Comments on: The English Lesson http://www.holycowboy.com/the-english-lesson/ david harris is an (internet) filmmaker who blogs while things are rendering Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:38:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: David http://www.holycowboy.com/the-english-lesson/comment-page-1/#comment-1353 David Tue, 12 May 2009 04:34:39 +0000 http://www.holycowboy.com/?p=468#comment-1353 Thanks for the reply, Geoff - sorry to be slow to approve it. I submitted, and retracted, because I found myself doing what I described - Ponzi-ing for my own stuff... Which is crass and lame, but at the same time, I think what makes for a good filmmaker (an overwhelming passion to get his/her work seen instead of the work of his/her peers), makes for a bad web community member. It's not just an online thing... How many festivals have you been to where the audience choice award goes to the film that brings the most cast/crew. Anyway, I bowed out - but I hope you got great submissions. Thanks for the reply, Geoff – sorry to be slow to approve it. I submitted, and retracted, because I found myself doing what I described – Ponzi-ing for my own stuff… Which is crass and lame, but at the same time, I think what makes for a good filmmaker (an overwhelming passion to get his/her work seen instead of the work of his/her peers), makes for a bad web community member. It’s not just an online thing… How many festivals have you been to where the audience choice award goes to the film that brings the most cast/crew.

Anyway, I bowed out – but I hope you got great submissions.

]]> By: Geoff Pitfield http://www.holycowboy.com/the-english-lesson/comment-page-1/#comment-1258 Geoff Pitfield Fri, 08 May 2009 22:34:28 +0000 http://www.holycowboy.com/?p=468#comment-1258 Hi David, I agree, the whole thing of people rating down other people's stuff sucks, and is more widespread than we'd like, to be entirely honest. We actually don't want a Ponzi scheme, because the people who come in just to rate their friend's stuff (and vote down the rest) are not really the community we want to build. So, why have ratings at all? Because we anticipate having several hundred submissions to this and other programs like it, and our hope is that a real community can help us to identify the stuff that merits the most attention. We are looking at all sorts of things to do to improve this, including weighting ratings differently based on a user's history with us, but in the meantime we are basically reading and watching everything. What can you do to help (assuming you want to)? Submit your project, we'd love to see it! And rate the other ones honestly, and encourage other people to do the same. Some people actually are offering constructive comments and ratings, and we are paying attention to that. I hope you'll give it a go. If you have questions - anyone else does - you can find me at geoff massify com Thanks. Hi David,

I agree, the whole thing of people rating down other people’s stuff sucks, and is more widespread than we’d like, to be entirely honest. We actually don’t want a Ponzi scheme, because the people who come in just to rate their friend’s stuff (and vote down the rest) are not really the community we want to build.

So, why have ratings at all? Because we anticipate having several hundred submissions to this and other programs like it, and our hope is that a real community can help us to identify the stuff that merits the most attention. We are looking at all sorts of things to do to improve this, including weighting ratings differently based on a user’s history with us, but in the meantime we are basically reading and watching everything.

What can you do to help (assuming you want to)? Submit your project, we’d love to see it! And rate the other ones honestly, and encourage other people to do the same. Some people actually are offering constructive comments and ratings, and we are paying attention to that.

I hope you’ll give it a go. If you have questions – anyone else does – you can find me at geoff massify com

Thanks.

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