer to decide which one(s) he chooses to use.

I've seen videos by popular editors getting pages of fawning opinions that IMO were mediocre at best and realize that I downloaded the video purely on popularity.

Well, if you're going to say that you've downloaded mediocre or worse videos, that's no one's fault but your own. How "good" a video is is completely subjective, and just because you don't think a certain video deserves the accolades it gets, doesn't mean a damn thing. Popularity is going to be a factor in every video announcement, and certain editors will get more attention, no matter what. Doesn't matter if you eliminate announcement threads altogether - popular editors will get their videos out there somehow, and in return they'd get tons of opinions from admirers. I doubt Nostromo would have so few (29) opinions on Auriga if he hadn't announced it - that number would probably be larger if he hadn't, because he's well-known. People will want to make their opinions heard, and after the announcement thread the best way to do so is the op form. Like I said, editors will get their recognition somehow, and it doesn't make sense to limit criticism to a single form.

One last thing - people are much more likely to leave a positive op than a negative one (in my experience anyway), and were we to try and limit what can and cannot be written on the announcement page, I have a feeling that negative criticism would decrease as people wouldn't find it to be worth their time to fill out an op sheet (which takes a decidedly longer time to fill out than just posting in a thread) for videos they didn't like.

[Copycat_Revolver]

Good job on that post Crack. 5/5

[Koopiskeva]

So basically, do what some people have been doing. That is, post the forum announcement link on the video description.

The forum announcement only stays fresh for so long before it is eventually locked and people forget about it, while the opinion page was made for long-term availability (even though you'll have to leave some sort of opinion to access the others that are not made public).

If this was already covered in this thread, too bad.

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[Kitsuner]

There's always the option of copypasting posts into the opinion form.

[JaddziaDax]

(even though you'll have to leave some sort of opinion to access the others that are not made public).

and there's a trick to getting people to leave ops just to see other ops... it's called not making any of your ops public. I noticed it worked on me, so I started doing that with all my videos (save for ones that have "important", "don't tell me this again", or "I'm way beyond this shit" opinions)

[surfsama]

Personal preference aside, my initial question was based on the premise that there is a place dedicated for opinions and QC’s on this site. The announcement thread seems to be taking over that role as the preferred medium for longer and more detailed opinions. No-where in my post do I suggest limiting responses to one or two lines of useless comments, eliminating comments altogether, or any sort of censorship.
As mentioned, the announcement threads eventually get locked-down and forgotten taking with them some very well-written critiques (both good and bad). What I was suggesting is have an op-link available and encourage people to use it instead of leaving it all on the announcement thread. Perhaps a follow-on suggestion would be to open the op pages to anyone that wants to view them without downloading the video.

However, you bring-up some very good arguments why the announcement page works well for long detailed opinions.

Well, if you're going to say that you've downloaded mediocre or worse videos, that's no one's fault but your own. How "good" a video is is completely subjective, and just because you don't think a certain video deserves the accolades it gets, doesn't mean a damn thing.

In fairness, I was addressing a comment about downloading videos based on positive opinions and recanting how I had downloaded a few by popular editors with many positive comments that turned out to, In My Opinion not live-up to the hype. It wasn’t in the context of a general statement.

[JaddziaDax]

then state your opinion on the thread that it doesn't live up to the hype lol, and there will be at least one opinion on a thread like that to balance it out...


Truthfully, the whole "thread getting locked and lost" is one of the reasons I've started linking to my announcement threads, that way if people want to see what people are/were saying they still can cause it's attached to the profile.

[Kitsuner]

When I saw this topic, I thought it was complaining about people responding to Site Announcements. I'm not sure if I like it better or worse now that I know what it really meant.