To-do updates and discussion.
posted by max on January 17, 2006 at 09:27:01 PM
I'm glad you guys have been giving so much feedback on the feature list. Please note these are nowhere near final, I just want to throw ideas out for discussion. Don't get too worried!
For those of you who haven't been around a while I suggest you look at the TODO list to get up to speed.
Read more if you care.
For those of you who haven't been around a while I suggest you look at the TODO list to get up to speed.
Read more if you care.
[ PAID ACCOUNTS ] Paid accounts will be a reasonable one time fee. The idea is not to take away any privilege from unpaid users, just to give some more powerful features to the people who are willing to throw down some cash. I really doubt that the money gathered from paid accounts will actually be a substantial amount so it's more to pay for the extra server hardware that these features require. One other major possibility is to have dedicated PAID servers so that paid users experience less lag and faster load times. [ MODERATION ] Moderation has been going on for some time now. It's a necessary evil. At first it wasn't needed but as the traffic grew the need for advertisers grew so as the site could pay for bandwidth. As many of you can guess, advertisers aren't pleased when you have animated pictures of gay men having sex on your domain. If moderation stopped, advertisers would drop the site, and the site would shut down. It has to be done in order to keep the site alive. The honor system doesn't work on a scale this large. YTMNSFW is required. The idea is to allow anyone to do moderation and require a majority vote. If people moderate at the same time they are looking at new YTMNDs, it shouldn't really get backlogged. [ SITE DELETION ] One of the main reasons I have even included auto-deletion is the sheer amount of awful sites that are made on a daily basis. There have been 280,000 sites created, of those, 180,000 still exist. The majority of content complaints I get are from people who have had a site made about them. Girls who have angry boyfriends, high schoolers who want to pick on someone, etc. There are a huge number of sites with inside jokes and pictures of people that aren't noteworthy, people's personal information etc. There are tens of thousands of duplicate sites (ie. needs more cowbell syndrome). If users don't police the content of the community, it's going to continue getting worse. This causes a problem as each site (even if it doesn't get viewed) adds to the load and storage space across all servers. The more gunk clogging up the system the slower the YTMND engine will run. Sites are currently being made at up to 2500 per day. [ SUGGESTED CHANGES ] Again these aren't set in stone and I am throwing out the TODO so you guys know what's going on and what I'm up to. The 2.5 score/100 views/10 votes thing was totally pulled out of the air. I obviously want to keep the "instant on" aspect of YTMND and the ability to see the most recently created sites in as "real -time" as possible. It was definitely a bit over-zealous, and I realize how many sites would be affected by using this method (70,435 to be exact). I want feedback from you, the user. We have to figure out a suitable way to keep the site clean enough for advertisers without holding people back too much. We have to focus on quality over quantity. [ ANOTHER POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOR MODERATION AND DELETION ] User would create a site as normal. Upon creation the site has 2 weeks to receive 5 moderation votes. Anyone can see recently created sites, and logged in users are prompted to choose between a few moderation votes. Users can only vote on a site once one of two things happens a) they have made a moderation decision on that site or b) 5 other people have already made moderation decisions on that site. If after two weeks the site still hasn't managed to get 5 moderation votes it's priority will raise in the queue. At this point only registered users will be able to see the YTMND until it's been moderated. The queue would most likely be displayed on the front page. Another possible idea is do away with the recently created list and come up with an "unknown ytmnds" list. Initially it would be seeded with a number such as 50. It would then cycle through every site that has less than 50 total views starting from the oldest and working its way to the newest. The exposure on the front page would give a lot of old and unknown sites some fresh traffic. At a certain point once the older sites have been viewed 50 times, only new YTMNDs will show up in this area, and it would solve the problem of people making YTMNDs at reset time to inject their way into the Top 15. The possibilities are endless. Below are some new suggestions and things I forgot to add. Again, please comment on this stuff as it is the only way I can get feedback. [ FORUMS ] Regarding the forum goers who want things back to the way they used to be, it probably isn't going to happen. The forums are a free service which are offered to members of the site. It's meant to be a community area. The main users of the forums don't even visit the main site and usually shun away any user who mentions the site. I am adding a sub-forum to appease you, but I'm not going back to the old way it was because it was hurting the community and only benefited a minority of the community. If you are looking for that type of forum there are multiple that have started in response of YTMND enforcing it's rules and I am sure you will have no trouble finding them. [ SITES ] +- Build a protection mechanism to keep sites from being accidentally deleted +-- (especially useful for hall of fame). @- Possibly require sound and image origin fields. [ FLASH ] @- On upload make a copy and convert sound files to SWF (has to be done for mp3) @- Write a flash/JavaScript player and preloader. @-- This will more or less end all sound compatibility options, end the need for (refresh) etc. @-- This would require a major change of infrastructure and the need for a lot more hardware. [ SITE TEMPLATE ] @- Allow users to use the "# !" style on the site template instead of the corner image (not sure if this @-- should be paid or an available feature for all users). The corner image is mainly to draw the @-- attention of www. to people that aren't members of the site so it serves little purpose to non-paid @-- users except for the advertisement. [ STANDARDIZE SITE LINK DISPLAY ] @- Go through and make sure every link that links to a sub-domain opens in a new window. @- Standardize the way a site title and votebar is displayed. @- Possibly make icons for the site list which show sites that are ws/nsfw and sites that are in the HOF. [ SEARCH ] +- Make the search more powerful, make an advanced search. @- Possibly a paid feature to add filtering. [ CONTENT BOXES / FRONT PAGE ] *- Don't show the Top Viewed box at reset, causes some skewed results. +- Write some code so that sponsored sites get an amount of front page time equivalent +- to the percentage of money they have contributed to the total. [ WEIGHTED VOTING ] @- Create an algorithm based on each user's vote spread and the average votes of @- the site's they have created to create a multiplier. @-- This would mean someone who only votes 1 or 5 on everything would have @-- less voting power than people who spread votes around. [ COMMENTS ] @-- Possibly open this feature up for people who have a large number of comments on one site @-- (ie popular sites) for free. [ DONATIONS/SPONSORSHIP ] +- Show users contributions on user profiles. +- Show breakdown of contributions on site profiles.
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Okay, most of the conversation I'm sorta out of the loop on, admitted newb. I'm sure we can figure it out, and have a fair method, so that crap sites do get the axe, and good sites stay.
Thing is, with YTMND, there's only a few truely good sites like "catch that _____" and admittedly, the future Conan ones were quite inspired, if not well made.
Once again (as Max has explained repeatedly), the POSSIBLE flash solution would only affect sites once uploaded (during the process of being uploaded, the sound file would be converted to flash and mesh with a preloader). It's NOT A FULL FLASH FILE (in the sense of audio and video) AND IT TAKES THE SAME f*ckING SKILL TO MAKE AS CURRENT SITES DO. The big difference is, as Max says, it requires a lot more work server-side. Jesus Christ.
CHECK OUT MOFO:
I am currently writing and soon to be filming a "documentary" movie on the events of the ebaum forum raids. Filming and editing should be done by March. I will post the movie on my website for free download once it is complete. If anyone has any questions, ideas, DONATIONS, or would like to help out in any way, email me at ytmnd_the_movie@yahoo.com
I think you are all gonna like it!!!!!! ZOMG!!
I'll keep you updated.
its easier than you would think. actually this is the ultamite nerd movie. we turned it into a giant metaphore thingy. there is a town of YTMND, and the dark village of ebaum. princess lohan is kidnapped from ytmnd, so there is a huge war over it, and eventually she is returned. most of the main fads have been incorperated into the story as well.
Although the Flash thing is a pretty good idea, but I don't want the mp3 or wav to be converted into an swf. Make an swf that loads the sound file (and make the option to place a direct link to the sound file on the site page). I believe it's possible to externally load a sound file via an swf and use a preloader.
And to those who didn't understand, YTMND will not become a flash portal.
UPDATE ON MOVIE: More than half the movie is written, and filming should start by next week. If anyone would like to help out in any way, be it giving ideas, donations, or actually being in the film, we will include your name in the credits in the movie, and probably send you a free copy of the movie, because we will be putting it on dvd. For questions, comments, and anything else, reach us at ytmnd_the_movie@yahoo.com
I'd agree with you, Virty. It's just that there's so many "OMG YTMND ROX LOL" sites that just plain aren't good. Making a site about YTMND should be a rare occurrence, yet it seems that there are so many of them, especially in the top 15 and top rated (because no one dares to downvote a YTMND site).
I like the idea of a cutoff - if, after say, a week, a site has not obtained a score above 2, views above 100, or votes above 10... blam!
I'm against Flash. This site is good for the simple text/image/sound engine. Newgrounds is for Flash. If you want to preload stuff so it syncs, write some javascript precache stuff. Avoid Flash.
Paid accounts sound really good.
I'm not so keen on this moderation idea, I prefer the current NWS/WS for all method with a cutoff method.
Weighted voting? All for it. Allows users to keep upvoting and downvoting, but at a cost to their vote power.
We don't want silliness like Newground's "levels" though. Site # ! template should only be adustible for paid users.
^ you're not the first with this idea. You're not even the first this year with that idea. And aside from the fact that it opens Max up to all kinds of legal liability (instead of you stealing a sound, he's accomodating/encouraging that theft,) it'd also enable people to make even more terrible sites with fads that were dead six months ago.
NoGod, right, but if that was front-page, it'd be thousands. YTMNSFW just isn't a relevant entity in terms of numbers. I should clarify the NWS tags, though. When I say they do nothing I mean no amount of people tagging it one way or the other affects it's status. It's more a tag to remind yourself and to weigh in your opinion. Mods see the votes and sometimes take that into account when deciding if something's NWS. Considering most of the people here can't even handle the responsibility of a button that does NOTHING, (marking sites NWS out of petty grudges,) we usually don't pay attention to the votes.