Happy New Year everyone

Okay, for those geeks who want to discuss videos.antville.org, jump over with me..

WARNING!!!! This will be really dull and self-indulgent.

         

Short Version: How would you improve this place?

Really Long, Boring Version: Okay, I don’t know about you, but this place rocks. New, really good music videos delivered every day to my doorstep. (or at least videos of, um, interest) Awesome!

I really feel like this is becoming the place where fans and creatives are meeting up in a way that’s never happened before. I just want to see if anyone has any ideas (example) on how to improve this concept of an open-source mv blog, if it needs improvement at all.

Some ideas:

• a nice list of vital links on the sidebar (prod companies’ websites? Other sites like Screenhead?)
• As an open-source mv blog I don’t think posting any 'rules' will do any good at all. There'll be occasional commercials and double-postings but you just have to wait a couple hours and they get pushed down, no harm done.
• Tags? They didn’t seem to work at first, but could they if they were formatted differently?
• I’ll try not to sound too self-indulgent, but some of the 'classic' posts we've all worked on beehive-like are now buried. It would be nice to have a list of those links too on the sidebar.
• a 'beta' area (msg board?) where, for instance, progosk and I can argue tediously over whether to call something ‘worst’ or ‘most disappointing’

I don’t know how flexible this antville shit is, but perhaps we can bug kris to implement some changes? (Hey, Kris, you out there?) Or would a different blog site/program work? Naturally I would be absolutely stoked to host this place on my site if there’s a much-better blog program out there. Though there would have to be significant improvements (Antville 2.0) for anything like that to be feasible. I ask cuz I’m not well versed in blog software yet, not because it would totally make my ego swell or anything.

         

something good would be consistency in post titles... so if you want to see all the videos by a certain director, they will all come up simply in a search for the name in the same place in each title. i know this is more of a user thing, but it would help the usability quite a bit. this could also be done in tags if there was some variability in capitalization... something like audioscrobbler/lastfm uses, maybe

also- voting/thumbs up-thumbs down? maybe a list in the sidebar of the threads with most posts in the past 24 hours?

         

kev: i think we'll be getting a cold shower from kris on most of these fronts. antville, in its current state, is really unwieldy and ill-suited for all the funky web2.0 shit (tags, etc.); and the developers seem to have other priorities in their lives. there's some amount of discussion of features to be built into antville 2.0 going on, but it looks a long way off. and there's not a lot more that can be shoehorned into the current version.

interestingly enough, videos.antville is actually the flagship implementation of antville blogs (vis. alexa). it's obviously struck a note, and there's nowhere else like it out there, so i can understand your enthusiasm. on the other hand, if it works, don't fix it. as regards a couple of your specific ideas:

• though migrating to another platform would indubitably make lots of other bells and whistles possible, the most immediate effect would probably be a disbanding of the motley antville collective.
• i'd leave the industry links thing to edited sites - the open/collective nature of this place is one of its fundamental characteristics and too much top-down structuring/content-shaping works against that spirit.
• separate bitching grounds: doesn't strike me as necessary. if only because that way we'll rein in our bitching instincts...
• the rules thing gets taken care of spontaneously, so no need to do anything more on that front.

on setanor's ideas:

• consistency in posting's pretty important, but again it's one of those things you can't really do much about if you want to keep things collective around here. kris has already tweaked the input page so as to suggest posting form/syntax; but you'll always get some degree of variability in input. (in my experience, the search works pretty well...)
• i believe kris already explained that listing the most-commented posts isn't possible. shame, cause that would be useful...
• voting: like the "best of" poll? a bit complicated, since you'd have to set up a poll to link to for each post - and who (other than kev) will ever go through the trouble of doing that?

a very modest proposal: since the pace of posts/comments seems to have acceleratd somewhat, perhaps the most recent comments could be expanded to 30 or 40? also: does anybody ever use the calendar?

         

if you take a look at the most reads, you'll find out they're most likely also the most commented.

         

Not that I’m some sort of ludddite, but I like the anarchic way that antville works in this form. Okay, so its very basic compared to something like lastFM, but then antville doesn’t need a team of programmers running around trying to prop it up. The linear nature of the site makes it pretty easy to use. Searching for a particular video CAN be difficult if the original poster hasn’t labeled the link well (I can’t remember if I did so myself) so double postings are inevitable - but then the promo will be listed properly second time around. Possibly. So perhaps input boxes for band, song and director? I appreciate kev’s ideas and greater functionality and specialist discussion areas seem good on the face of it, but getting into production companies’ websites and links to other ‘useful’ websites would erode the democratic nature of antville. Who would decide on the links, for example. On scoring - I think that this is, again linked to the nature of antville. Initially, I thought that it would be a good idea, in that you could rate a video (low) without qualification. But then, I like the fact that if you trash a video (which I have done on several occasions) then you have to justify your comments (which I haven’t done on occasion).

All in all its a great site that works through the cooperation of the users. As long as there are regular posters encouraging discussion (like this one) and fair comment then the site will continue to work.

         

Hey Gang...Happy New Year. It seems the nature of this thread is to discuss if there is a way to make the blog better, so I thought I'd chime in. It is completely true that there is no other music video blog out there like this one, hence we all come here.

I think the nature of "how"we use this blog has so much more to do with making it a better place than any sort of technical update. As I see it, the potential here is great however the site is pretty much reduced to a place to watch videos. Im guessing the site sees hundreds of hits a day. There are so many people like myself who are simply flys on a wall here.

While I have found this site to be great for finding videos to check out, it sort of stops there. The threads generally feel like something of a small club of people writing back and forth to each other. I would guess one big reason that people dont participate outside of the very small group of regulars has something to do with the lack of welcoming or respecfult nature. I'm talking about the way people or work is often dissed or attacked. For some reason, there seems to be this attitude thats like yell at this person they double posted or bitch them out they put up a performance video. Who cares if you arent interested in their thread move on to the next. If this worked as a community more we would see more advice giving. Tips on how to do something. We might even see threads with guest directors etc.

For about a year I have come to the site almost daily; yet I have posted very rarely. I've noticedthat some of the other people visiting the site are very working directors, even of the stature of Chris Milk, and yet somehow you can just go back page after page, thread after thread and in general its pretty much the same 10 people posting...I think finding a way to evolve the site has to do with making it a better community and less of a club house.

Any thoughts? Im curious as to why others think we have a site of regular posters and less participation?

Again thanks for the postings and info..happy new yr guys.

         

quixotic's point about commenting often being stifled is true, and something to think about. things do tend to degenerate into slushfights a little too often, and a lot of potentially interesting thoughts and up as roadkill (ahh, mixed metaphors).

the main reason why there's a stuffy clubhouse of posters is probably because most people just can't be bothered to join in the circle-jerk, it'd be great if there were some system (but of what sort?) for keeping the doors open. i have my doubts, though, given that even places like metafilter, slashdot (and apparently even the flighty digg) end up being "run" to some extent.

for the record: i love to read other peoples thoughts, and i do my best to avoid killer/definitive/trashfest comments. my guess is that a little verbal/social ecology could go a long way towards making antville a little more welcoming - which is about the most that could be hoped for.

• end soapbox - h.n.y. all

         

You definitely have a good point there quixotic. It would seem to me that we are talking about two totally different mv blogs.

The world you talk about - where industry folk feel free to post what they like and not get trashed - would be a registration-only mv blog, perhaps somehow involved with the MVPA. That's perhaps the only way to avoid slushfests, because everyone's potentially a coworker of everyone else; there's an esteem of peers.

Meanwhile for the rest of us who aren't as entrenched in the industry, it's much easier to dis, because we can just go along our merry way. So far this is where videos.antville.org falls. We're just very fortunate to have a pretty good society here.

It's unfortunate, but this split is the current nature of the ever-anonymous Internet.

It would kill me to suggest splitting up this place into two blogs, one where only industry folk could post, and one for the populace. But it's something I think could use a lot more thought, and some good cooperation on many peoples' parts.

biccamera - input boxes is a good idea. And I agree with your point on an over-bearing structure dampening the self-made nature of the site.

I would still like to hold onto the idea of putting 'classic' posts on the side, though. I feel it gives this place a bit of a voice, which is another thing I'd like for this place to achieve, though it may not be possible right now.

For now, I agree the 'recent comments' list needs expansion. And that calendar can go for all I care. Have a wonderful evening.

         

So if I read that Alexa traffic report right, this place got 7,800+ hits today? (I don't know if that's unique hits)

         

I agree with Quixotic. Each time I enter this place I feel like I need body armor or something. There are loads of people who just like to fight, even people who just post videos they don't like just to piss and moan. That's the problem with having no moderator, so the members moderate for ourselves, shunning whatever we find unacceptable. I don't see any way to remediate that situation, except maybe a call for all of us to calm down. Maybe the regular posters and/or the ones that are logged on all the time could "police" the posts, so each time an aggresive or overzealous comment appears they would make a call to order.

That issue aside, some technical improvements I think would work are:

• A list of the posts that just shows the title, so we could search the archive thoroughly.
• I second for the post creation form to include fixed fields like "artist" "song" and "director" so the posts would be more uniform. That would eliminate such posts as this one, but maybe another section could be opened where we could just talk without restraints.
• Maybe a few of us could make a description work with the whole of the posts, labeling correctly and building a topics index only this time it would be controlled and standardized. The topics index didn't work before because people used to make up all sorts of topics that didn't make any sense. As it is know here are thousands of posts in the archive, but who knows what they say, no one can watch the whole of antville in a comprehensive manner.

Just food for thought. Hope you have a happy new year celebration and that 2006 brings us a lot of great videos.

         

I'm weary to put change into this site. It became what it is based on this design. The quick signup (no email password shit) encourages a lot of new people to post.

Does anyone remember allmusic.com? It used to be awesomely simple, then they added all this stuff and it sucked.

kevathens: I think it would be a great idea to create a blog that archives "classic" antville discussions into entries; an abridged antville for people who don't want to weed through a dozen no-name videos.

Throw on a ratings system - maybe high-level posters could add a "8/10" to their reviews; then average the scores.

         

I just want to clarify that I am in no way saying that we need to separate fans, professionals or novices. I am not even suggesting a moderator, however most film & design blogs that I find useful have one. I am simply saying that we should ask ourselves what is this site ? Currently it s functions as a place to post/view videos, and I guess have some semblence of discussion. Its true that the current site design has limitations. Its also true that those limitations make the site what it is. I am going on a limb and saying that in a certain respect its not successful. Above somebody mentioned over 7000 hits today alone. And yet how many posts? I do think it has to do with a certain sense of maturity if this is to be a community.

It would be nice to see more Q&As. It would be nice to see headings other than look at this video. I think the persistant need to talk about rating or this is dogshit and this the bomb is part of the problem. Those are all opinions. What makes something interesting has very little to do with who thinks it good or bad or if it is a 7 out of 10. I mean I know that everytime I go to Whitney Biannial, I am always thinking wow this is what made it in. But it did. So it has an impact. This should matter whether you just like watching videos, you make them or you are the commissioner of a major label.

It would be amazing for example. If someone posted say Mark Romanek's - NIN - Closer ... and a real discussion ensued. Perhaps about image appropiation. The pros the cons. Who were these artist who inspired him. All of a sudden hundreds of people might learn about Joel Peter Witkin or be thinking about how to borrow imagery. Or just learn something about a video they like.

I think the emphasis is in the wrong place...a moderator would make a big difference ...the responsibility is on each person who posts here to prove that they are interested in a community and not a wanky club house. What I find most frustrating is that I know I have a wealth or information that learn and share...currently I am more more inclined to be a fly on the wall and just watch stuff.

         

I havent read any of this and I dont know if it was said already but, It would be nice if people would have to register a real identity so people can speak how they feel with courage. I really hate it when people hide behind the alias like cowards.

well it looks like it was said so I second it...

         

mutant: you mean this? videos.antville.org not exactly representative of anythin current, or even particularly "classic".

kev: reagrding alexa, you did 17% of 46,000? that's not hits, it's ranking. i once fiddled around with these numbers and i think a closer estimate is about 2,000 hits per day (still fairly sizeable).

on moderators: there are a few, and i don't think there's need for more explicit intevention than the community itself engenders.

on identities: it would be nice if people at least registered reachably (ie either with an email or a site through which to reach them.

mvstills: a flat list of posts by titles is here: videos.antville.org

i could imagine a secondary site, repository of must-read or classic posts. (kris would probably suggest a twoday.net thing...)

         

hi,

i like videos.antville.org in its current state, because it is open to everyone and the informations are fast accessible. i guess the degree of discussion-culture on antville is not that bad (for a non-moderated page), as there are most of the times reasonable argumentations among the posts.

i appreciate the idea of a secondary site. it would be great to have beside the mentioned classic-posts-section a section with a collection of links to important other ressources on the web (if you want to go further). e.g. you could have links to "information"-pages (like the one of kevathens), to "into-depth-discussion"-pages/blogs, to books, to magazines, etc.

a point, which is often discussed on videos.antville.org, is the posting of "cool" commercials and shorts. how would it be to make a commercials.antville.org and a shorts.antville.org?

         

antville isn't adding any more blogs, but it is a good idea.

Quixotic - I of course love that idea, though sometimes (as with my site, which I'm always working to pare down) all the analysis feels overwrought. Perhaps an mv wiki? Already wikipedia's getting some mv breakdowns on it (including closer).

I would certainly like more community Q&A's with directors to get an idea of what goes into their work. MVwire has done a little bit of that on their boards, but I don't think it's been entirely successful in that format, with registration and moderation.

And this place is formatted for speed and ease of use, not necessarily full-on discourse. (As you see our comments are stretched waaay out in this thread)

         

a better layout to make it easier to read from thread to thread.

         

an mv wiki (founded from the cross-germination of antville and director-site, no less!) is, i think, a potentially awesome idea, and probably the only format that would allow a similarly open participation while leaving scope for structuring in more content/functionality. contributors can be anonymous or logged; it certainly implies more modding than antville, though, that's for sure... all in all, a good wiki takes some doing, as far as i can tell, but once these things take off, they're amazing resources (just look at the amount of info you find in a niche wiki like indiepedia.de, which was started in june 05; and it's not even a paticularly well structured wiki - there are loads of videolinks in there, somewhere...) videopedia? videoville? vidiwikivinci? should we start voting on these?

         

i really like antville as it is. maybe i'm a prude, but half of the adventure in finding new music and videos is doing a little searching. i have given the site to friends, classmates and students as a place to find innovative video work, and to bring the discussion outside of the forum.

things i would like to change: i would like to have at least one screen cap, or a small series for each listing. i think that would be a keen visual reference. as far as comments, i don't read all of them, so i don't think they are that big of a deal. and sometimes the only way to draw attention to something is to just post it. i was beat up for posting a video i didn't like and for being negative, however that was my opinion. this forum is by far a place for opinions. people put things up that they think are cool, others for things they think are not so much. it's all in an effort to start a dialogue. i would much rather someone explain to me what i missed about something to make it stand out (in lamen terms of course, which is not usually the case) than just say you don't know shit. obviously i have an interest or i wouldn't be on here. the industry vs. non-industry thing is tricky. in some ways i really don't care what those in the industry have to say. i think it's fine if they read things, but sometimes their personal attachments are so clouded they can't see another opinion. but that would be like segregation and we can't have that. so maybe a separate board of some sort for comments would be nice and just keep the main board as the main place to see the work. also, if the description could have some sort of smaller word limit it would prevent too many ramblings. i thought i had just one suggestion, sorry to ramble.

         

haha progosk I love your enthusiasm for the wiki.

If my music video show is indeed over (I'll figure this out this month) I'll have time to spend on this idea. I'm a neophyte when it comes to the programming behind wiki's, so it would take group effort, but I'm into the idea, though there would have to be good community moderation going on. It's hard for one person to make a site decent when you aren't funded. I'll pass this idea on to Alex Garcia, and see what he makes of it, since his site is already partly on its way to being a wiki, and I believe he's funded now. Hah maybe I can work for him after all.

As for the site name, search me.

If anybody thinks an mv wiki is stupid, chime in.

         

on funding: even mr wikipedia himself appears to be mulling the idea of some sort of return. as long as you're transparent about where the resources go, i don't think that'd be a stigma.

mvdbase seems the other natural root for a definitive mvwiki - indeed i'm surprised he hasn't adopted the wiki infrastructure yet himself - though he might feel his work would be too co-opted by a wiki (also: he doesn't seem to offer much love to antville anywhere on his tentacular site...?). but: how's he funded other than by donation?

the wiki wouldn't, of course, replace antville as it is - antville's flat, one-page structure (though it could do with a layout tweak) is infinitely readier for day-to-day consumption.

         

Just some remarks from me: I had done two or three similar project before I started videos.ant, but with different focus (disturbing search requests and cheepo cam pictures), and I've started a some others after this. My experience with sites like these is to keep them as simple as possible. The posts are meant to be read while they are fresh. Most of the links will die in a few weeks or months, anyway.

I personally do not believe that Jakob Nielson or tagging or other things that are currently touted as Web 2.0 would improve this site. Posting is meant to be as simple as writing an email because I want to attract music video afficionados regardless of their computer skills.

I'm going to think about your ideas and I agree to a couple of suggestions. Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to make some tweaks if the software allows me to. The Antville version running on this server is not the latest snapshot. Once antville.org is updated, you can make complex searches with operators and wildcards. This will hopefully resolve a lot of problems related to finding old posts and it will increase the value of the archive.

Happy new year to you all.

         

progosk - Alex hasn't had much time to devote to site design - there are enough mv's out there to enter that it's a good full time job in its own right.

In essence his work would be subsumed into the internet mv community, which in essence is a good thing, and seems to be where the Internet is going, but it would be logistically challenging. He's a really good guy though. I can vouch for his coolness. I forget who's giving him fundage, some mv professionals in Europe somewhere.. Maybe SPPAM?

         

Here's my two cents worth as a regular reader and occasional poster.

The value of antville to me is the type and scope of stuff that get posted here. It's not the mainstream or the heavily played that crops up, but a brilliant digest of that which I'd never have the time to find on my own.

Anything that vets content by user consensus runs the risk of emphasising the mainstream at the expense of the peripheries. It's often the unlikely and the divisive ones that interest me most and the democratic way with which allcomers are dealt is refreshing.

Opinionated comments are part and parcel of this site. It's the mixture of these with astute and intellectual remarks that is antville's charm. As a director, it's one of the few places you can go for a frank opinion. If people need anonymity in order to be frank, then three cheers for anonymity.

videos.antville has noticeably grown this year, if the speed of postings is anything to go by. Right now, the site is pretty perfect, but the challenge might be to keep the content interesting and leftfield and the vibe democratic as popularity continues to grow.

'Teh Gorriliez' provided a moment this year when democracy descended into anarchy and the self-moderating idea looked pretty strained. I suspect popularity will bring more of that.

         

Addition: Weblogs can generally be seen as filters. This site was meant to filter the cool videos from all the profusion of videos found on the net.

We all agree that videos.ant has grown so big that it could use another filter cascade. I can imagine that a site with the coolest videos selected by some of you or, say, one with all videos of a given genre would be exciting.

So if anyone plans to set up external blogs (no, I'm not promoting twoday.net) or wikis or message boards or tagging thingies or whatever that filter the videos posted here, I'm more than happy to give these ressources a link in the sidebar.

         

KEV/KRIS: I think filiz has a great point. Is there some way we could do a spin off, especially for shorts? And have (shorts.antville) be some kind of cousin to this site?

I know I'm not the only one who finds shorts very interesting and promising in regards to new talent. Any thoughts?

         

Yeah, a shorts.ant idea is very good. I have no experience with shorts though. Are there other sites that do this?

Also N.B. the wiki concept would also seem to take Alejandro's mvstills.com to the next step, with mvdbase.com and maybe some of those others (clipland, popzoot). In some ways it seems inevitable to combine it all. I hate being a usurper though. These people have made valuable contributions.

         

Otaku-house. What a sensitive soul. To protect your boyfriend from harsh criticism while filling this site with tomes of your own self-satisfied bullshit that you defend as "well thought out" is straight-up hypocrisy. Just because a gay little monkey sits around and thinks a lot before spreading his fecal matter on the wall, hardly makes it insightful. How dare you call members of this site juvenile as if you, the great "otaku-house" were the harbinger music video critique and the crass knee-jerk "users" were mitigating your experience here with their immaturity.

You don't mind "the levels goofiness?" You don't want to "crush expression?" Is that a warning Otaku-house? If this ribald shit-slinging continues will you be forced to crush expression? If the "level" of goofiness goes from 6.7 to 8.4 on the Otaku-scale, are you re you going to stop the bus and turn it around? Did you daddy hit you too much as a child and now you want all the kids to grow up and act like big boys? Go fuck yourself.

What a humorless pretentious prig you are. Oh yes, let us all register our names so that a million little otaku-houses may flood email boxes with requests for internships or the latest after-effects tips. At least you'll know the name of the user who keeps calling you out on being a fucking homo.

To enhance this site Otaku-house, I propose hari-kari.

         

see that was straight up rude. i bet u wouldnt have the nerve to say any of that in front of someones face or even with a real identity. "cowardly internet bullies"

         

Agreed...rude...and while Im not for censoring very much in this world...the above is case and point about lack of any kind of moderation...usually the above comment would transpire into more BS. More than any sort of helpful technical web updates that we could ask the kind author of this site to make..... making it all of our goal collectively to share videos and share information in a respectful manner is the single best update we can make. I stand by my point that there are thousands of viewers here and an amount of regular posters whom can be counted on our hands.... being rude, unwelcoming,and disrespecful most likely have something to do with it.

Side note: whether or not we see an immediate site update I want to propose all of using the site as a place to ask questions or share articles or whatnot instead of just video links. I think this could re-shape how this works as a community, hence how we all use the site. Thanks.

         

If too many questions are posted though the front page may become taxed. (I try to limit my non-mv postings.) There's only so much content this place can seem to tolerate. But man, I love that whole idea.

Plus, it's hard to get attention on the front page without a screen cap, I think?

Perhaps a wiki with a blog like you suggest? Or a wiki with all sorts of specialized mv blogs? Perhaps videonews.antville.org (if it were possible)?

         

KEV: The only other short sites I know of are the ill fated atomfilms and ifilms. And I'm sure there's been a number of spinoffs that've followed.

Both have become overwhelmingly commercial and muddy and just downright boring. It'd be great to have a place where strong work could be showcased and shared.

I like where this thread is going and agree with both you and quioxtic that maybe side threads/articles could be cool but we would absolutely need a moderator of some kind, otherwise we'd be standing neck deep in a trash heap.

         

• screencaps definitely make a difference. (shame it ain't as easy as pie to put them in posts - anything doable on that front, kris?)

• as kev pointed out, other antville sites are currently not a possibility. so, sure, anyone's free to set up stuff, but there ain't gonna be a whole lotta relation, i fear.

• an "antville select" doesn't sound like much of an idea for a site (what with cliptip pretty much doing that - btw. kev, i don't believe earnest will let himself be englobed by anybody who encroaches his turf...). it sounds more like an idea for a periodic thing/broadcast, or, more fittingly with the times, an rss2-compliant vidcast feed, which people could pick up by a single click in itunes (or using other vidcast viewers, like fireANT). it would take a little doing (i've done enough research to understand that it's just not automatable from the current state of antville) - but again, it's something that makes most sense emanating from an antville-born wiki, where some editorial intervention/selection would feel more natural. that'd be pretty cool (consider that it's fairly easy to structure the feed so that the video enclosures are accompanied by their respective comments...)

• questions and articles, i'd petition, should at least contain one video-link, if only as a starting point/exemplar for the question being asked.

-re: shorts.ant - there are quite a few places doing this, only not collectively ("no fat clips" comes to mind, i'm sure there are plenty others). personally i think a collective shorts blog is likely to have much more of a quality problem than videos.ant... so many bad shorts out there....

         

LUSK81/KRIS: the only other serious resource for (mostly independent) musicvideos i´m checking right now is the res magazine (www.res.com). they feature on their dvd shorts, musicvideos and commercials (often presented with other works of a certain director) and they have a printed magazine. what i want to say is, what i especially like at antville, that there´s no filter. the res magazine filters, which is ok for that, because they deliver you a overview in a lot of different fields and in high resolution (ok...dvd-quality). why should we cut ourselves on videos.antville, where there´s no necessity for it? i like to evaluate the posted musicvideos for myself.

KEV: good point with the wiki and the fusion-idea, but why should it be more complicated than necessary? the charme of this community is somehow quick and dirty i guess, so why not just start an external wiki and see what being it will become? we could let it grow till the end of 2006 and decide then, what to do with little videowiki.

... and ok, maybe it´s hard to copy the collected inforamtion on another server later on (in case it merges with e.g. mvstills, mvdbase, clipland, popzoot, sputnik, res,...). how much does it cost to keep up a wiki?

         

Filiz - I guess what we're nailing down here are four entirely separate concepts.

1. MV Wiki
2. mvnews/articles blog
3. videos.antville.org
4. Shorts blog

I don't know if any of them should be housed under a single domain, but antville won't make more blogs.

progosk - As for "antville select", perhaps a rating system could bump hot videos to the top of a separate RSS feed, like kuro5hin, etc.

I'll look into the wiki software. If anyone has tips or favorite traits of wiki's (or anything), keep talkin. By the time we figure something out we'll have input from mvdbase and mvstills. And if it's easy enough to do I'll not do ads, just get some donations. ;)

         

filiz, i agree: a wiki should be thought out enough in its functionality, then built without too much control-freakery or over-polish, and finally let loose into the wild: survival of the wikiest! the best content comes of its own accord if you tap into the right passions.

         

kev:

• on point 3 i think the consensus is that antville should stay (pretty much) what it is.
• on point 4, it's up to anyone's initiative
• point 2, i think, should be an emanation from point 1 (with antville blessings)

i'm not sure how a rating system could be implemented here. (not familiar with kuro5hin, though i lurve the funky name...)

         

maybe another way of a rating system could be to have some permanent "judgy" persons, who show their taste by presenting their e.g. 20 all time-favorites-videos-list and besides that they put together every month for example a monthly top10-list. i guess something like that makes more sense on a wiki than on videos.antville, hm?

         

yeah, i'd say so, filiz. ideally, a wiki can accomodate plenty of sub- and super-content...

         

kev: what Ko4ting ISN'T (but could be) to kuro5hin.

         

Yep you learn quickly. And yep Filiz that sounds right. Should there be a 'personal page' section of this mv wiki? Or do those of us who want to list our faves seem to already have our outlet??? I guess (if it's possible/reasonable) we can give anything a shot and see if it sticks.

         

generally wikis allow users to add personal pages.

regarding wiki engines (i hope you've got more time on your hands than me), i believe you'll want to look at these: mediawiki (apparently emerging as the industry standard) or, alternatively: usemod moinmoin oddmuse

         

i hope i understand you kevathens. maybe the term 'personal page' is a bit misleading in this case. maybe a bit clearer: 'antville jury' or 'most interesting of the month', because there should be all tastes together on one page.

and i don´t understand your question: 'Or do those of us who want to list our faves seem to already have our outlet???' thanks

         

Oh sorry Filiz I meant ppl already have their own blogs/sites. We've been painting today so I'm a little dizzy.

And I just finally realized an mv wiki would usurp my content too, as Progosk mentioned a long time ago. haha That took a while. I love the idea, I've been wanting user input on the pages for a while. Though, eek, I'd hate to lose some of the b/g flourishes of the Gondry pages ;) I love those

Progosk I like your research abilities, I'm not sure I need programming help yet. Like I said, this'll take time, then cash, storage and bandwidth in that order. ;)

         

we´re back at your categorization of the 4 different concepts. i was talking about a basic wiki (# 1), which focuses on the actual happening on antville (e.g. 'classic posts', 'best of') and which (i repeat now parts of my first post in this topic...) "...collects links to important other ressources on the web. e.g. you could have links to "information"-pages (like the one of kevathens), to "into-depth-discussion"-pages/blogs, to books, to magazines, etc."

in my imagination the mv wiki is more of a short and dense information pool.

your page wouldn´t be touched – i think it would rather be the opposite, because you gain traffic through the links on the wiki.

         

Alex wrote:

"Interesting you should bring this up, I've been thinking of this myself for quite a while. I absolutely love the Wikipedia, it's such an amazing and mind-boggling project... Problem is I don't really have much free time to put into it (even though I couldn't resist creating an account with them a while back). Additionally, well, I wasn't sure what I could bring to an MV wiki that wouldn't already be available on mvdbase (or planned in some cases).

But hey, why not? I'm certainly not against the idea."

He also enjoys having control of the credits on the site, which is understandable. I suggested locking in the credits and maybe the pages too on mvdbase (people would still have to submit info), and letting people free to do descriptions, screen caps, video links, etc.

P.S. mvdbase still doesn't have funding, my bad.

         

concern about control over credits? sounds out of tune with the idea of an open/collective wiki. (who'd want to mess with the credits...?)

he's right that a wiki wouldn't be categorically different from what he's put together so far - an interlinked information pool (as filiz quite rightly called it) - the main difference being in how many voices go in / hands go on it. so, on the whole, it's kind of hard to see what his incentive would be to embark on another project like this...

         

Well what I'm asking is he give up some amount of control over his site, which isn't easy when you've worked hard on your plot of land.

I don't know who would care to mess up credits besides trolls or whatever. I think going to a completely-open mv wiki on mvdbase (including credits) would need to be a slow transition to see if a good community develops.

I think if this all pans out like this my role will be to assist with programming. I certainly don't want to ask Alex to do more work; I'd be happy to take on much of that role, but this would require some work on his part.

         

i didn't realise you were pitching it that way (mvdbase gets some antville grafted into it). on the other hand, would a wiki started from scratch ever accumulate mvdbase's wealth of information all over again?

maybe it'd be an idea to run the two initiatives in parallel: on the one hand give antville its reference-wiki (covering classic posts, thematic "features"/collections, linkpages, and what have you) and on the other open mvdbase to some input (of what kind?) from contributors (vetted by editors?).

         

Well I'm just tossing things in the air really. Although hah it seems I was thinking larger than everyone else was. An antville mv wiki would work, and may be a good first step for me programming-wise. But indeed making mvdbase a full-on wiki has its benefits for the wiki concept.

We'll see what happens.

         

Actually let me nail the two concepts down:

1. mvdbase goes wiki
2. independent mv wiki

Either will work in its way, and the indie can merge with mvdbase at a later point, probably, if necessary.. I think this can be up in the air for a little while.

         

fwiw, my guess is that antvillers are more likely to contribute to 2) than to 1). tho, as you say, if mvdbase starts opening up at the same time, a commingling at some point could conceivably be on the cards.

         

I think you're right. So I think I'll go with that unless Alex feels strongly about wikifying.

         

Regarding the non-music video blogs, I talked to some friends that are hosting Antville sites. Their Antville server sports the latest software plus some cool self-written extension.

They will get back to me in a couple of days, but I think they are looking forward to host and maintain such a weblog. How does this sound?

         

sounds interesting ;-) (or do you mean for the shorts.ant thing?)

links to check'em out at? what works on theirs?

         

it's about the blog(s) for cool shorts and/or commercials.

         

STATUS/HELP: Chose, downloaded MediaWiki Let the games begin!

What name should this place have?

"videopedia? videoville? vidiwikivinci? should we start voting on these?" Good question progosk. It may make things easier - and spurn me to work - if I had a domain to fool around with. Should we vote or are most people bored with details like this?

There's already a mvwiki.com, but no wikimv.com. musicvideowiki.com is also available. antvillewiki.com musicvideopedia.com mvdorks.com musicvedia.com

Please someone come up with something not registered

         

erm... antwiki? no. i kind of like the thought behind musicvedia, but in that case i'd go for musicvidia (fake plural + phonetic ref to the whole [wikip]edia thing). though we like to think of antville as ours, it's actually a platform so maybe (apart from a mention in a tagline, brought to you by, or something like that) the reference to vidoes.ant should be visual/graphical (the orange&grey&red on white thing).

also: thought about a .tv domain, but somehow it strikes me as crass, or rather: opposite to part of the idea: it's precisely NOT tv... though i would go for something more neutral than .com, like .org or .net

also: i still like videoville (ant reference but all-encompassing) but maybe that should be the title of the podcast (mediawiki does do rss2 feeds with enclosures... doesn't it?)

         

musicvidia.org? videoville.org? Perhaps keep with the .org since it's v.a.org.

When it comes to .org's even mvwiki.org is available, which is my fave so far. Short and more articulate.

Anyone else?

         

i'd favor videoville.org, cause it s got a bit more personality than something like mvwiki, which is correct, but … missing something ;) videopedia.org sounds good to me, too, as it takes reference to an encyclopaedic kind of idea …

there s some great ideas & potential in here, very much looking forward to seeing it online some time!!

         

videopedia.org .net .com are taken :(

musicvideopedia.org et al are free ??

I do want something that feels right to most people. I'm very literal, and as you can tell I'm no good at naming my own sites.

videoville.org isn't bad. Perhaps if we can cull together a few more names we can do a quick vote, like progosk said. I'd like to get it up (and in good quality) ASAP. Strike while the iron's hot, and then we can all have free reign creating our own site. Imagine a detailed Carpark North page.. Pages outlining Romanek's art references ;)

         

musicwikio.org musicwikeo.org (musikvideo.org is free, but no it´s german...) musicvid.org musicvide.org musicvidki.org (puh, this one´s too much...sounds finnish)

favourites so far: musicvideopedia.org (because it´s clear what it´s about) videoville.org (this one sounds best so far, but is not quite obvious what it´s about)

         

do a run-off between videoville.org musicvideopedia.org mvwiki.org

(or were there any other good&available ones?)

one thing i was thinking: wherever possible in the wiki a link to the relevant antville post should be featured. (i'd even thought that video links should always be only to the antville post, but that's a bit excessive). i think it's important that antville remains the quick, vibrant one-page flat video&comments site, while the wiki caters for all the in-depth stuff and knowledge archive (with back-lins, or, even better, cross-links between the two.) maybe this is all obvious - in which case i'll shut up now.

         

I don't want to monopolize the topic either. Once this thing is up (depending on if or how quickly I can learn PHP, MySQL, MediaWiki) it'll just be whatever anyone puts in there. I think it'll take time but once it becomes a destination (like this place), I think more people will put more time into it, and it'll form itself.

Neither do I want to monopolize the site. While I'm putting in some legwork in getting it up, and will definitely put some content into it, this is absolutely not going to be director-file-part-deux.com. I love my site, but I loathe the thought.