Having coded up the thumbs up/down feature quietly in the privacy of my own home months ago, and promptly having forgotten about it after deploying, there is some sadistic pleasure in suddenly hearing that the downvotes cause so much consternation. I fully admit there’s something wrong with me.
Not because the film was good (it was barely watchable), but because the book was so badly written. Maybe part of the problem was that I listened to it on CD, so the painfulness of the prose was magnified.
Nathanael, absolutely agree with you. Page loads are slow now in all areas, and we’ll be doing a lot to shore that up over the coming weeks. The site is 100% unoptimized right now, and you will see dramatic improvements as we tune things.
The feedback has been great everybody, keep it coming! We’ve been doing a lot of planning for the coming months, and you can expect changes coming frequently.
I wanted to give a quick heads up that we’ve just turned off the thumbs up / thumbs down feature. We built this feature early on to provide a simple reputation system for our users, however it’s causing more problems than it’s worth, and we don’t want to encourage the users who are abusing it, so as of today thumbs are disabled and cinephile rankings are frozen. The next iteration of our reputation system will be not so easily-gamed and will be oriented towards quality participation, not sock puppets and vendettas.
Guys, forum comment notifications have been temporarily disabled until we have the ability to turn them on and off. Yes, we do realize how insane it was to be sending those out so frequently.
Not canonical, but represents some stuff i’m diggin’ on now that has slipped the rest of y’alls filters:
The Roots — Rising Down (Best hip hop album of the decade if you ask me)
The Decemberists — The Hazards of Love (The first performance of the album in its conceptual entirety is available on npr)
Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
Frank Zappa — Läther (8-sided LP that the record company split into 4 albums, release posthumously, covering perhaps the widest musical gamut of any of Zappa’s albums, and that’s saying something)
The Crystal Method — Vegas (quintessential snowboarding music, best served with cliffs and ample powder)
Everyone, I wanted to drop in real quick and let everyone know that change is coming in a matter of days. The forum has clearly reached a critical mass where guidelines are needed to enforce common decency and civility. The name spoofing, spamming and over-the-top vulgarity are absolutely not acceptable. Vigorous disagreement is one thing, but a number of individuals have seriously crossed the line. This is a warning right now that anyone involved in this behavior is running a serious risk of being banned indefinitely from the site.
You can also use FB Connect as an alternate method of logging in. You will be able to use it to find which of your FB friends are on The Auteurs very soon. There is a lot more stuff we plan to do with it in the coming months.
since this is the defacto insider thread… just thought I’d drop in and mention: the link to start a new topic about a film is now FIXED. And also, the new topic form has a film field that auto-completes from our library. We had to pull the old drop-down menu with a quickness a few months ago because it was getting way too long, but this new auto-complete should last us to 10,000 films and beyond.
Fredo – I’d say your attitude is more passive-aggressive than defeatist. Defeatist would be to resign oneself to the problem or perhaps leave the site. I’ve seen you frequently post about abuses by the moderators but not yet seen any actual evidence. Instead you simply present it as a foregone conclusion that there is abuse and that the site management doesn’t care about it.
However one thing you should know is that there is a paper trail of everything and moderators are not able to delete evidence, therefore any specific complaint could be evaluated very easily. As it is you are slinging mud at us without any basis. That’s not say mistakes are never made or that improvements can not be made to the system, however painting this as some sort Stasi-like conspiracy is intellectually dishonest.
Flagging posts is just a tool that allows users to help shorten the feedback loop on trolls with less manpower. You shouldn’t say things like “trolls will use this function of flagging to abuse the system” because you haven’t the first clue about how the system works. Perhaps you think we are idiots who would never anticipate how a system might be open for abuse, but you would be very very wrong in that assumption. The flag system has checks and balances just as the moderation system does, so there’s no need for all this hand-wringing and ignorant speculation.
@RUS That would be a nice refinement to the system. The initial versions are all about efficiency in dealing with overt troll attacks (ie. making the troll do 20x, 50x, 100x as much work as the moderators). It’s not yet optimized for people who are pushing the envelope without malicious intent. We’ll get there eventually, but there are other more pressing enhancements coming to the forum first.
I’m sorry if I came off overly harsh in that post. My vitriol is due to the fact that someone reading your comment would be led to believe that something sinister is going on here and the management doesn’t care, which is simply not true.
I also want to state unequivocably that we do not have tools to read others private messages, and my impression is based solely on what I’ve read through a smattering of forum and perhaps wall posts. Regarding this bit:
your accusatory tone only answers my question of why the owners of this site have chosen certain members to be moderators
I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I am not involved at all in picking moderators, I only build the tools for them to use.
I’m actually surprised that so many people hate this film. If I tried really hard I could pick apart some of the acting, but for the most part it was very realistic and didn’t call attention to itself. For me this film just plain works. There’s not one aspect that blew me away, but rather the way the cinematography, editing, music, and yes, even acting came together created a very effective and immersing experience.
@Ross – We replaced the favorite auteurs list with actual director fanships. That is if you go to a director page and become a fan it will show up in your favorite auteurs list, whereas before you had to select them from a separate list of ~1000 directors. Now you can become a fan of any of the 6000+ directors we have for films in the database. We transferred the old favorites as much as possible, but a few were lost due to name spelling mismatches, etc.
TOP 5 Childhood Films over 4 years ago
Um, Star Wars?
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TOP 5 Childhood Films over 4 years ago
Okay seriously, top 5 list.
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TOP 5 Childhood Films over 4 years ago
Okay here’s one for ya. I watched this probably 100 times between the ages of 5 and 8:
The Phantom Tollbooth
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Which film has changed your life forever? about 4 years ago
@ Berlinale this year:
Standard Operating Procedure
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VILLAINS. about 4 years ago
Toecutter from Mad Max! Or Humungus from Mad Max 2!
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THUMBS UP THUMBS DOWN- love it or hate it? over 3 years ago
Having coded up the thumbs up/down feature quietly in the privacy of my own home months ago, and promptly having forgotten about it after deploying, there is some sadistic pleasure in suddenly hearing that the downvotes cause so much consternation. I fully admit there’s something wrong with me.
Go to Comment
Films that are better than the books that they are are based on over 3 years ago
Da Vinci Code
Not because the film was good (it was barely watchable), but because the book was so badly written. Maybe part of the problem was that I listened to it on CD, so the painfulness of the prose was magnified.
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Spout.com vs. Theauteurs.com over 3 years ago
The Auteurs pays my rent.
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Help make The Auteurs totally awesome over 3 years ago
Nathanael, absolutely agree with you. Page loads are slow now in all areas, and we’ll be doing a lot to shore that up over the coming weeks. The site is 100% unoptimized right now, and you will see dramatic improvements as we tune things.
Go to Comment
Most Traumatic or Dramatic Film Endings over 3 years ago
Chinatown
Messed up.
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This or the remake? over 3 years ago
Funny Games
(Sorry, showing the associated film inside the discussion view is a usability problem that will be corrected sooner than later)
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Help make The Auteurs totally awesome over 3 years ago
The feedback has been great everybody, keep it coming! We’ve been doing a lot of planning for the coming months, and you can expect changes coming frequently.
I wanted to give a quick heads up that we’ve just turned off the thumbs up / thumbs down feature. We built this feature early on to provide a simple reputation system for our users, however it’s causing more problems than it’s worth, and we don’t want to encourage the users who are abusing it, so as of today thumbs are disabled and cinephile rankings are frozen. The next iteration of our reputation system will be not so easily-gamed and will be oriented towards quality participation, not sock puppets and vendettas.
Go to Comment
Help make The Auteurs totally awesome over 3 years ago
Sorry about that Skeleton. Seemed like a good idea when we had 100 users :) Seriously, that’s very high on the priority list.
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Help make The Auteurs totally awesome over 3 years ago
Guys, forum comment notifications have been temporarily disabled until we have the ability to turn them on and off. Yes, we do realize how insane it was to be sending those out so frequently.
Go to Comment
Happy New Year (^_^)_∀ over 3 years ago
Cheers!
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High five for new Interface! over 3 years ago
And what you may not realize is that we are now internationalized for Pounds in the UK and Euros in Europe.
Forum is coming next guys!
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Mindfuck Films over 3 years ago
Thought this was a pretty good list. What do you guys think? Significant omissions?
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Help make The Auteurs totally awesome about 3 years ago
guys, sorry, the forum posting order was a bug that crept in due to some optimizations we made. It was never intended to be that way.
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Films that are so bad...you gotta love them about 3 years ago
The Stuff
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Speed Racer about 3 years ago
I liked Khoi Vinh’s take from a designer’s perspective.
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Another off Topic/Your Favorite Albums about 3 years ago
Not canonical, but represents some stuff i’m diggin’ on now that has slipped the rest of y’alls filters:
The Roots — Rising Down (Best hip hop album of the decade if you ask me)
The Decemberists — The Hazards of Love (The first performance of the album in its conceptual entirety is available on npr)
Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
Frank Zappa — Läther (8-sided LP that the record company split into 4 albums, release posthumously, covering perhaps the widest musical gamut of any of Zappa’s albums, and that’s saying something)
The Crystal Method — Vegas (quintessential snowboarding music, best served with cliffs and ample powder)
Go to Comment
Feedback almost 3 years ago
Everyone, I wanted to drop in real quick and let everyone know that change is coming in a matter of days. The forum has clearly reached a critical mass where guidelines are needed to enforce common decency and civility. The name spoofing, spamming and over-the-top vulgarity are absolutely not acceptable. Vigorous disagreement is one thing, but a number of individuals have seriously crossed the line. This is a warning right now that anyone involved in this behavior is running a serious risk of being banned indefinitely from the site.
Go to Comment
Help make The Auteurs totally awesome almost 3 years ago
Watchlists are back everybody, there was some database maintenance that went awry, but all the data is intact and is now restored to its former glory.
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What's This Facebook Connect Thing? almost 3 years ago
You can also use FB Connect as an alternate method of logging in. You will be able to use it to find which of your FB friends are on The Auteurs very soon. There is a lot more stuff we plan to do with it in the coming months.
Go to Comment
STOP THE LISTS! almost 3 years ago
since this is the defacto insider thread… just thought I’d drop in and mention: the link to start a new topic about a film is now FIXED. And also, the new topic form has a film field that auto-completes from our library. We had to pull the old drop-down menu with a quickness a few months ago because it was getting way too long, but this new auto-complete should last us to 10,000 films and beyond.
Go to Comment
Inappropriate? almost 3 years ago
Fredo – I’d say your attitude is more passive-aggressive than defeatist. Defeatist would be to resign oneself to the problem or perhaps leave the site. I’ve seen you frequently post about abuses by the moderators but not yet seen any actual evidence. Instead you simply present it as a foregone conclusion that there is abuse and that the site management doesn’t care about it.
However one thing you should know is that there is a paper trail of everything and moderators are not able to delete evidence, therefore any specific complaint could be evaluated very easily. As it is you are slinging mud at us without any basis. That’s not say mistakes are never made or that improvements can not be made to the system, however painting this as some sort Stasi-like conspiracy is intellectually dishonest.
Flagging posts is just a tool that allows users to help shorten the feedback loop on trolls with less manpower. You shouldn’t say things like “trolls will use this function of flagging to abuse the system” because you haven’t the first clue about how the system works. Perhaps you think we are idiots who would never anticipate how a system might be open for abuse, but you would be very very wrong in that assumption. The flag system has checks and balances just as the moderation system does, so there’s no need for all this hand-wringing and ignorant speculation.
Go to Comment
Inappropriate? almost 3 years ago
@RUS That would be a nice refinement to the system. The initial versions are all about efficiency in dealing with overt troll attacks (ie. making the troll do 20x, 50x, 100x as much work as the moderators). It’s not yet optimized for people who are pushing the envelope without malicious intent. We’ll get there eventually, but there are other more pressing enhancements coming to the forum first.
Go to Comment
Inappropriate? almost 3 years ago
I’m sorry if I came off overly harsh in that post. My vitriol is due to the fact that someone reading your comment would be led to believe that something sinister is going on here and the management doesn’t care, which is simply not true.
I also want to state unequivocably that we do not have tools to read others private messages, and my impression is based solely on what I’ve read through a smattering of forum and perhaps wall posts. Regarding this bit:
your accusatory tone only answers my question of why the owners of this site have chosen certain members to be moderators
I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I am not involved at all in picking moderators, I only build the tools for them to use.
Go to Comment
What did you think of Paranoid Park? almost 3 years ago
I’m actually surprised that so many people hate this film. If I tried really hard I could pick apart some of the acting, but for the most part it was very realistic and didn’t call attention to itself. For me this film just plain works. There’s not one aspect that blew me away, but rather the way the cinematography, editing, music, and yes, even acting came together created a very effective and immersing experience.
Go to Comment
STOP THE LISTS! over 2 years ago
@Ross – We replaced the favorite auteurs list with actual director fanships. That is if you go to a director page and become a fan it will show up in your favorite auteurs list, whereas before you had to select them from a separate list of ~1000 directors. Now you can become a fan of any of the 6000+ directors we have for films in the database. We transferred the old favorites as much as possible, but a few were lost due to name spelling mismatches, etc.
Go to Comment