Gorillagong's future

[Veyrdite]

For those not familiar: gorillagong is a website (by Ross?) where people shortlist 'good' machinima videos and add a short description of why they think they're interesting.  When youtube's recommendation system started going to "TOP TEN EVERYTHING" the Gong was a good place to still find interesting and original content.

 

https://gorillagong.com

 

Now it's down.

 

I don't think new content has been put on there for quite a few years.  Regardless it is (was) a great list of interesting videos -- I especially appreciate it for introducing me to Guy Noir, Private Eye.

 

@Ross Scott does this site have a future?  Was it a backlash of rage from machinima vs Machinima that birthed it and a change of genre that stilled it?

 

[TB]

10 hours ago, Veyrdite said:

For those not familiar: gorillagong is a website (by Ross?) where people shortlist 'good' machinima videos and add a short description of why they think they're interesting.  When youtube's recommendation system started going to "TOP TEN EVERYTHING" the Gong was a good place to still find interesting and original content.

 

https://gorillagong.com

 

Now it's down.

 

I don't think new content has been put on there for quite a few years.  Regardless it is (was) a great list of interesting videos -- I especially appreciate it for introducing me to Guy Noir, Private Eye.

 

@Ross Scott does this site have a future?  Was it a backlash of rage from machinima vs Machinima that birthed it and a change of genre that stilled it?

 

Hi, I'm the co-creator and programmer for Gorilla Gong. GG died years ago, we had trouble finding reviewers with enough time and talent to find, then sort through the vast pool of videos. The site hinged on vetted reviewers, and I think that's where I went wrong. I'm considering either re-purposing the site, or trying again with a Reddit style format. The old database has been preserved, so that list has been saved.

[Veyrdite]

Thankyou The Britain.

 

16 hours ago, The Britain said:

or trying again with a Reddit style format.

That would not be worth it.  There's already a reddit (+many clones) with various video subforums. 

 

16 hours ago, The Britain said:

The site hinged on vetted reviewers, and I think that's where I went wrong.

That sounds like a lot of work.  But it's the only (and main) differentiator that made Gorillagong good.  Without some strong vetting and controls I suspect the site would become nothing more than another video spam platform.

 

 

Suggestion from left field: have a look at the user invite tree system and the tree itself used by the news site "Lobste.rs".  It might be possible to adapt such an idea to a much smaller amount of users + some very strict rules; rather than having it open like lobsters.  In practice this would mean:

• Users must vet people before giving them an invite.  Typically this involves them showing some form of online commitment, eg a forum profile somewhere in good standing, a blog that's not machine-generated, etc.  Something that suggests they are going to make quality reviews and/or are a reliable person.
• A gong user is responsible for the reviews of users invited by him.  If many of them are found to be outside the guidelines then the tree may be removed and/or user's ability to invite disabled; depending on circumstance.
• The tree is kept to a size that's felt to be manageable.   Judge by the quality and quantity of reviews vs admin time spent.  Hard limits can be set perhaps.

Do you think a system like this might have helped at all?   Please disagree   I might be assuming the solution to a social problem is a technical one.

 

Edited November 11, 2018 by Veyrdite (see edit history)

[ekket]

You could take inspiration from how Stack Overflow attempts to keep all the answers on the site high quality, it has quite heavy moderation and operates somewhat like a wiki. (It does have a reputation of being pretty newcomer-hostile, though. Being a Q/A site, it also mostly serves as an information dump for Google, so not the best fit for something like Gorilla Gong.)

 

I would suggest letting everyone contribute (after all, we could run into the exact same problems that were had with vetting contributors), while having those contributions be under some form of approval process. For submitting videos, this could be more lax, just seeing if they are worthwhile machinimas.

Steam's system for curators has worked fairly well, something like that for reviewers wouldn't be a bad idea.