WHAT DO WE WANT? CHANGE...WHEN DO WE WANT IT?....NOW

Most of you who read this wont be old enough to remember where that saying came from however, you will definitely understand the connotation.  There have been a lot of blogs, pm's, and comments lately about the state of affairs here at Ebaums' World and in one way or another they all come down to points.  Points lead to prizes and that is were all the trouble started. Some users myself included have suggested removing the prizes all together and that is simply not realistic. You can't get the shit back in the horse, so to speak. I have also recommended limiting uploads according to "erep" rank. This presents its own problems and would require an intense restructuring of the site which neither the users or the administrators desire. This leaves us right back where we started at zero. 

Now is the starting point for new solutions.  It is a known problem that users upload low quality or duplicate videos.  There is nothing you can really do about the quality without reviewing each upload but there is a fairly easy solution to duplicates. Almost every video posted comes from different sites with different titles that you can't reliably search for, but they all have the same file name (I doubt users are changing the file name after they rip a video). This file name is like a finger print and if you look Youtube, Meta video, Stupid video, Bofunk, etc.... all have the same root file names. A little bit of code needs to be written that searches for duplicate file names in the video registry. This code can also scan new uploads and it can do it right when the Select File button is pushed so the server doesn't even have to upload duplicate media. I realize that there is going to be a lot of screaming and crying if this happens and I personally have a lot of really good videos that got overlooked the first time and will never again see the light of day. That is what it has come to people. Ebaums' World put faith in the users to operate by an unwritten code of conduct and not all but a lot of users failed us as a collective.

As an response to an earlier idea of limiting uploads by rank I would like to say this.  Several people complained that senior users would gain an unfair advantage over the new or low level user and I gave this some thought. Another complaint was that senior users who cash in their points and loose rank would be at a disadvantage so I gave that some thought also. Here is what I came up with.  New users limited to 10 uploads a day would have to find higher quality media in order to compete for features and that is what the site needs. (Stay with me here) Senior users would have more of their media seen in general but the views will be by lower level users looking for ideas and I doubt most sincerely that you will see a lot of 5 star ratings. If you think this is unfair wait just a minute. Senior users who wish to collect prizes will drop down in rank and in essence start from scratch which will flip the tables and the former enoobs will be the top dogs. Thus every one gets a shot at the top. In a way it is a little like taking turns and it will balance out the battle for ultimate Ebaum's supremacy (lol).