The fact that you and dag remain active and hands on helps preserve a certain vision for this site. Your personalities reverberate through the whole group. I know folks did not like Dukakis’s “fish rotting from the head” comment about Reagan, but top personalities affect a group.

You’ve stated that you have had to ban a few isp’s. That indicates that you will deal with those who make trouble. You and dag regularly invite folks to offer their expertise. At a fraternity conference I learned the cliché, “people support what they help create.” The group efforts towards VideoSift 2.0 have been fun. Various members have participated.

Whereas we do have a “downvote”, the consensus has been to use it with caution and explain its use. I believe this goes a long way toward preserving a positive feeling about the site. Sooner or later there will be disagreements. Having run several organizations, the important thing is let people feel like they have had their say - whether or not they prevail.

Good observations.

Also important to carefully consider mechanisms to combat "sock-puppetry", which your article cites as a way to harm digg and other sites (including this one, really). I wonder if others have yet come up with an effective system to allow people to sign up their new user accounts but avoid the spammer problem cited above (and occasionally witnessed here in the past)?

An automatic daemon that checks for redundant accounts with the same IP is one potential response, although that can be spoofed with multiple IP's.

Another control, although somewhat more draconian, would be to limit the # of "new user accounts" that vote on a queued vid. While this would prevent the rudimentary attacks seen in the past, again, this could be overcome by someone setting up a series of 'sockpuppet' accounts far in advance, and then pouncing whenever the system's limit expired.

Quite a challenge - and I wonder how many countermeasures are feasible against it, and which are more practical than others?

And yes, in theory this comment still relates to the exam I'm writing - hurray for using extracurriculars to study!

Very interesting article...but the difference I feel as a user is that we have mountains of respect for one another.

You guys have been swift with cutting off people who come in to make trouble, and that has kept ALL of us in line. "Give respect, get respect. Give trouble, no soup for you."

You guys are growing at the right pace. Instead of opening the floodgates, you are keeping the influx at a steady pace so you can keep up with it.

Lately (and unavoidably) there has been a lot of political back and forth...but I have faith that even if we don't agree with someone's political views we all still respect each other's right to say them. We may not agree on a particular political point, but we can all find common ground on the "Cutest Kitty Video Ever" posts.

Besides, if anyone dares to mess with our beloved dag or James, we will come together as one to bring the bastards down.

Nothing as awe-inspiring as a well-deserved near-unanimous neg-vote pile-on.

Yeah, those Neg-Vote Pile On's are fun when they are safe to do... :-)

I agree with Daphne, there is a certain level of respect here that is remarkable and I hope VS doesn't change too much that we lose this feeling.