Nov. 4, 2007 - Recent Bugs And Issues, This is long - you've been warned Options

[Talia]

Hi guys,

There has been a lot of confusion lately on the site, mostly caused by several bugs that have been plaguing the site, so we wanted to give you an update of sorts regarding the burning issues on the forums. What we are saying below here isn't meant to open up a debate, though you are free to comment on anything - we are merely passing on our side of things in hopes to make things more clear and increase visibility.

Known bugs/problems:

* VideoRank and general ranks and views on the site - we made a change to VideoRank a little over a month ago. There were problems with it and we rolled back a couple of days later. There are NO lasting effects from this at all. Overall views on the site are not down - they just seem to be more spread out.

* Videos appearing on the Most Recent page aren't being released immediately to the Highest Rated etc. page - this isn't a bug - it is an old built in feature. Since we are obligated to both our video creators and our site visitors, we have implemented a system where you need a minimum amount of ranks to appear on the Highest Rated etc. pages. The reasoning behind this: Having 5 people rank a video 5 stars (friends, family, etc.) and thus giving is a 5.00 rank does not mean it should have that rank. If we let videos appear right away on those pages, there will be several effects: 1) people will get angry that a video they don't feel deserves to be there is there and will give it a low rank anyway, in which case it will quickly disappear, 2) the pages will be much more dynamic (i.e. your video will show up faster - but it will disappear quicker), and 3) people who have come to the site will see the Highest Rated pages filled with videos that have only had a few ranks, may not like them, and won't come back. Metacafe works in a type of cycle: We want the producers to create amazing videos that will bring in the audience, but we also want to bring in the audience who will watch your amazing videos. You can't have one without the other.

* Thumbing down of comments on video pages and profiles - we will soon be making a change here where these comments will not necessarily disappear. We don't have a date on this yet - please be patient.

* Subscriptions and recommended videos on the homepage - we developed this feature to make it easier to see new videos by the people you subscribed to. Many of you expressed the desire to choose whether this feature is shown or hidden, and we are in the process of changing this so you can choose whether or not you'd like it displayed. We don't have a date on this yet - please be patient. In our next phase we will be increasing some visibility for PR items, but I can't give you any more details at this time.

* Spam - this is a war that cannot be won (fully). Those of you who have been here long know how many times we have updated our filter. The only way to 100% prevent spam is to have a staff dedicated to reviewing each and every comment posted to the site. Since we literally have hundreds of thousands, you can imagine that it could potentially take hours if not days for comments to appear, which would severely hurt user experience since everyone likes to comment on videos. Therefore, all we can do is prevent as much as we can from appearing on the site, such as blocking all links within comments. We will soon be adding a Report this User function so it will be easier for you to alert us about spammers. We don't have a date on this yet - please be patient. It's a race, and we'll get the advantage in the next few weeks as we deploy more and more updates to the site to help handle spam.

* Rejecting videos "for no reason" - we keep statistics about each and every video that is rejected from Producer Rewards and in almost 100% of the cases, with a couple of exceptions, videos are rejected because the submitter failed to comply with the rules. The most used rejection reason - copyrighted music. We would like to suggest that before you begin uploading videos - or even if you already have - go to our FAQ page and read the rules of the program - it will save you a lot of aggravation when your video is up for review. Metacafe wants to have as broad of a range as producers as we could possibly have, and an enormous bank of videos. It is in our best interest to accept as many as possible - that way everyone wins. In a perfect world, we could accept each video, but unfortunately we must abide by rules, most of which are there for legal reasons, and others to keep the site as fresh as possible. We want the best items - a rejected item isn't a tragedy, it's a lesson.

* Rejection reason emails - we are implementing a system where you will receive an email if and when your video is rejected from Producer Rewards. For now, you can see your rejection reasons in your Channel page when you go to your Submitted tab, just there was before.

* If we reject your video and you don't agree with the reason - contact us through the Help Center. In many cases, the issue will be resolved very quickly (i.e. we suspected music was copyrighted but it's yours). While rejections are our decisions, they are by no means 100% final - if we are wrong, we have no problem correcting the mistake. That said, if we go over your video again and reject it again - it will probably not be considered a third time. In many cases, videos that were rejected were reviewed by many people, just to make we were in line with Metacafe's guidelines.

* Content duplicates - this is probably the fuzziest issue on Metacafe, and unfortunately it is very hard to explain. Generally speaking, we do not want 2 of the same video on the site for several reasons, the most important being that people come to Metacafe to watch new things all the time. As you know, there are thousands of videos in the program already, and sometimes we miss a duplicate. It's human error. On the other hand, we don't just reject videos for content duplicates for no reason. If you don't make a video that isn't similar to another - it won't be a problem. All the short form comedy videos, for example, have never had a content duplicate problem - none of them. Any type of how-to and trick video is harder since it's (generally) public knowledge, be it more famous or less.

* The ONLY people who can remove a video from the site are Metacafe employees. Reviewers can recommend adding a flag or removing a video, but once the recommendation occurs, our staff reviews the video and makes the decision of whether or not to remove the video. This particular staff works LITERALLY 24/7, 365 (366 on leap year) to ensure videos are released as quickly as possible.

* Fraud - we have to ask once again that once you have brought to our attention a suspicion of fraud (and we would really prefer for it to happen via email and not the forums), that you let us take care of it. We cannot and will not comment on any ongoing or closed investigation of our members, regardless of the result. The only exception to this rule is if defamation is occurring, but we ask that you contact us about suspected members via the Help Center or private messaging, not through the forums. Posting someone's user name in the forums will place a permanent scar on them, regardless of whether or not they actually did something wrong.

* Recommended videos on the video page and post roll - all the videos appearing in both these slots are there by algorithms - they are not hand picked by anyone. The algorithm depends on many factors including - but not limited to - views and rank. That said, we are constantly working on tweaking our recommendation system, and it will be changing fairly soon to reflect a broader - and sometimes more focused - range of videos. The ONLY place where we choose what videos to feature is the Staff Picks in the Studio, and a few videos that are on the right box on the homepage. We have thousands of videos to choose from, and if something extremely interesting is brought to our attention, we are not against featuring it, but we choose those videos based on what we think our audience will like, not the amount - or lack thereof - activity in the community of the creator. It's important to note that featuring a video in either of these spots (that we manually choose) does not make or break a video.

Metacafe has a fairly large amount of staff whose sole job is customer support, be it through the forums or the Help Center (email). While we attempt to answer everything as quickly as possible, and would love to answer each email within 48 hours, sometime we cannot do so. Our customer support works 6 days a week, and the forums are also monitored 7 days a week, where on Saturdays we may not check as much as the other days. This isn't going to change. While we understand your need for efficiency, in actuality, having 5 minute response time would require a staff the size of which we cannot have. If you don't receive an answer immediately, don't feel like you are being ignored. Some cases take longer to solve than others, and sometimes they take more than one email to do so. We have just hired another person to help us out with customer support via email, and as our load increases beyond what we can take care of, we will hire more people - we are already planning on one more.

I really hope this has shed some light on everything going on lately. We haven't addressed each individual bug here since they are mostly being solved as we speak - these are on-going issues.

[Screenwriter10]

Thanks for the info!

[Mr.Illusion]

I've been warned..

Thanks Talia for the update.

Say, you typed this in 3 mins?

[Talia]

2 minutes 15 seconds flat.

The keyboard is actually attached to my brain - no finger action needed.

[Zack Scott]

Awesome! I've been looking forward to a post like this. I feel it allows Metacafe to be open and fair without revealing any "secrets" such as videorank or investigations. Thanks a bunch Talia, the MC Community Goddess!

[Ross V]

Awesome! I've been looking forward to a post like this. I feel it allows Metacafe to be open and fair without revealing any "secrets" such as videorank or investigations. Thanks a bunch Talia, the MC Community Goddess!

/agree Zack! TY TY TY Talia! =D

[loup226]

tHATS its MORE CLEAR TALIA. MC want clear contract but producer want clear info. Now its more clear.Thanks



Talia what do you think of posting each week this kind of info. I think we (PR) feel more secure .
Thank again

[kipkay]

2 minutes 15 seconds flat.

The keyboard is actually attached to my brain - no finger action needed.

Can I do a 'hack' video on your brain? I'll pay you an undisclosed percentage...

[kipkay]

Okay Talia....

"Overall views on the site are not down - they just seem to be more spread out."

Can you elaborate as to what that means...? The Today > Highest Rated used to receive the highest number of views. Where are they spread out to now and why have they moved? If it's a VideoRank thing, just let us know.

Thanks

[NK5]

Yes, thank you so much Talia.

I hope this sticky post will cut down on the complaints and questions you are constantly having to answer.

You did leave out the earnings related bugs. Top producer list is way out of whack and the earnings in "My Channel" are not updating regularly. (Interestingly enough, the payment log shows an accurate amount unpaid for the month.)

The views on the front page seem to be getting back to normal. I wonder if a lot of people simply gave up on Metacafe for a week when the front page kept showing up blank? Maybe they are now starting to come back.

[Talia]

"Overall views on the site are not down - they just seem to be more spread out."

I can't - because I don't actually know. It's not that I'm trying to hide it or anything.

You did leave out the earnings related bugs. Top producer list is way out of whack and the earnings in "My Channel" are not updating regularly.

I didn't want to talk about individual bugs. This particular one should be fixed this week, hopefully in the next couple of days.

Talia what do you think of posting each week this kind of info. I think we (PR) feel more secure .

All these issues are long-standing issues. I will, though, definitely take this under consideration and do my best to be a little more clear about things.

Can I do a 'hack' video on your brain? I'll pay you an undisclosed percentage...

Trust me - you don't want to know what's in there. And it's in 3 languages, too.

[Hershey Magic]

This video has a 5 rating..... but only 33 views in 12 hours......
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/903460/hit_w...e_comedy_video/

Why?

Keith

[FunnyBone]

2 minutes 15 seconds flat.

The keyboard is actually attached to my brain - no finger action needed.

1773 words in 2min 15sec? That would make it 788 words per minute. That's 13 words a second!!!

The world record for typing is 216 words per min (3 words a second) back in 1948.

That's my useless info for the day.

But great info from Talia. Everything seems to be clear now.

[virtualplanet]

Greetings from New Zealand - land of the long white cloud - I have recently joined Metacafe and this is my first post. I just wanted to say how impressed I am with the professionalism of the organisation. You guys really seem to care also which is quite a rare commodity on the net these days. Thank you for this information. As a newbie I have found it extremely useful. Best wishes... virtualplanet....

[Talia]

H FunnyBone,

I actually type about 108 WPM. I used to, at least. I think I'm down to about 90. Half the letters on my keyboard are gone. Literally.

VirtualPlanet - welcome!

Keith - please stay on topic. If there's a problem with the video, open a separate post about it. Thanks!

[Mona(LivFilms)]

Thanks, Talia!

[Hershey Magic]

Keith - please stay on topic. If there's a problem with the video, open a separate post about it. Thanks!

Sorry, thought it was on topic... it was a recent bug / issue.
Keith

[Erk]

Talia,

First off, great post. I wanted to respond to several of the things you spoke about, so I’ll break it into its individual pieces. I guess I would be the exception to the rule as I hardly ever actually go to the website to view anything, so most everything that I see I view through the Metacafe Pro application. That being said, several of my comments will reflect this.

* Thumbing down of comments on video pages and profiles - we will soon be making a change here where these comments will not necessarily disappear. We don't have a date on this yet - please be patient.

Wonderful idea, can we get this added to the Pro application as well?

* Spam - this is a war that cannot be won (fully). Those of you who have been here long know how many times we have updated our filter. The only way to 100% prevent spam is to have a staff dedicated to reviewing each and every comment posted to the site. Since we literally have hundreds of thousands, you can imagine that it could potentially take hours if not days for comments to appear, which would severely hurt user experience since everyone likes to comment on videos. Therefore, all we can do is prevent as much as we can from appearing on the site, such as blocking all links within comments. We will soon be adding a Report this User function so it will be easier for you to alert us about spammers. We don't have a date on this yet - please be patient. It's a race, and we'll get the advantage in the next few weeks as we deploy more and more updates to the site to help handle spam.

Can we get a “Report this video” and/or a "Report this user" added to the Pro app? I feel this would work on so many different levels that it is just too valuable not to have.

* Rejecting videos "for no reason" - we keep statistics about each and every video that is rejected from Producer Rewards and in almost 100% of the cases, with a couple of exceptions, videos are rejected because the submitter failed to comply with the rules. The most used rejection reason - copyrighted music. We would like to suggest that before you begin uploading videos - or even if you already have - go to our FAQ page and read the rules of the program - it will save you a lot of aggravation when your video is up for review. Metacafe wants to have as broad of a range as producers as we could possibly have, and an enormous bank of videos. It is in our best interest to accept as many as possible - that way everyone wins. In a perfect world, we could accept each video, but unfortunately we must abide by rules, most of which are there for legal reasons, and others to keep the site as fresh as possible. We want the best items - a rejected item isn't a tragedy, it's a lesson.

I know this is not a very popular idea, but can we get the old reviewing options back? Rejecting submissions as “Junk” was sooo useful. Yes, I know this is subjective, but more often than not, the junk REALLY is just that, junk.

* Content duplicates - this is probably the fuzziest issue on Metacafe, and unfortunately it is very hard to explain. Generally speaking, we do not want 2 of the same video on the site for several reasons, the most important being that people come to Metacafe to watch new things all the time. As you know, there are thousands of videos in the program already, and sometimes we miss a duplicate. It's human error. On the other hand, we don't just reject videos for content duplicates for no reason. If you don't make a video that isn't similar to another - it won't be a problem. All the short form comedy videos, for example, have never had a content duplicate problem - none of them. Any type of how-to and trick video is harder since it's (generally) public knowledge, be it more famous or less.

* Fraud - we have to ask once again that once you have brought to our attention a suspicion of fraud (and we would really prefer for it to happen via email and not the forums), that you let us take care of it. We cannot and will not comment on any ongoing or closed investigation of our members, regardless of the result. The only exception to this rule is if defamation is occurring, but we ask that you contact us about suspected members via the Help Center or private messaging, not through the forums. Posting someone's user name in the forums will place a permanent scar on them, regardless of whether or not they actually did something wrong.

Fraud, content duplicates and real, actual duplicates could all be helped by adding a reporting feature to the Pro app. Since the Pro application is the first place that all new, unreviewed content is posted, this is the best place, imho, to catch the junk before it gets proliferated.

That being said, I will repeat a theme that I have mentioned a few times in the past about a "wiki" approach. As someone who has been following the development of MC for several years (2004, i think, back when it was just Arik) I am still a firm believer that a "superuser" (superreviewer?) category would be a useful thing, mostly from the standpoint that if there was a serious problem with a video, even one that had made it past the review stage, it could be flagged by one of the superusers for further review by a member of the Metacafe staff. Unlike the current system of reviewers, this group would be held accountable for their actions, so if they flagged inappropriately, their status could be suspended or revoked. Having this group would make it possible for the Metacafe staff to focus a little less on the review process and more on the actual running of the day-to-day stuff.

All things considered, I believe it is a good system, but it could use a few big changes to make things better. Please don't forget those of us that don't necessarily live off the website itself...

[Talia]

QUOTE(Talia @ Nov 4 2007, 11:51 AM) *
* Thumbing down of comments on video pages and profiles - we will soon be making a change here where these comments will not necessarily disappear. We don't have a date on this yet - please be patient.


Wonderful idea, can we get this added to the Pro application as well?

It will apply to the entire site and application - either comments are filtered out or they aren't.

Can we get a “Report this video” and/or a "Report this user" added to the Pro app? I feel this would work on so many different levels that it is just too valuable not to have.

Fraud, content duplicates and real, actual duplicates could all be helped by adding a reporting feature to the Pro app. Since the Pro application is the first place that all new, unreviewed content is posted, this is the best place, imho, to catch the junk before it gets proliferated.

I'll pass these on, but it is a lot more complicated to develop for the application. The content duplicate won't always work though - it may not be a content duplicate today, but it can be tomorrow.

I know this is not a very popular idea, but can we get the old reviewing options back? Rejecting submissions as “Junk” was sooo useful. Yes, I know this is subjective, but more often than not, the junk REALLY is just that, junk.

It was removed as an option because we no longer remove videos from the site for any reason. We want everyone's videos to be available, even if they are the only ones who will watch the video. One person's junk is another person's LonelyGirl15.

[Artist3d]

Talia, we never met and yet I have followed your postings for their warm advise and details... will miss you but before you go maybe you, who have probably the deepest understanding of the inner workings of Metacafe could clarify something for me. I read your post about changes to the way viewers are spread more fairly over the total videos.

Would this latest re-distribution account for a drop by 1000s a day in viewers to my "Popcorn on the Cob" video? It seemed to have gone from 2,000/3,000 a day down to maybe 24 views in the last 24 hours, almost overnight! For a video with a rating of 4.07 I find this disturbing. Can the new changes have made that much difference?