the sun is still
posted by max on January 09, 2008 at 11:46:11 AM
In an attempt to keep you all up-to-date with the inner workings of YTMND,
I'm going to try and update a little more often. Rather than trying to
convince you that I'm working, I'll just publish my results, regardless of
how boring they may be to you.
I want to thank everyone who provided feedback on the TODO. I really enjoy reading constructive criticisms and ideas, even if I'm not directly responding to all of it. I want to open a discussion on a couple of topics with this news post, so read more if you are inclined.
So first off:
I've migrated all of the database servers over to the latest version of MySQL, which seems to have not only gone pretty smoothly, but also removed a lot of the headaches. Hopefully they should have less hiccups, which means you should see "vote lag" issues less often. While I was at it, I did a good deal of database cleanup, but there are some more major structural changes that require large modifications to the site that I'm doing on a test setup first.
I've also spent the last week migrating the hundreds of files that compose YTMND into SVN (from 3 old CVS repositories). This was a lot of work, because it involved figuring out how I renamed and moved files around for the last 4 years. I found some gems from the past in there too!
Now that everything is in SVN I am beginning the large refactoring that I've wanted to do for a long time. This is a pretty lengthy list of things I need to do in order to get the site's structure and codebase the way I want it. One of the major benefits of this is it will make the site much easier to work on, meaning adding little features and fixes will happen much more often. It also means I can start thinking about opening up the code base to developers that want to add patches or really work on YTMND.
The refactoring is extensive and effects almost every page on the site, as such, I'm going to take the time to split out theme specific stuff to external templates where I haven't in the past. Since I'm doing this, I've sent out a request for new YTMND designs/layouts to a bunch of designers, I've given them 2 weeks at which point I'm going to post them here and let you guys decide which you like best. I haven't figured out how much work the templating will be, but it's possible that the refactoring will include choosable "themes", it might even be possible to get the old design in if someone is willing to do the grunt work. If any of you are serious designers and want to take a shot at it, send me a private message. It is (poorly) paid work.
It is likely while I'm in there I'll make a lot of little fixes and feature enhancements, as well as introducing a plethora of new bugs. Hopefully a few of you will step up and be willing to test everything when it needs it. Anyway, you know how much I like pretty graphs so here is one for you:
You'll notice that I very rarely committed code in the past (and there was a ton of code that wasn't even in the repository until now). With SVN, it means I can update much more frequently without messing up the site, so I am pleased to finally stop "shitting where I eat" as it were. That all being said, due to the significant back end changes required, the site is currently on a semi-lockdown for new features/fixes until I move the production servers over to be mirrors of the SVN repositories. So don't expect much to change in that department for a couple weeks.
As most of you know the hall of fame (even pre-neomatrix additions) was filled with a lot of undeserving sites and didn't really make much sense. I've been mulling over how to actually repopulate it with proper sites that really deserve attention, but I keep coming back to the community nature of this site. On one hand, most of the site is governed by "majority vote", top rated, top viewed, top etc etc. On the other hand, the site is more than just "mine", so picking the hall of fame entries should be a task for more than just myself.
I've thought about various schemes where you could get one Hall of Fame vote for each 3 month period you've been a member or something like that, but I wanted to hear from you guys how you think the Hall of Fame should be populated. I want it to be filled with not only the best sites, but the most significant, historical, and most importantly, the most creative sites out there. This is the page that most newcomers will look at, so it is really important that we show them not only the best and the brightest, but a summary of what YTMND is.
So how do you think we should do this? Should I just sit down for a few days and go through as much as I can and pick them and then write a little blurb about each? Should I let the super moderators pick as well? Featured users? Everybody? Possibly allow everyone to vote as a suggestion mechanism only, just so I don't miss anything? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!
As I mentioned in the last news post, a moderation system is built on rules, and without clearly defined rules the moderation system is bound to fail. I know the whole TODO is a lot for most of you to process, and some of you focused on that bit, but this is necessary to discuss before I proceed. We, as a community, have to come up with a concise and clear list of rules that the community as a whole have to abide by. So:
This is something that must have community backing and support and it requires serious discussion. As I said before, I can't (and refuse) to do this alone, so I will keep posting it until I either get the feedback I'm looking for or get sick of the site and go get a real job.
I want to thank everyone who provided feedback on the TODO. I really enjoy reading constructive criticisms and ideas, even if I'm not directly responding to all of it. I want to open a discussion on a couple of topics with this news post, so read more if you are inclined.
So first off:
<technical junk/what I've been up to>
I've migrated all of the database servers over to the latest version of MySQL, which seems to have not only gone pretty smoothly, but also removed a lot of the headaches. Hopefully they should have less hiccups, which means you should see "vote lag" issues less often. While I was at it, I did a good deal of database cleanup, but there are some more major structural changes that require large modifications to the site that I'm doing on a test setup first.
I've also spent the last week migrating the hundreds of files that compose YTMND into SVN (from 3 old CVS repositories). This was a lot of work, because it involved figuring out how I renamed and moved files around for the last 4 years. I found some gems from the past in there too!
Now that everything is in SVN I am beginning the large refactoring that I've wanted to do for a long time. This is a pretty lengthy list of things I need to do in order to get the site's structure and codebase the way I want it. One of the major benefits of this is it will make the site much easier to work on, meaning adding little features and fixes will happen much more often. It also means I can start thinking about opening up the code base to developers that want to add patches or really work on YTMND.
The refactoring is extensive and effects almost every page on the site, as such, I'm going to take the time to split out theme specific stuff to external templates where I haven't in the past. Since I'm doing this, I've sent out a request for new YTMND designs/layouts to a bunch of designers, I've given them 2 weeks at which point I'm going to post them here and let you guys decide which you like best. I haven't figured out how much work the templating will be, but it's possible that the refactoring will include choosable "themes", it might even be possible to get the old design in if someone is willing to do the grunt work. If any of you are serious designers and want to take a shot at it, send me a private message. It is (poorly) paid work.
It is likely while I'm in there I'll make a lot of little fixes and feature enhancements, as well as introducing a plethora of new bugs. Hopefully a few of you will step up and be willing to test everything when it needs it. Anyway, you know how much I like pretty graphs so here is one for you:
You'll notice that I very rarely committed code in the past (and there was a ton of code that wasn't even in the repository until now). With SVN, it means I can update much more frequently without messing up the site, so I am pleased to finally stop "shitting where I eat" as it were. That all being said, due to the significant back end changes required, the site is currently on a semi-lockdown for new features/fixes until I move the production servers over to be mirrors of the SVN repositories. So don't expect much to change in that department for a couple weeks.
<end of technical junk/what I've been up to>
Stuff you should care about but won't: (i.e. feedback needed)
The hall of fame
As most of you know the hall of fame (even pre-neomatrix additions) was filled with a lot of undeserving sites and didn't really make much sense. I've been mulling over how to actually repopulate it with proper sites that really deserve attention, but I keep coming back to the community nature of this site. On one hand, most of the site is governed by "majority vote", top rated, top viewed, top etc etc. On the other hand, the site is more than just "mine", so picking the hall of fame entries should be a task for more than just myself.
I've thought about various schemes where you could get one Hall of Fame vote for each 3 month period you've been a member or something like that, but I wanted to hear from you guys how you think the Hall of Fame should be populated. I want it to be filled with not only the best sites, but the most significant, historical, and most importantly, the most creative sites out there. This is the page that most newcomers will look at, so it is really important that we show them not only the best and the brightest, but a summary of what YTMND is.
So how do you think we should do this? Should I just sit down for a few days and go through as much as I can and pick them and then write a little blurb about each? Should I let the super moderators pick as well? Featured users? Everybody? Possibly allow everyone to vote as a suggestion mechanism only, just so I don't miss anything? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Rules and Moderation
As I mentioned in the last news post, a moderation system is built on rules, and without clearly defined rules the moderation system is bound to fail. I know the whole TODO is a lot for most of you to process, and some of you focused on that bit, but this is necessary to discuss before I proceed. We, as a community, have to come up with a concise and clear list of rules that the community as a whole have to abide by. So:
-
Reading material:
- Rules / Moderation Guidelines / Global Policy
- Global Permissions (a foundation for possible punishments)
- Add to the list of behaviors that should be considered as "bad"
- Discuss the "pros" and "cons" of certain behaviors and if they should be considered "bad"
- Discuss possible punishments for each behavior
- Discuss what the overall focus of user moderation should be, or which areas should be the most important
- Discuss what to do about repeat offenders/trolls, at what point do we delete people?
- Come up with a full list of behaviors and consequential punishments for each.
- Write a community guidelines document that can be shown to new users.
- Fucking participate for once
What you can do to help:
What you can do to help if you (are an over-achiever/love the site/are trying to brown-nose):
This is something that must have community backing and support and it requires serious discussion. As I said before, I can't (and refuse) to do this alone, so I will keep posting it until I either get the feedback I'm looking for or get sick of the site and go get a real job.
Add a comment
yay my clive owen site got mentioned :) and boy i knew someone was going to have a problem with it. It's okay because I wouldn't want every site to be nintendostalgia either. Anyway, who said it was the epitome of humor? I sure didn't. :P And can you honestly say that sites like clive owen is playing with power are making ytmnd a worse place?
I think in spite of their bot-like behaviour, most of the time downvoter accounts are used to increase the competitiveness of the downvoter's alt account. Let's say, for example, money-hat creates a new site that he wants to get on Up and Coming. So, he makes that site, then he logs out of money-hat and logs back in as Qnslaught and starts downvoting everything else on Recently Created so that no new sites even have the slightest chance of getting on Up and Coming. That's how downvoters really work.
Speaking as a moderator who has access to information about individual users I have noticed that most "downvoters" are not bots and are not even alternate accounts. Sometimes users act the way you two describe in that they are creating extra accounts to both upvote all their own sites to status and downvote other sites to maintain their status, but that isn't as common. The point is that these are real people, not bots, and they simply act like bots, but they can't be stopped the way bots are handled.
They're just replying to a deleted comment, so now they're floating. I'm not sure if it really is a bug, I think max intended it to do that. Or if he didn't intend it then he must see no problem with it. What else would he do, delete all the replying comments? Comments replying to deleted comments will usually be angry and max must have found it funny to see floating comments giving everyone death threats. I know I do!
Wait, what? lol, I wasn't suggesting changing the vote limit back to 500. I think an improved Worthwhile section should be enough to add constantly-fresh content to the homepage. That should keep the front page from being stale. Worthwhile YTMNDs were updated every half hour, which should be enough to fit in several hundred different good sites per day. A few of those sites might even occasionally make it on to Top Viewed every so often. That would likely be better than a WoW or a "dugg" site.
I loved the Worthwhile section when it had standards. Many of my sites became popular because of it. Max, please change the rating threshold back to 4.0, 20 votes minimum, and a better rotation. You can replace the Featured User box with it because honestly, the featured users who makes good sites do so sparingly while the featured users who don't make good sites do it constantly.
A year or so ago Max changed the threshold for the Worthwhile. It used to be sites above 4.01 and 20 votes would qualify you. Then it changed to 3.6 (or 3.75) and the only sites that would show up were not rated higher than 3.9. That's when the Worthwhile box died. If it was changed back and had a good randomizer it would be good having it back on the front page.
I think the hall of fame sites should be chosen by you and a committee of the most important people at ytmnd. You or someone in the committee nominates a site if they feel it's worthy, and the committee votes. Maybe if 3/4 approve it gets in.
The committee might be made up of like you, syncan, sirlemming, other staff, moderators, etc.
Or we could just remove all of them, except for the original YTMND. Most of the original HoF sites would make it back on eventually, and maybe then the creators of those sites may be more trusted to vote on HoF sites. I also didn't mean to let them have more voting power than anyone else, I just meant in addition to whoever else is voting. I dunno, I'm just making this up as I go along, why don't we just vote on it?
I've been with ytmnd for a while now, so here are my opinions and comments for you Max. 1.) I have never been fully aware of what the moderation system is, or has been. 2.) I believe the biggest flaw with ytmnd lies in the top viewed for the day; lists like that are self perpetuating. A ytmnd that might not have merit to be up there could be held there by people just being curious enough to look at it, obviously. I just think maybe there should be an option to vote kick a ytmnd off certain lists.
I'm not sure at what point the vote should take effect, as I don't really know anything about the traffic on this site, etc. 3.) My only really big dissapointment ever was the loss of ytmnsfw.com 4.) Perhaps a vote to extend time between a users voting/comments at certain intervals could be implemented as a punishement; yet again I don't know how many votes this should take.
I think we should have subscriptions to other users (Like youtube where if a person that you subscribed makes a site it will show up in the frontpage). I am thinking we can make this a seperate column on the homepage (Perhaps as instead of sponsorships or featured users, we can have a column that says "Subscribed YTMND's". The users that you subscribe to will be in a tealish, baby blue color, and like the featured user column, it will go in order from when it was made, the username will be next to the ytmnd
I really like the addition of "hall of fame" votes, with extreme limitations. Personally, I would make them available once a month to members who have proven they deserve it. Either by distinguishing themselves as a cut above the rest, or by being here for some significant amount of time and making at least X number of sites that are rated above 2.5 or 3.
Well, everyone has just about covered anything I wanted to say. I do have an issue with people ghost voting, though. I think it would be cool if you could not vote without leaving a comment of some sort.( I have no clue how hard it would be to implement) This could be quite practical and hopefully take out any remaining votebots . As well as singling out trolls and narvs, it would make it easier to see who your friends and enemies are, and you can then block (or not) people accordingly.
Yeah thats true, I guess, but I feel thats the case anyways right now. But that way if the 'friends and enemies' option comes into play, you could block the dummies. I'm being a little hypocritical in a way because I don't always leave comments, but I've never revenge downvoted either, because thats just weak. Also, I guess if someone is going to downvote to get higher ratings for their own sites, they wouldn't really be swayed in an argument over it.
http://ytmnd.com/news/?news_id=55 Apparently a lot of people quit after this news post? lol Well, should we go over what we did then and figure out how we can fix it or something like that? That sounds good, okay here are some things that happened. Sega of Europe sent us a Cease and Desist Order. HTPAT replaced Blue Ball Machine in Top Viewed and was added to Hall of Fame. State-of-Mind quit. Fourest was hacked, and then DR-L337 was locked. Um... what else?
Well, I'm not really sure how to fix those things directly. As in, we would probably have to get State-of-Mind back for that particular aspect, but there must be some reason that users like him quit in the first place. So perhaps the problem took place before December 06? Anyway, as for sites like HTPAT in Hall of Fame, we can fix that just by changing the Hall of fame around. So I hope those HoF improvements are added soon. We should probably fix that as soon as possible actually, lol. If Hall of Fame is
supposed to be an accurate representation of all of YTMND, then visitors to YTMND are probably even still being driven away just by seeing it filled with NeoMatrixClt's sites. Just one look at almost any of them will make people think "WTF this is Hall of Fame material for this site? Screw this I'm going to watch more funny youtube poop videos."
Lack of moderation, dumb cliques, WoW and MySpace-related sites, reluctance on Max's part to appoint more staff, alt. accounts, flawed front page, Digg-whoring, split-voting becoming the norm, new good fads harder to spawn, changes in technology determining engagement with YTMND in general, every good site having a crappy sarcastic counterpart, comment spam, any criticisms downvoted thanks to the comment vote feature, more kids that demand NEDM/300/Poland or anything with '-TMND' in the title...
Plus, the Top Viewed doesn't get as many views anymore because: A) YouTube/MySpace steal our stuff. B) YTMNDs are directly linked more often by Digg and WoW influencing the top spots often. C) Back in 2004-5, all the popular YTMNDs were pretty much on the front page all the time. There was a bigger focus on the 'all-time' most viewed/rated in 2004, and 2005's front page constantly featured 'mod favorites' - which were often classic YTMNDs and fad-starting sites - so fads and spinoffs were in big supply.
I don't know what we can do about Digg and WoW putting sites in Top Viewed, besides putting the site in HoF so it won't get on Top Viewed anymore, which is what we're trying to avoid in the first place. Then, once we get this place cleaned up a little bit, we could do with some extra outside links to YTMND in general. Another media sighting could help, lol