YOU CAN BUY THIS SONG HERE: thehypnoticlights.bandcamp.com

CONTACT: thehypnoticlights@googlemail.com

facebook: www.facebook.com

Music: The Hypnotic Lights Producer and Director of all : The Hypnotic Lights Cut and FX by Stefan Haberkorn from VISUALIMPRESSION www.visualimpression.de

booking and contact: thehypnoticlights@googlemail.com

         

Nice one!

         

actually it's pretty lame

         

Videos that get praised by the people who made and uploaded them — under another username (how creative!) — just 2 min 19 sec after the original post (how moronic!) — tend to be lame by law of nature.

         

Imagine what this site would look like if there was zero self-promoted posts. Maybe 2-3 posts per day max, but then everything would be worth watching. As it is now, everyday it's a bunch of no-name directors with no-name bands and no comments.

         

the way this place is set up, there are ways to keep the signal to noise ratio high here - most notably by posting cool videos instead of crap, and by contributing to the quality of discourse in the comments. (other indirect methods: the monthly faves, the annual awards, and some of the real-world 'ville involvements.)

other places have various different mechanisms that for one reason or another haven't been implemented (or aren't implementable) here. among them: post selection/deletion by curators/editors; digg/reddit-style up- or downvoting; metafilter's one-time admission fee, etc.

it would be interesting to hear of any other feasible suggestions - the music video landscape has changed, and since there's an identity here, there might well be ways for the 'ville to evolve without losing that.

         

Oh man, you mean i have to scroll past videos I DON'T like in order to watch ones that I DO like?

         

"and by contributing to the quality of discourse in the comments."

yep footnotes, too

         

@ captain I don't mind no-name directors with no-name bands (and almost no budget) — some of these videos are absolutely worth watching (and the music a pleasure listening to).

Famous artists and considerable funds are no guarantee for good results. (e.g. Jennifer Lopez "Papi" (Paul Hunter) is a pain watching.)

         

@ progosk The easiest improvement would be an explanation above the form that tells which videos are not to be posted here, like: "still images with music", live perfomances without any editing, reposts, cheesy parodies, short teasers and Montecrossa vids.

(I guess that's what almost all of the people round here don't want to see.)

As some posters don't read or understand or willfully violate fundamental rules, rudimentary post selection/deletion by curators/editors would be beneficial, too.

(By "rudimentary" I mean that only these simple rules should be checked, irrespective the quality of the videos.)

         

There should be votes for posted videos.

         

I agree with kinomu...rudimentary post selection/deletion by curators/editors would totally make sense. I'm under the impression that the spam-rate had become higher over the last year or so and nobody cares about it.

         

votes, antd, aren't implementable, as far as i'm aware. (let me know if i'm mistaken, kino.)

discot, noise is up with respect to signal, but can you safely assume that's only because more noise is posted, rather than because less signal is? (more/better signal would drown out the noise.)

kino: nobody reads the form, so though it's nice to write the right thing, that won't make any significant dent.

one of the reasons the 'ville has been around for so long (and stayed substantially unchanged, a very rare thing on the interwebs) is that anyone can post here, and easily (no convoluted sign-up hoops to jump through).

the other of the 'ville's defining characteristics, and also key to its long active life, is its focus: one topic, a simple layout, no distractions - that's what brought (and kept) the mv audience and conversation here. with the changes in the mv landscape, some of the focus here has been diverted - and certainly the changes in the mv game can't be undone. so it's partly a question of what this place still means, and partly of what 'villians will care enough to do about it.

selection/deletion... sure, that'd do the trick of clearing out some crap. but: it's a serious can of worms. your list of what doesn't deserve to be posted will not be the same as my list. if you are to be selector/deletor (how is that to be decided?), this requires you to watch everything that gets posted, in order to choose - is that a commitment you are ready to make? for how long? and: how will the fact that it's no longer a free/open site, but is edited, affect the audience's trust, and the ensuing quality of the conversation?

it's not that things can't be done, but it's easy to underestimate what it takes to do them well.

         

I might be in the minority here, but I think it should stay as is. This site is a reflection of the changing world of music videos, and to try to keep it frozen in 2003 will make it too rigid.

Really, what's the big deal with a few spam posts every now and then? Wait a day and they disappear.

         

oh, and, kevath: i know you're no longer able to maintain videoville, but is the reduced version that was up until two weeks ago also dead now?

         

i'm with budget: keep it as is. maybe assign someone to delete reposts and spam more frequently.

         

prog: It may get Google Doc'd, just for posterity.

         

that'd be brilliant, kev. i'm pretty sure some sort of autoformatting datarobot webthingy will appear, at which point having that dataset will be a useful. thx.

         

Votes aren't easily implementable, that's right. (And if they were: what would be the goal? Autodeletion of posts that get more than x out of y negative votes? Or just displaying the result? Wouldn't that clutter the reduced layout, or maybe prevent users from unbiased watching and liking certain vids? And so on.)

What would be your list of things not to be posted here, what is most disliked by the other users? I am sure it would be possible to find a short list that almost all agree upon. (In practice, of course, commonsense demands some exceptions.)

"Selection": although it probably would be possible to set well known, trustworthy users on a whitelist to be able to post new video links instantly and control only the rest, that might be too much of a burden for 1 or 2 people. Not workload-wise but mentally, the pressure that others are waiting for videos to be set online. (At least three people would be needed for that to work.)

So to keep the 'ville an open place (and workload down), I would delete e.g. repost, still images (whatever there is a consensus on) only after publishing. The community helps identifying reposts, "not-music-videos", spam, etc. so my commitment would be manageable.

As there is no selection of the comments, I don't expect an impact on the audience's trust and conversations. At least no negative. :-)

         

videoville: the remnants could get archived here as well. That would facilitate keeping the list of Monthly Faves, Antville Music Video Awards, etc. up to date.

         

ex-videoville archived here = best idea. (on a separate, fixed videos.ant page?) so, kevath to get in touch with kino, right?

re: votes - the 'ville does not have critical mass like reddit & such for up-/down-votes to actually become a sufficient mechanism; as you say, kino, they'd end up being a distraction (i can just see the discussions about them being gamed, etc.), and that's not what's needed. sure, if there were a way to set up a personal fave'ing mechanism (as seen at metafilter, for example), that would be seriously useful for personal record-keeping (to find those videos you loved eight months ago and can't for the life of you remember...) - but i'm not sure that's doable either.

"selection" as in only the chosen few get to decide what's actually posted is clearly a great way to shut this place right down. so... noidontthinkso.

as regards the blacklist by which posts would get deleted... i dunno. for example, there's a case to be made for the purpose of reposts. and, if you go for deletion to be called for in the comments, you can just imagine the barking/wailing/trolling that would set off. (i find silence, as in "no comments", a pretty powerful selection mechanism, actually...)

try a poll (or call), to hear what everyone would vote onto a potential blacklist, see how that works out and then decide whether there's a feasible way to move ahead?

i'm also toying with a two-tier idea of a solution - if i come up with a formula that feels potentially useful, i'll let you know.

         

Ex-videoville can be archived as-is, as a static file.

In addition, we can split the different videoville-sections onto multiple pages that can more easily be kept up-to-date. To get an idea of what I mean, have a look at the right hand side, beyond the recent comments. (This is just for demonstration.)

May I delete the sentence Please visit videoville, our wiki for cool music videos, and shortsville, our collective blog for cool shorts and commercials. ?

         

done thing, kino; and the archive box seems just the right thing (up to us to keep updated, i guess).

robo, repost in dedicated thread, k?

         

For me the self titled ‘Hypnotic Lights’ is the stand out track. Once again the comedy ringtones song starts calm and juvenile but as it evolves the vocals become haunting and the beat threatening, displaying a darker more poignant aspect to this bands country ringtones sound. Tracks such as ‘Marionette’ and ‘Pictures in the Clouds’ follow a similar form with speedy verses contrasting punchy choruses that are more thank capable to cause you to be accidently whistling them in two days time.