This whole region blocking problem has been a mess for lots of Sifters because, well we can't help being so darned popular in places disliked by video hosts like Comedy Central who've put the kibosh on playback of their videos outside North America.
It's rather difficult and proven undesirable to ask people not to submit from region blocked hosts, so here's our solution (probably stolen from some brilliant Sifters insertion to the suggestion box): There is a new invocation/filter system.
Gold Star members may invoke *blocked on videos that contain an embed they are certain is region blocked, meaning it's intentionally not playable in only select parts of the globe. If you any members dont' want to see any region blocked videos in general listings you can tick the appropriate checkbox in the Filter section of your account preferences.
If the video submitter swaps out the embed, they may invoke *unblocked to remove the Region Blocked flag. Gold Star members may also invoke *unblocked if they are certain the embed works in 100% of the tubunets.
It's rather difficult and proven undesirable to ask people not to submit from region blocked hosts, so here's our solution (probably stolen from some brilliant Sifters insertion to the suggestion box): There is a new invocation/filter system.
Gold Star members may invoke *blocked on videos that contain an embed they are certain is region blocked, meaning it's intentionally not playable in only select parts of the globe. If you any members dont' want to see any region blocked videos in general listings you can tick the appropriate checkbox in the Filter section of your account preferences.
If the video submitter swaps out the embed, they may invoke *unblocked to remove the Region Blocked flag. Gold Star members may also invoke *unblocked if they are certain the embed works in 100% of the tubunets.
It might be a good idea to add where in the world you can´t see a clip when you invoke * blocked.
Only downside of this seems to me that if I decide to filter out "blocked" content I will filter out all, and not just the ones that are blocked in my region.
cognac
nitrous oxide
Should we be encouraging a "swap"
I only say this because generally the Region blocked video will come from a direct source, if it is later swapped out for a YouTube version, there is a good chance the youtube version will simply get pulled later, thus leaving us with a dead video.
Perhaps just encouraging users to post alternatives within the comment section and encouraging the video submitter to put a link to the alternative within the description will fix this...or something along those lines... you'know what I mean...bueller?
no need to nitpick here, as I like the new blocked idea...but
Should we be encouraging a "swap"
I only say this because generally the Region blocked video will come from a direct source, if it is later swapped out for a YouTube version, there is a good chance the youtube version will simply get pulled later, thus leaving us with a dead video.
Perhaps just encouraging users to post alternatives within the comment section and encouraging the video submitter to put a link to the alternative within the description will fix this...or something along those lines... you'know what I mean...bueller?
Good idea about posting an alternate source without it being the embed. I for one will add an alt link where needed (if available) for my blocked vids.
I just tried this on a couple of videos and can confirm that it's working okay. I'd still prefer that region-blocked stuff stay off the sift altogether, but I suppose given the increasing amount of content that's being stupidly blocked, this was inevitable.
Then, how will we know which videos that don't have region block? Also, we would lose a lot of good videos.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Dog-Years-2004