WARNING. Long post ahead. Continue if equipped with enough cookies. I heard someone gives them away for free.

Well, naut is back! studies are over for this term. I'm almost ready to rumble again :)
There has been quite some talk in these halls over the last month since we introduced WTM 2.0
Thanks for all your positive and constructive feedback. We are dependant on user feedback to make the WTM experience even better.

I have followed the discussion and the main problem we're having right now seems to be that many shots (considered good by some people) don't make it to FF films.

Here is a list of all proposals of LePaposaure's "New Submissions adjustments" thread along with my comment:

P (proposal) > Hiding voting-stars to off-set recent popularity of bad-rating;
A (answer) > This, I don't understand, please explain ;)

P > Admins having the final word with deletions ...
A > Good idea. Put on ToDo.

P > Possibility for the shots that don't go through to go in some kind of "Hall of shame" ..... I have for instance added some that I really liked to my favorites, they didn't go through, I have no way to find out which movie it was or even who posted it to ask.
A > A "Hall of Shame" sounds good, but it would make WTM too fat. There were many shots in WTM 1, which we didn't accept and I didn't cry a single tear and there are loads of mediocre shots in WTM 2 that don’t make it to FF films. It’s like getting rid of old stuff on your attic. You have to do it every once in a while or you’re apartment will explode.

We do however have a solution for this. More down below.

On an unrelated note, tliff and me have met Zanapher and Nimmy (our French moderator front) for the first time a couple of days ago and we discussed all things WTM :) which was great. Thanks again for that!

Now, I’ll try to sum up our very own proposal which might fix things a little.
I leave it open for discussion :)

The main problem has already been pointed out numerous times:

> A lot of people give shots they were able to solve a high rating

> As a result, WTM2 will get easier. Basically, we intended to make WTM2 easier, but only to a certain degree. There should be a good balance between easy, medium and hard snapshots. Over the course of the last month, I tried to balance things out by myself (I transferred about 15 shots/day myself: B&W ones, hard ones, even unsolved ones ;) but that should not become a habit, since we obviously tried to give the power to the people with WTM 2.
So, what can we do? We need a second mechanism (besides the voting thing) to get medium and hard snapshots from the New Submissions to Feature Films. The trick will be not to allow all 15.000 players access to this system, only some handful of people.
We don’t want to select these people based on their activity in the forum or their feature film solves and we certainly don’t want to select them randomly. Instead of creating a new group, we’ll take an already existing one, with the fitting name “WTM supporters”. A lot of people will sigh now, but let me explain first and justify later.

We came up with the idea of “Protect Tokens”. Every supporter get’s 3 tokens per day, which will replenish up to 3 once a day. You can decide if you spend all the tokens on one movie or if you divide them among two or three. Based on the amount of tokens (just like with the votes) the ones with the most tokens will be transferred. Concerning the amount, we thought of an equilibrium between tokens and votes. We’ll start with 20 snapshots each. That makes a total of 40 snapshots per day. In order to give !every! player the opportunity to spend tokens and to give players which have shown a great dedication to the site, we’ll also award tokens based on the set rank. The amount is not final yet, we have thought of 1 token every 8.000 movie bucks.
A lot of people will think that this is the end of the classic WTM: “they’re giving super-powers to people with money”. The money thing has indeed been the downfall of quite some sites, but I think (and hope) we’re different. Let me explain:

> You don’t necessarily have to be a supporter to gain tokens.
> Every player (whether supporter or not) is still able to play 100% of the game. There are no limitations. As the title suggest “supporters” help to sustain a steady flow of great snapshots.
> Money is necessary. If you’d think that we’re making millions with site, I can prove you wrong. As of now, we’re short 400,- Euros (mostly due to our recent server upgrade). The google ads are worth shit, and we’re planning on removing them. Amazon does a little better, but as you might not have guessed the most money comes from you guys! A lot of people donated during WTM1 and since the launch of V2 already 15 people joined the supporters (They’re the ones with the black tag in their autograph picture).

Since a lot of people in the forum seem to be of the same opinion when it comes to “good” snapshots, why not post the snapshot here and use the joint effort to transfer it with combined token-power.

Tliff and me have already discussed this matter with Zanapher and Nimmy and we’re on the same page but we will leave it open for discussion. There is nothing final yet. Tell us what you think.

The day before yesterday tliff had a great idea concerning the disappointment involved with the fact that your shots are not accepted. All of your rejected snapshots will go straight to a personal gallery at your profile page. Accessible and solvable for everyone. They just don’t give Feature Film points. And since we have never deleted any of the snapshots, every single one (since we introduced WTM2) will be there.

So far so good . . . :)

Those look like some well thought out solutions . . . very cool . . .

I think it is necessary for users to have the ability to protect good shots, but I feel like you're making things overly complicated with the tokens. You were very smart in the way you set up WTM 2.0, and made it so that the regular users would have high ranks which let them protect snapshots. However, we are still in the transition phase, as nobody can become and Executive Producer (rank required to protect shots) until November (@ 300 WTM Bucks per day).

While your token idea may be necessary now to protect more good shots and lighten your workload, I question whether it should continue once a fair number of regular users become Executive Producers.

On a side note, it's nice to see supporters getting recognition, though I didn't expect it. While I understand your trepidation about money corrupting the site, it is honestly not very much to become a supporter, and I'm surprised more people haven't contributed.

@naut
Thanks for the response. I see what you mean about EP's having too much power. Hopefully, the token system will work out. Either way, I'm glad to know that nothing is final because it means we can always expect WTM to adapt and become better.

I would be interested to know about the distribution of votes for the majority of shots. Most shots end up with a score between 4.0 and 6.0. Is this because of a large number of people voting 5.0, or a bimodal distribution of lovers (10) and haters (1), or is it usually a gaussian distribution?

Thanks for all your time, I'm glad you're done with your studies for now.

@astrododo
Me too, thanks :)

I'm sure tliff could do a little magic and draw a graph with the distribution.
We have about 300,000 votes right now. Enough for serious feedback.

@Chrisy
Hehe thanks :)
Using tokens to protect your own snapshots would result in a direct advantage over uploaders who are no supporters.
Which is obviously bad. It won't be allowed to protect own snapshots. And I see no problem in revealing the owners of each token (give transparency).
I've already commented on the 2 snapshots thing in another thread: http://forum.whatthemovie.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=393&page=1#Item_8
The feature is simply not implemented yet

@naut
One thing that I liked about the shoutbox showing up only to those who solved the movie is being able to discuss aspects of the shot or movie that could be a spoiler to those who haven't solved it. Would it be possible to add a 'spoiler option' to shouts that would only be revealed to those who had solved it?

O, yes you edited your post that's why I didn't see it. Good news that it is on its way then :-)
For the rest, I think it is an interesting proposal!

And yes it would be nice to have more statistics available to give us an idea on how the votes are because for instance I'm pretty sure people change their votes when it comes to the end. It is just strange how lower they get sometimes. Maybe it would be an idea to only allow to vote once

Also having more visibility on who added your shots as a favorite. Maybe getting extra points for a number of favorites, or making more challenging by giving extra points for a new movie added or for been the first one to solve movies....

Anyway, just some thoughts :-)

One question: how do we make sure that the tokens are given to shots which wouldn't go through otherwise with votes?

I like the token idea and I agree that the shoutbox should be open to everyone, with spoilers hidden of course. It's also nice to hear you are done with your studies. I also finished studying a few weeks ago and it feels soo good!


@Phoenix:
> That sounds good, but what about those shots which have been deleted for a good reason like wrong aspect ratio, not taken from DVD, dupe and so on?

Good point. Maybe only shots which didn't make it to FF because of the ratings should be in the personal gallery. Not the ones that got 5 votes.

I have an idea on the voting of stills. I don't think you should be able to vote on a still unless you solve it. A lot of the time an uploader submits a still because of how that part in the movie made them feel or because it is artsy or any number of personal reasons. And when you solve the still you can immediately feel the same thing they did. "Hey, I remember that part, that part was funny, or scary, or moving or whatever." The point is when you let someone rate your still without knowing the movie they have a tendency to just base their rating off what they see. Too blurry, not enough going on, etc. I know you are suppose to rate the still based on its "awesomeness" and a lot of times I base it off how that still makes me feel. If I get the sense of the shot and the mood then it promotes me to give it a higher rating. Why wouldn't you? But at the same time, knowing the still also gives you a better reason to critique it or give it a low score because of reasons mentioned before (too blurry, not important, what have you). Instead, we get people who rate every movie to get their 300 bucks a day to rise in the ranks. Then these guys get to determine later on which stills make it through and which ones don't and they didn't even solve half of them! I could be up to Boom Operator or whatever, but i choose to only rate stills off of movies I know. I have made a few rare exceptions to stills I just thought were really good, but I just think it is more fair to rise the ranks that way.

You are definitely right about that. A good point indeed.

agree!

I've to agree with them00ch here: One week's holiday and so many important things to catch up on ...
... and to say that I'm a little surprised there were only 15 supporters as I had the impression that all people I "meet" around the forum or the lounge have their black bars (hehehe, what an ingenious way of showing someone's a wtm supporter, by the way, I've only realised that now).
And to add that it's great that wtm is "work in progress" where users can state their opinion and admins will patiently listen to them mostly complaining a lot ... and that there are still some "rock cakes" left in that cookie tin over there, help yourself. :-)