Can we please get multiple titles again?

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:18 pm

röymond wrote:
Test Week Hiatus wrote:edit: actually, i always thought it would be cool to have a counter in the "next week's fight" part of the front page that would track the number of submissions currently received for the upcoming fight. and maybe then if you click on it, you'd get to see a list of the submitters.
There are four very cool points of tension and anticipation that make SF special:
- when will the new title be posted?
- when will the new fight go up?
- who (or how many) will be in the fight?
- what will people say about my song?

Taking any one of these four away dilutes and diminishes the experience, and like a table losing a leg, the whole thing comes crashing down.

Not always

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:22 pm

Caravan Ray wrote:Not always

That isn't a four legged table who has had a leg torn, neigh, RIPPED off. That's just a wimpy three legged tuneflow table.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:29 pm

röymond wrote: ...a leg torn, neigh, RIPPED off.

Do you have a cold? You sound a little horse.

Steve Durand · Post by **Steve Durand** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 10:39 pm

röymond wrote:[
There are four very cool points of tension and anticipation that make SF special:
- when will the new title be posted?
- when will the new fight go up?
- who (or how many) will be in the fight?
- what will people say about my song?

Taking any one of these four away dilutes and diminishes the experience, and like a table losing a leg, the whole thing comes crashing down.

I find only the last two of these to be a "cool point of tension". I wish that the titles and song postings went off like clockwork.

Steve

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 1:04 am

I agree with Steve on this. What's exciting about sitting around and waiting for the title? It's like Christmas when you're a kid. It can never come soon enough. And for the people with busy lives, you can't get any work done in whatever free time you have if there's not a title there. I've got plenty of means of dealing with it, and I'm not complaining, as I appreciate the work the fightmasters do, on whatever schedule they can manage, understanding that they receive no compensation for their services. But to be blunt, I think the inconsistency is bad for the site.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 1:12 am

Bad how? Reduces the number of entries in a fight?

HELLO

frankie big face · Post by **frankie big face** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:44 am

Lord of Oats wrote: Although my background suggests that "a bad song is better than no song,"

You should shoot your background in the face.

j$ · Post by j$ » Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:58 am

Lord of Oats wrote: But to be blunt, I think the inconsistency is bad for the site.

To be blunt, I think the inconsistency of song quality is worse for the site.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 6:47 am

Lord of Oats wrote:I agree with Steve on this. What's exciting about sitting around and waiting for the title? It's like Christmas when you're a kid. It can never come soon enough.

I know! When I was a kid, Christmas was totally unexciting. All that waiting and wondering, fuck that. It would have been so much more exciting if I got the gifts unwrapped as soon as they were bought.

king_arthur · Post by **king_arthur** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:13 am

fluffy wrote: 1. Cover an artist/genre/etc. - ANATHEMA TO SONG FIGHT

Well, not if it's covering other songfight songs. I still think that deserves more respect and encouragement (and hosting) than it seems to get around here, but I guess that's been asked and answered.

Fluffy's original complaint was that there haven't been enough (good) reviews. Multiple titles was presented as one way of addressing that (presumably by leading to fewer entries per fight, making individual fights more "reviewable"). How about some other ideas for ways to increase the quantity and quality of reviews?

Since tuneflow has already been mentioned... they're (we're) currently working on this same problem, but they have a different structure - reviews are done "per song," they have a "rating" system rather than a "voting" system so that you don't have to listen to ALL the songs to pick a winner, and they run their reviews through a web interface so that they can track how many reviews an individual has done, and reviewers earn "Review Feedback Points" for doing useful reviews, which have some value in that universe.

In general, anything we want the site to do to encourage more reviews probably would require some sort of database managed thing... if I'm logged in as king_arthur and click the "review songs" button, it brings up a screen with all the artist names and a text block space for each one and I type my review comments in there, and then they are gathered up and automatically posted to the review thread for me. And if I come back a few days later to review some more songs, it lists the songs I haven't reviewed yet with text blocks, and, again, posts any new reviews to the review thread. And once I have turned in reviews for ALL the songs in a given fight, I get an extra vote. Or some sort of "reward," and that was the first thing I could think of that would have value here.

Yeah, I know, that doesn't allow for audio reviews, it doesn't prevent somebody from typing "your song sucks" into all the boxes to get an extra vote, etc. But it would set up a structure that would let us do further stuff to discourage bad reviews, encourage more and better reviews... and then as an artist, when the fight is over, I would be able to click a button that would show me all the reviews of my song in a nicely formatted, uhh, format. Or all the reviews I did of a particular fight.

But that's all very tuneflow like, and it would also be a lot of work to create and manage.

Nonetheless... reducing the number of songs per fight by having multiple fights may be one way to increase the number of reviews. How 'bout some other ideas?

Charles (KA)

P.S. - I know I haven't done reviews in quite a while. My reasons: too busy to review so many songs, the expectation that you have to review ALL the songs, and maybe a loss of interest in SF in general...

Paco Del Stinko · Post by **Paco Del Stinko** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:26 am

KA wrote:maybe a loss of interest in SF in general

Sorry to hear that. Anything that can be done to help? Selfishly, I'd hate to see one of my favorite artists here disappear. It's me, isn't it?

king_arthur · Post by **king_arthur** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:40 am

No, it's just that I'm finally having to admit what Blue told me my second week here: if the target audience at songfight was 50 year olds, I'd win every week. But it isn't. And a lot of the stuff that IS popular here doesn't even appeal to me that much when I get around to listening.

Tuneflow has its difficulties, but it seems to be where the old guys doing semi-humorous country songs hang out, so I've been seeing how it goes over there. I turned in "And Counting" 'cause I wanted to be part of the 500th fight celebration here, but I knew it would get slaughtered in the reviews, and if it had been a regular fight, I probably wouldn't have submitted it.

I'll still be involved at songfight and do the occasional song and/or reviews, but it just doesn't interest me the way it used to.

Charles (KA)

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:44 am

king_arthur wrote:No, it's just that I'm finally having to admit what Blue told me my second week here: if the target audience at songfight was 50 year olds, I'd win every week.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm the youngest (I think) person here, and you're in my top 2 favorite artists list.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:01 am

king_arthur wrote:No, it's just that I'm finally having to admit what Blue told me my second week here: if the target audience at songfight was 50 year olds, I'd win every week.

And if the target audience was into odd off canter whatever it is people tell me I do, then I'd win a few. I do wish I could find a group of folks more tuned in to my genre but I also value the eclectic tastes, backgrounds and opinions of the SF crowd. It is surprisingly diverse, yet cohesive. So keeping a foot in the door, KA, is welcome.

king_arthur · Post by **king_arthur** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:02 am

Oops, I really didn't mean my post to be a "nobody loves me, everybody be nice to me" thing...

Umm... how about ideas for getting more and better reviews?

Charles (KA)

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:36 am

king_arthur wrote:Oops, I really didn't mean my post to be a "nobody loves me, everybody be nice to me" thing...

Umm... how about ideas for getting more and better reviews?

Charles (KA)

Non-rhetorically speaking, how would you (speaking only for yourself) define "better"? What would an ideal review look like?

Post by jb » Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:45 am

king_arthur wrote:
fluffy wrote: 1. Cover an artist/genre/etc. - ANATHEMA TO SONG FIGHT
Well, not if it's covering other songfight songs. I still think that deserves more respect and encouragement (and hosting) than it seems to get around here, but I guess that's been asked and answered.

Ok, here is an offer:

I will host any covers of songfight songs that anybody makes, provided that someone comes up with a Web form to upload and catalog/display them.

FTP/shell access would be limited, as I'd rather not give too many people
will-nilly bandwidth for whatever. Not that I don't trust each and every one of you. Well, except that I don't. Ha.

So if you wanna cover a songfight song, and you don't wanna, or can't find a place to host it, now you have no excuse. Well, after Plat or somebody makes an interface to upload.

So, somebody start organizing.

JB

king_arthur · Post by **king_arthur** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 10:05 am

Whoopee! Keep whining and eventually...

Seriously, thank you!

I have a bunch of hxari I've done in the past, plus all the tracks from the first Secret Santa lovefest, so whenever somebody has an interface, I'm ready to start testing

Charles (KA)

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:04 pm

king_arthur wrote:Since tuneflow has already been mentioned... they're (we're) currently working on this same problem, but they have a different structure - reviews are done "per song," they have a "rating" system rather than a "voting" system so that you don't have to listen to ALL the songs to pick a winner, and they run their reviews through a web interface so that they can track how many reviews an individual has done, and reviewers earn "Review Feedback Points" for doing useful reviews, which have some value in that universe.

I wouldn't like to see that model here. I like that Songfight! is a fight. A discrete group of songs that must be assessed against each other to find one eventual winner. I don't get that same feeling of competition at Tuneflow.

(Yes - I have been dipping my toe in at tuneflow recently - though don't bother going there to check out my work. You'll find that my Tuneflow entry "One Foot Out The Door" bears an uncanny resemblance to my Purple Reign song "So Blue". I love a "2-for-the-price-of-1" song)

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:13 pm

king_arthur wrote:No, it's just that I'm finally having to admit what Blue told me my second week here: if the target audience at songfight was 50 year olds, I'd win every week. But it isn't.

seems we're all getting older

I recently posted some songs to a site called Slice The Pie (is anyone else there?)

One review I received for my old Nur Ein 1 song "Pencil Me In" was "

I can tell you're not young, but this just makes you sound past it. It's old fashioned, and sounds like a homeless guy trying to get a few cents by singing at the side of the road. I don't know what else I can add.

That's going on the album sleeve! And a T-Shirt!

king_arthur · Post by **king_arthur** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:20 pm

Caravan Ray wrote:I wouldn't like to see that model here. I like that Songfight! is a fight. A discrete group of songs that must be assessed against each other to find one eventual winner. I don't get that same feeling of competition at Tuneflow.

Yeah, and I wasn't suggesting that whole other model, just pointing out that their model DOES give them more ability to implement some things aimed directly at increasing quantity and quality of reviews.

So, okay, here are some off the wall ideas about ways that songfight! could increase quantity and/or quality of reviews:

- Fightmasters could announce that the new titles / new fight won't be posted until there have been (10 times number of songs in fights) reviews posted. Getting in there and doing reviews speeds up the posting of new titles, new songs and old results (sometimes I wonder if they're already doing this).

- Fightmasters could announce that artists have to submit reviews of at least 10 songs from fight (N-1) to be allowed to enter fight (N). Or, basically, once you have reviewed 10 or more songs in a single fight, you get permission to enter some fight after that. (would require a lot of monitoring, we would probably have to appoint a panel)

- Once voting on a fight closes, artists would have three days to vote on "Reviewer of the First Level," and the RotFL would be listed in the results blurb along with the fight winner.

- If RotFL happens to have a song in the current fight, it could be worth one extra vote. Although it's probably easier to just find one more friend or arrange for one extra IP address...

- Is there some specific piece of information which would make reviews more useful across the board? For example, I would love it if every reviewer would indicate which songs they considered "keepers" - something they're going to save on their computer, put on their iPod or whatever. Some way of separating the good stuff from the not so good stuff so that I would at least know how many people thought my song was good, even if nobody thought it was the best. Anyway, if there were some specific things that would make reviews more useful, we could encourage the inclusion of those things in reviews.

Other ideas?

Charles (KA)

the idiot king · Post by **the idiot king** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:54 pm

king_arthur wrote:- Once voting on a fight closes, artists would have three days to vote on "Reviewer of the First Level," and the RotFL would be listed in the results blurb along with the fight winner.

- If RotFL happens to have a song in the current fight, it could be worth one extra vote. Although it's probably easier to just find one more friend or arrange for one extra IP address...

the idea of a RotFL is pretty good, regardless of how we determine the RotFL. giving a band or artist's song more than just a passing listen is pretty awesome of someone, and there should totally be a pat on the back for being a generally cool person.