Vid Archive

[paraka]

Earlier today sunryse00  talked about starting a vidding archive. I think this is such a good idea. I know that when I first started to vid, I was so worried about where to host it, and certainly about advertising it. I'm not sure if an archive could immediatly solve these problems for people, but it could be a first step. In the hopes of actually organising this effort, I've set up a new community for anyone interested in participating in this, or just monitoring what's happening. I would really like to encourage everyone to visit it, it's called vidding_archive and everyone's welcome.

Comments

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

If you want a format to work from, you could check out www.animemusicvideos.org

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

I think I'm in a good position to add to this. There are many things to consider: a database, a hosting service, a community hub.

First the database:

One thing I've learned, having been head admin at a-m-v.org for the last 6/7 months or so is that having a good database structure for recording videos at the very beginning is a very very handy thing.

amvorg was first started as a catalogue and that is its primary function to this day but it became very clear very fast that the following things are true:

1) Users cannot be trusted to enter accurate information. If you have a web database of things it is ideal to develop in parallel tools that administrators can use to clean things up, move things around, rename things, provide aliases for shows and so on without hurting the information in the database too much. We learned this far too late at the org, meaning that we now have a database full of bad music entries that are just way too huge for a cleanup job. If, on the otherhand, we had good tools from the start, this would not be a problem.

2) Think of who will use the database. When the org was first made it was used by only one group - creators who wanted to check if a certain idea was in use. It then became apparent that two other significant uses were happening. Firstly you have the people looking for vids of their fave shows who need a way of finding videos that are good or have a particular combination. The second type of user was much harder to accomodate and this is the convention organiser. They needed to use the org to verify information (who entered what video in to what prior contests etc). In this last regard, the org is lacking because of the inherent trust it placed in the creator to add valid information. We now have a problem that there are many videos that are listed as being participating in convention or contest X when they havent at all. Thinking about these different users in advance is a very useful thing.

A lot of decisions need to made early on about what role such a website should have. The org became very quickly a centre of a growing community. vidding, being essentially a collection of fandoms, may develop differently. If, for example, there was a forum for discussion it may need one per fandom and these would need moderating (by whom? what rules?).

I think a database would be a great idea. It was a great idea for the amv community but I think in hindsight things would hav been done very differently. What Phade originally wanted was an encyclopedic record and this was never really attained. If a database for vidding is created then there needs to be a big push early on for people to record the videos of the past if it is to become a useful archive.

The hosting:

This is a very hard thing to set up as it inevitably falls foul to popularity. The org spent a long time working out strategies and raising funds before getting the service it has now. We get about a grand a week in donations and we honestly do need all that to keep things running. That's the kind of cost thousands of downloads a day can make.

Of course there are ways to save on this, numerous ways, but you need to do a lot of reasearch regarding what the community really wants/needs. the org did well in this regard because it was a gradual process that has become a great hosting service that is to be honest one of the crown jewels of the amv community. I really take my hat off to phade for being able to get it off the ground.

TBC....

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

continued:

Just a couple of things to think about. When I have some more time I'll post in the community with more insider insight and take part in some of the debates happening there. I think there is potential in the vidding community gaining a larger or more consise net presence but we need to decide early on what we want because these things can turn into monsters. Do we want one place for hosting? Do we want one place for discussion? Note well that some of the older creators bemoan the popularity that amvorg created for amvs as it radically changed the community - some say for the worse. These are all worthy considerations and one needs to weigh the benefits against potential risks (such as drawing attention to the numerous copyright infringements (the org has industry support regarding the footage - can the same be said for vidding?), attracting a younger anarchistic crowd to a stable community etc etc).