mad world
posted by max on December 25, 2007 at 06:31:06 PM
merry christmas amigos,
I know I haven't made much fanfare of this holiday season. I forgot to put up the Holiday YTMNDs section, I didn't even add any sparkly decorations to the front page. I know I always talk about how busy I am, but I've been spending a good deal of time reflecting on YTMND's history and future. I was thinking about doing up some big "ghosts of YTMND past, present, and future" deal but instead I'll just get right to the meat of it, plus I'm hungry.
The last month has been bizarre to say the least. I had dinner with moot the other night. Turns out we face a lot of similar issues. Neither of us makes any money and have hundreds of thousands of people who take us for granted. This made me feel a bit better about YTMND's situation, but it also really got me thinking about what YTMND will be in five years, or even five months for that matter.
It's been a almost eight months since I've updated the TODO list. In that time I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours discussing various pieces of YTMND with just about anyone willing to discuss it. One of the major themes, and the bits I get the most criticism for is the moderation system (or lack thereof).
One thing I've slowly realized over the last few months is that when I started, I really had no clear idea of what the goals of a good moderation system really were. I had designed a grandiose system with hundreds of complex doodads and widgets, but for what? I'm trying hard not to mention Shirky's article, but I keep going back to it.
The main focus of the moderation system was to make sure sites were always moderated and classified properly, but that doesn't really matter at all. I have poured a huge amount of my time and resources that have been poured into a system that does all of the wrong things really well. One thing I've learned from a decade of making dumb websites is that you need to know when it is easier to scrap something and start from scratch than it is to change it to do what you want.
So that being said, I have updated the TODO (and even made a parser that makes a "pretty version") in a massive way. Over 1000 lines added, 55,000 characters of every idea I have had, heard or thought was worth remembering in the last year, as well as a large amount of information I'm publishing in hopes that we can start a dialogue on how the site should be.
This is your christmas gift from me. You have the chance to decide how YTMND will turn out. The time for criticism, bickering and general mockery is over friends. If you have any fondness left for YTMND, now is the time to speak up and help to decide where to go from here. I can't (and won't) do it alone.
So over the next week, check out the TODO, and spend some time thinking about the pieces that are most important or relevant to you. Comment on things you want or don't like. Be constructive. Be a productive member of society, because as soon as I sober up from new years, I'm going to be seriously shaking shit up.
So a good deal of the starbar bugs are fixed, but it hasn't been implemented everywhere yet. If there are any remaining show-stoppers let me know. Also I did another thing I never thought I'd do and made a quick Facebook widget which does dumb stuff like tell your friends when you make or favorite a YTMND and adds pretty junk to your otherwise bland profile. Check it out if you actually have any friends to share with.
Have a good holiday and a happy new year. Don't drink and drive.
-Max
I know I haven't made much fanfare of this holiday season. I forgot to put up the Holiday YTMNDs section, I didn't even add any sparkly decorations to the front page. I know I always talk about how busy I am, but I've been spending a good deal of time reflecting on YTMND's history and future. I was thinking about doing up some big "ghosts of YTMND past, present, and future" deal but instead I'll just get right to the meat of it, plus I'm hungry.
The last month has been bizarre to say the least. I had dinner with moot the other night. Turns out we face a lot of similar issues. Neither of us makes any money and have hundreds of thousands of people who take us for granted. This made me feel a bit better about YTMND's situation, but it also really got me thinking about what YTMND will be in five years, or even five months for that matter.
It's been a almost eight months since I've updated the TODO list. In that time I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours discussing various pieces of YTMND with just about anyone willing to discuss it. One of the major themes, and the bits I get the most criticism for is the moderation system (or lack thereof).
One thing I've slowly realized over the last few months is that when I started, I really had no clear idea of what the goals of a good moderation system really were. I had designed a grandiose system with hundreds of complex doodads and widgets, but for what? I'm trying hard not to mention Shirky's article, but I keep going back to it.
The main focus of the moderation system was to make sure sites were always moderated and classified properly, but that doesn't really matter at all. I have poured a huge amount of my time and resources that have been poured into a system that does all of the wrong things really well. One thing I've learned from a decade of making dumb websites is that you need to know when it is easier to scrap something and start from scratch than it is to change it to do what you want.
So that being said, I have updated the TODO (and even made a parser that makes a "pretty version") in a massive way. Over 1000 lines added, 55,000 characters of every idea I have had, heard or thought was worth remembering in the last year, as well as a large amount of information I'm publishing in hopes that we can start a dialogue on how the site should be.
This is your christmas gift from me. You have the chance to decide how YTMND will turn out. The time for criticism, bickering and general mockery is over friends. If you have any fondness left for YTMND, now is the time to speak up and help to decide where to go from here. I can't (and won't) do it alone.
So over the next week, check out the TODO, and spend some time thinking about the pieces that are most important or relevant to you. Comment on things you want or don't like. Be constructive. Be a productive member of society, because as soon as I sober up from new years, I'm going to be seriously shaking shit up.
So a good deal of the starbar bugs are fixed, but it hasn't been implemented everywhere yet. If there are any remaining show-stoppers let me know. Also I did another thing I never thought I'd do and made a quick Facebook widget which does dumb stuff like tell your friends when you make or favorite a YTMND and adds pretty junk to your otherwise bland profile. Check it out if you actually have any friends to share with.
Have a good holiday and a happy new year. Don't drink and drive.
-Max
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t-shirts!! also i think you should put a priority on fixing sound issues especially making it platform independent. syncing is still a pain in the ass. i like your solution 2 idea to choose which would allow us to choose which wrapper is best for that particular ytmnd. also, stickers with our t-shirts!
Also, just to run with your collaboration idea. Perhaps a dropdown or rollover tab which displays all sites that users put up who want to collaborate on and you can add on to their collaboration in you'll see all the other possible collaborations tiered under the original concept and users can vote on which would be best end product but ultimately giving control to the originator. It should show on the top left that it was a collaborationYTMND and users can click on all the other tiered ones to0o.
While I liked the idea of the feature user, I think it backfired. IMO, there were quite a few people on the list who should have never been put on it (Ollj for starters) and a lot of people who should be on it (AwesomeBob). People also turned it into a class envy group. It may be worth retooling the qualifications and deleting the feature user box, but keep the pink highlight.
Make alts viewable by ip. That makes no sense but I will clarify. Like use an ip or something and if someone posts on an alt it will show all the other users that have been logged in under that ip. That way I can see who some of these *ssh*les are that pretend you're buds on their main then bomb your sites and talk sh*t on an alt.
Also a cycling section of sites rated over 4 would be f*cking awesome. Only rated over four though cuz I remember some of those sites in the worthwhile section were god awful.
+- "Hardcore mode" option. +-- When you sign up, you must make one site, if it gets a rating under 2.5 +-- for a period of 24 hours, your account gets deleted. That would be f*cking awesome haha. Also you could use the section of sites rated 4 or higher (And maybe do it by number of views to because alot of big ytmnds are low rated but highly viewed) to redo the hall of fame. Have an option to vote the site into the hall of fame. Also making the turning on or off NSFW sites thing a little more
apparent would be good because some of my best work is NSFW'd and I bet more than half of the casual browsers of the site have nsfw turned off thus never getting to see my stuff. @- Anonymous site authoring
@-- The ability to create a new site and hide your identity for ~3 hours after the site is made.
@-- The site/profile will not show your user name until the site is 3 hours old.
@-- Additionally the site will only show up in your profile for you and your friends.
I like that idea.
@- Consider making a full site template version in flash that can be embedded anywhere.
That would be coo.
@- Think of some clever way to deal with user collaborations on profile pages.
You could do like you guys were doing in #?! with the themed nights. That was awesome but a bit elitest because only a select few heard about it.
@- Company Sponsored contests
Good Idea
@- Paid features and useless upgrade sh*t.
Good Idea. I sent you a message about this I think. Like private ultima online servers
It needs to be Air's song "Alpha Beta Gaga". The puppy originally showed up on June 13, 2007, the day after Featured Users were introduced. I believe syncan is the one that created the puppy. Here's a site telling about it: http://imbackandthinnertoo.ytmnd.com.... that site has an epic profile number (776655). It wasn't just the puppy on the front page, sparkles were falling down the page like snow. Max, please change it to that, sparkles and Alpha Beta Gaga. It would make my Christmas.
IMO we should take a page from 4chan and have our mods be unknown to everyone but the ubermods (which we could use a few more of) and have them in charge of NSFW'ing, temp-banning flagrant rule violators, and abusive site deletion. If someone says they got banned for some sh*t reason, and it turns out someone abused the power, the ubermod just drops them off mod duty.
Well, I believe I have stated in many past news sections some things that could be done. But if you want I can write something up and send it to you at a later date. I'm not talking about becoming a mod tomorrow, but when you get everything in place. As far as programming something to help, I can't do that. I can't even fake programming. Even the APIs confused me. I have no skill. I understood BASIC--sort of, but nothing else.
I haven't gone through the TODO list yet, but the randomizing on the random and worthwhile sections need to be improved. The random list only brings up really bad sites from 2004 and the worthwhile section only highlights sites with a rating from 3.5-3.9 from 2005. Why did that change from being above 4.01? If you get rid of the featured user box, replace it with the worthwhile box. That's one of the better sections of the site.
I was glad when the Worthwhile section was removed because it always seemed to bring up lousy sites, although I like the basic concept after thinking about it more. I'd be all for bringing it back if the requirements were more restrictive (like, say, a minimum 4.1 rating, 10,000 views, and 500 votes).
The enemy/troll thing seems exploitable. Watch spy and add anyone who downvotes one of your sites as your enemy. Users could form a list of all regular users with low voting averages and make them all enemies to protect ratings of future sites. I would stick with just blocking the comments/sites of users you don't like.
Hello max, my typical comment consists of "omfgwin" or "this sh*t is COX", but your post today has inspired me to give some constructive criticism. First and foremost, I feel you should make ytmnd more newbie friendly. Honestly, in its current state, it isnt. In fact, my own getting into it took a bit of showing around from my friend. Call me an idiot, but I'm just the average guy surfing the web for funny sh*t. With the current anti-newbie feel, this site gets a lot of dumb computer-crazed teenagers[cont]
and WoW crazed guys from WoW forums across the web. I often try to refer my friends to ytmnd, but they always ask a ton of (in my view) obvious questions. Sure, I dont want this turning into an internet fad like youtube, myspace or even ebaums. But the kind of humor promiment on ytmnd will scare most total morons away. Despite seeming simple and dumb, most of this humor is relativly complex.
Secondly, and less importantly, the search feature. Fad categories pl0x? Being able to browse based [cont again]
what the ytmnd hints at would be awesome, and very convenient. And finally, please, please, dont give mods far too much power. A powerful mod base will scare away much of the community. I dont visit newgrounds as frequently for this reason [mainly]. I mean comeon, getting my profile muted for saying "Blam this sh*t!", is utter bs. You turn the site into an oligarchy, which will require your watchful eye much more. Sure allow mods to take action, but dont hand it over like most sites do. Thanks.
you could also cut down on the number of people who want to become mods by not letting them create sites, but letting them keep and edit the sites they already made before becoming mods. I think that this would "up" the seriousness of moderation quite a bit, although I can see this resulting in every single mod who creates YTMNDs having alt-accounts...
I don't really like the idea of having MySpace like user profiles. There's enough places online for that now, and I think the spirit of YTMND has always been that it doesn't really matter who makes something as long as its funny. If you ask me, you should give priority to the entires that pertain more to improving the site as it exists now, like improving the HoF and flagging "unknown" YTMNDs.
Agreed on making the HoF a living entity. Plus its obvious you're working towards a "Sites I bet you'll cream over" section (haven't read TODO but I can guess). So many sites are lost in the sea of endless crap. Even a bot that shaved off sites with under a 2.4 rating or some such random number might help cut down on the sh*t a little
To be honest, I never really understood how the moderation system would change YTMND. It might help stop the alts, but build a better wall and they will just dig under it. People will always try to sh*t in our cereal. More mods would help, but I never felt we needed a mobilized policing force. As for suggestions on the future of YTMND, BTape's friends UI would be great for the site if you guys worked together to integrate it. YTMND is about 2 things: community and stupid crap. And the later is all set.
I disagree. If you dont like someones comments, go cry. An adequate mod system will stop spammers and overly active flamers (serious comment freedom is a big part of ytmnd for me, but flaming can definitely be done with).
A good mod system could work this out much better than the dog eat dog anarchy that would ensue if you allowed everyone to delete anyones comments.
Can someone explain what the f*ck the blue next to some of the comments means anyway? Because I always thought "You know, blue for someone with a higher + to his comments and red for someone with a majority of - for his comments would be sweet." but I can't tell if that is what is going on here or not. If not, can we do that?