What is the org doing wrong?

[Zarxrax]

Points brought up in the thread are why I have decided to learn PHP, MYSQL, Javascript, etc, so I can help reprogram the site.
It's actually a lot easier to learn than I thought it would be.

/passive encouragement for others to learn as well

[Kireblue]

Kill the log in requirement for previews.

Then everyone will just watch videos logged out so they don't have to give them a star rating.
(For the moment I'm not saying whether mandatory stars are good or bad, just trying to illustrate a consequence of the decision)

instead of having star ratings be mandatory, how about making it optional, and giving people incentives to give them. One incentive could be having a star rating leaderdoard similar to the "most useful" leaderboard. Right now, I can't think of any other incentives though.

[Castor Troy]

I think we should start running polls on the main page asking stuff like "Do you use mac or pc, Do you use Premiere, Vegas, etc".

It would be a lot easier to cater to everyone's needs.

[Pwolf]

The problem stems from everything we've been saying in the State of the Org thread. The org isn't a place to watch videos, it's a catalog and the design of the website is focused on that aspect more then anything else. amvnews is a distribution site for amvs, so you're most likely going to get more views.

[Kai Stromler]

Because my customer hasn't called into the meeting yet, I was able to take an actual real look at the main-site interface. Raise your hand if you were previously aware that there are 46 separate options available under the collapsable headers in the members menu. After I get home I'll followup/edit this with a proposed rework that gets this down to 30 in case the redesign team hasn't yet looked at this in detail, plus some other suggestions. The comments relating to community dynamics are probably more important to what the .org is "doing wrong", but if you're not familiar with it already, the main site design is not helping a whole lot.

--K

[godix]

The problem stems from everything we've been saying in the State of the Org thread. The org isn't a place to watch videos, it's a catalog and the design of the website is focused on that aspect more then anything else. amvnews is a distribution site for amvs, so you're most likely going to get more views.

The org WAS a catalog. Should it still be? Because, honestly, other than the language barriers can you think of a single reason a new editor would want to come here instead of other sites devoted to AMVs that will give their editing more attention?

And yeah, I know this is kinda a duplication of State of the Org. But state of the org didn't seem overly focused on a specific subject, while this thread is specifically about editors, how much attention their editing gets, how to increase that, and if increasing that is something the org should even try doing.

[JaddziaDax]

I would like to keep star ratings but i think it would be cool if they weren't mandatory.

The complaints I usually hear about the org are these:
1. elitism, bashing, and general reputation stuff.
2. "people will steal my video and upload it to youtube!" in other words streaming only = better
3. uploading is haaaaaaaaaaaaaard

[Pwolf]

I would like to keep star ratings but i think it would be cool if they weren't mandatory.

The complaints I usually hear about the org are these:
1. elitism, bashing, and general reputation stuff.
2. "people will steal my video and upload it to youtube!" in other words streaming only = better
3. uploading is haaaaaaaaaaaaaard

1. We strive for excellence, it's not our fault
2. They'll only steal if it's good, take it as a compliment... beside, youtube is lame
3. The method used for uploading on this website has been in use for 20+ years, how can it be that hard?

Joking aside, on a more serious note regarding #3, I've released a program a while back that makes uploading to the org extremely easy: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 16&t=97027

Copy and paste connection string into text box, browse for video, upload. after its done it takes you the confirmation page. cake.

[post-it]

people stealing my video .. ?again? .. look, people, every frame of every video can be encoded
with the users name/I.D.#/time/date/blood type .. its not that hard and its extremely hard to
locate ( which means that other video editors will just pass the info along with the video to
the finished encode where; WE can nab the little crook and kill them like you would any other thief. )
.. its not rocket-science!

[Mastamind]

I honestly don't see why this is a surprise to anybody. The org just lacks the interactivity present in akross and especially amvnews, and that's the reason their popularity has gone up while the org has gone down. AMVnews has contests, polls, reviews etc. that keeps the community active and encourages editing/serious critique. The org is way more editor-orientated and although that may set a high standard, it's got a negative impact for viewers.

However, despite these suggestions, I think a large part is simply the community.

This was my impression as well. I also uploaded my last video to amvnews, where it had a couple of pages of comments by the first day; I announced it here and I've gotten five replies after several days (no ops, no qcs). The same happened for my previous video where I didn't even upload it to amvnews, and it's gotten many more replies and thousands more views there than on the org. I'll admit I'm guilty of commenting less on videos I download than I used to, but... it just sucks how the org is a such great resource for high-quality videos but not for the appreciation of those videos

Of course the site itself contributes to the problem, if we're looking to reach for the more casual viewer then the whole "login to view a video" thing should disappear. I don't care for youtube, I hardly ever visit it anymore, but if someone wants a link to one of my videos I will give them the one on youtube. Nobody's going to create an account just to watch a video, and that's a shame because being able to download a video as a guest would only attract more members. Not that I think this system will actually be changed.

In the end, it's all just a matter of how much we're willing to cater to the general crowd as opposed to a smaller group. tl;dr maybe, but I'm not an established member of either particular amv community so I hope I'm providing a more objectice viewpoint here.