I'm maybe the only one, but since the new system, I have a lot of troubles to see the pictures. I have the complete page on my screen with all the links working, but in the grey frame no picture at all.
I think it's due to the growing number of visitors but it's a bit boring. the last week I saw the pictures twice.
You are right louisbloque, at the moment whatthemovie is quite flushed with new movies every day, and it's hard to keep up with the stream.
The reasons for this phaenomen are:
1. the movies are no longer stuck in the queue Before we switched to the new queuing system there were about 700 movies in the queue, which were released in the last week. These 700 movies are now done, and the amount of new movies every day should now be around 50-70
2. You guys upload heck a lot! The images don't just appear out of nowhere. They are uploaded by our players.
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So, if a lot of people feel the same way like you louisbloque, we have the following options to "fix" this problem:
1. Make an upload limitation. It would be great, If everybody just uploads a movie screenshot right after seeing the whole movie. This way, you have the best overview and are able to pick the best scene. E.g. we only allow 3 uploads per user / day.
2. Set a higher approval standard. At the moment we receive roughly about 100-150 movies every day and release about half of them. Releasing only a quarter surely improves our quality but also causes a pain in the ass for everybody, whose shots are disapproved.
I also feel that there are too many new movies each day. Besides this problem was also discussed on another thread, meaning that many people feel the same way. I don't think we should limit the number of uploads per user per day (we'd loose dorisnight and biglobowski's great input :)). However, we could put a limit on the number of uploaded movies per day.
Here's how I see it : People upload screenshots, these go to the main queue as it's done at the moment. Time in the main queue is limited (as now, but maybe 48 hours is a bit short). Moderators look at the shots, approve the ones they like, disapprove the ones they don't like and say nothing about the "meh" ones (mostly when they cannot decide if the image is good because they don't know the movie). After their time in the queue is over, disapproved shots are discarded (mail to the poster with reason for discard) and approved shots go in a "publication queue". As for shots for which no moderator has given an opinion, we could put them back in the main queue once (but moderators see that the movie has been resent for this reason and hence possibly approve more easily if they don't know the movie) and if again no one votes they are discarded (hereby removing completely unknown movies or non-interesting images.
From there, every day, a set number of images are taken from the "publication queue" and effectively published. Those that are not published are kept in this queue.
The way things are now, the publication queue will grow very quickly (if it's not emptied as fast as movies come). When it becomes large enough, we can start selecting screenshots more strictly and remove the mediocre ones (I would personally remove most of the gore ones, there are way too many of those) and make the published shots better overall.
Oh, and another thing : instructions to submitters should be slightly updated.
In particular : - Don't post many shots from the same movie at a time. This is annoying because moderators are supposed to choose the best one, when the submitter should have chosen (if the moderators don't agree on the best, several could be published, or none at all...). - The main title is the one that will appear to people when they solve the movie, or when they request the solution (and it's the one that will be used by the amazon link). As such it should be the original title. For uniformity, it should be the title as it appears on the IMDb. Please don't put the German title of an American movie, or the English title of a German movie... Other titles must be given as alternative titles.
Zanapher, I have some problems with a "second queue".
It surely solves our problem with "too many movies" per day, but it creates a lot more of them. The system is just getting to complicated. The amount of work to keep the site up and running would be a lot more. You would have to manage two queues and vote numerously on movies.
It would also result in the problem we had earlier. The pile of movies in the publication queue will grow larger and larger, uploaders would ask themselves whether there shots are approved or not. The moderators will have more and more work, overviewing both queues.
Zanapher: Your inputs on the upload section are quite good :) > Put on todo. We should explicitly write that one should ad the IMDB title as the main title.
My english is not good enough to understand everything that has been said by Zanapher and Naut, but I agree with what naut said last, the idea of this discussion is to check everybody's opinion.