Thank you for sorting this @eric.kiser
You da man!
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@TNKA36 @John_E Thanks for all the support everybody.
Crap. I hadn’t thought about that. What I usually see in the forum is people congregating. The idea being there would be a thread you participate in and User Video Index threads would be just for reference.
Implementing this could also take away from what we have that works well right now.
For instance…
I create @eric.kiser - User Video Index
I post all of my videos in that thread
I join in on the 50 Songs Challenge
I post a link to in Song 3 - “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley to my video on the @eric.kiser - User Video Index
Now somebody going through the “Crazy” thread has to make a decision.
Do I leave the “Crazy” thread to watch Eric’s video or do I skip it and keep going in the “Crazy” thread?
If I proceed on then the likelihood I will go back to watch it is pretty close to zero for most people.
If I follow the link, how much time do I spend there, instead of doing what I wanted which was keep up with everybody in the “Crazy” thread.
I think the same would be true for any of the dedicated threads.
My point is that if people use the User Video Index in this way, which seems intuitive, it will disrupt the flow of how people use the forum. This seems counterproductive to implement something that will disrupt the carefully designed flow of Discourse. Which works remarkably well.
Does this make sense?
I feel like I’m still missing a few pieces to be able to figure out what all the missing pieces are for making this idea functional and productive without being disruptive.
Optimally, this would be handled by one or a few people updating a master index, alphabetized by username. That would seem to provide the most consistent and useable resource for the community. Unfortunately, having a team of users work on something like this doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative right now.
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I don’t think it will disrupt the flow if you do what I suggested:
You have a video to post…
A) If you are posting to a thread outside of your User Video Index, post your video in that thread and the edit your OP in your User Video Index and add it there as well.
B) Else, reply to your User Video Index with a post of your video AND also add it to your OP in your User Video Index.
In both situations, users only get notified of a new post one time and the video is within the intended thread. Also, the main list in the OP of the User Video Index is updated in both routes.
I think that deals with it, but I could easily be missing something! 
Note, I’m assuming we can post as many videos as possible into one thread. And the initial thread will be massive if it has embedded videos and not links to the posts containing the videos. Maybe that is what you mean, if I have a link in the OP to another thread where the video is then I’m in that thread?
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I think your assessment of what needs to happen is spot on.
My concern comes from this part…
I’ve never been a forum administrator but I’ve heard some tales that all come back to the phrase “herding cats”.
Building it won’t take much time.
Getting people to use it shouldn’t take too much effort.
Making sure people use it as intended… that might be a challenge. 
Just to be clear, for anyone reading this, my concern is not about the people on the forum today, but about how you keep all the cats going in the same direction for the next six months, one year, two years…
I think that’s what has been stalling my brain. Over the long term, how do you make sure people do what has been suggested.
I am, perhaps, a bit sensitive on the issue because I am a guest in Josh’s house and I don’t want to be responsible for junking up his forum or creating difficulties down the road.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to all this @JT. I think it’s time for me to get some sleep and I’ll ponder this more tomorrow.
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@eric.kiser
I’m a little corn-fused… which category do we start in? “Lounge”? or will you be creating a new category? I have all my videos in a text file that I keep track of readily available to cut and paste to try this out.
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Hey Jerry.
There has been discussion about creating a whole new category for this. It’s not quite ready yet. I just posted the test document here to get feedback and try to work out all the kinks first.
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Roger that. I’ll wait for the category to be created. I think this is an excellent way to get access to everyone’s videos.
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I went back and added a disclaimer to the top so as to head off any potential confusion.
I’m glad to hear people are interested! 
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I’ll second what Jörg said above, @eric.kiser . . .
You should get a promotion for all the work you do to keep these Forums organized and coherent . . .
Cheers
Joe
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You are completely right. I was a moderator on a forum for a massive game being developed with thousands of active users. Apart from general stuff, I also maintained a master index of every user idea/suggestion, with a link to where it was suggested. I also kept track of the developer response and which ideas had been accepted/refused. Let me just say, its quite a pain in the ass to do this sort of stuff.
And you will never get everyone to do whatever the plan is. That’s just the nature of something that is voluntary. I think the key is that it is an improvement from today. I think you are on the right track for that.
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Thanks for doing this @eric.kiser. I’m sorry I’m not helping you as I said I would when I shared this idea with you.
Let me know if I can help.
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I would help but I have no idea how to do any of this right!
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Thanks, for your hard work. You got my vote for CEO. 
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@Jazzbass19 @PamPurrs @John_E @BigAl Thanks everybody! 
@PamPurrs Nothing to worry about. At this point, there really isn’t anything to even help with. If we end up going the way we’ve been talking the only thing to do is post a final version of the FAQ and then let everybody take it from there.
Thanks for this. I ended up getting the same advice from @Lanny. Today, with a clearer head, I think this was the piece of the puzzle I was having a hard time accepting and was trying to think through all the permutations of how it could go wrong. At some point you just have to pull the trigger and take it from there.
@JoshFossgreen Could you merge this with the Discusion: Index Of User Videos thread? I would like to keep the conversation in one place and I don’t even remember why I posted this as a separate thread to begin with.
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@eric.kiser Done! Just read through all this, good discussion. I’ve got a busy few days ahead but I’ll keep an eye on this and help figure this out when I get a chance!
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Thanks @JoshFossgreen.
It looks to me like these are the only things left that have come up.
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I tested out being able to edit a post on a locked thread and it works. At this point, I think we can just let it ride knowing this is an option if it’s needed later.
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I’m going to edit the FAQ to try and make things as clear as possible. Thanks @JT.
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Setting up the User Video Index category. When you have a chance to create it, I’ll post the new FAQ in there. If you want to do it the other way around, let me know and I’ll post the FAQ first.
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Okay, I’ve the FAQ ready.
So, that only leaves #3, the creation of the User Video Index category.
After that, we’ll be all set.
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Hey @eric.kiser , thanks for your work on this! Here’s the new category:
Post the FAQ there and I’ll sticky it!
Discourse also gives me the option to create a “topic template” for the category, meaning I can give some additional guidance on formatting etc. in any new topic someone starts. So I’ll set that up once you put up the FAQ, then people can get to it!
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Thanks Josh!
Ohhh, fancy. It got a BLUE stripe. That’s quite a departure from the color theme.
The FAQ is posted and @JerryP is going to post his page shortly.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the “topic template” works.
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Ha yeah, Discourse gave it the blue stripe by default, might ditch it!
Upon seeing how simple these pages are gonna actually be, a la Jerry’s example, I guess we don’t need the topic template thing so much. Getting the titles right is the only crucial component, which you cover in the FAQ. So I’ll just leave them blank for now and we’ll see how it goes!
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