The Song Fight Bulletin Board

fluffy wrote:And if you just review the songs you like, then the people you didn't like will feel pretty shitty.

Non-rhetorically speaking, would you (speaking only for yourself) feel less shitty after reading a set of reviews where your song was not included, or after reading a review of your song that was incredibly dismissive?

Some good arguments in here. I think the last time multiple titles came up I suggested that maybe they could be used for special occasions, break up the routine or as Fluffy suggests, seasonally. If I recollect rightly, Spud liked something about the idea.

fluffy wrote:

Ross wrote:

fluffy wrote:stuff.

I get all that, but you did prompt me to go look, and the last few three-title fights before the current standard of one-per-fight were pretty full and had a total of more than 25 fighters a week. So it doesn't seem to me that the title/participant thing is a supply/demand regulatory measure.

Key phrase: A TOTAL of more than 25. But each fight was individually more manageable.

My point exactly. In the post of yours to which i was responding, you suggested that the return to a single title was because the fights had gotten small. I don't think the data bear that out.

Ross:

There was a downward trend in the number of entries (see "Rule of Thump"), and the number of fights was reduced to 2. Then there was an upward trend again and it was increased to 3. Then there was another downward trend (see "Cable Beach") and then things got experimental, with an 11-title fight soon after that (the last group of 3 titles was a bit of a blip, statistically speaking) and then a "permanent" return to 1 title after that.

I should have been a bit more clear. WHILE the fight count was being adjusted, it was a regulatory measure. The single-fight format came back for a different reason, and I don't feel it's my place to say what it is.

Erik:

That's a tough one. Sometimes the dismissive reviews can be pretty funny, and also, if a set of reviews is being done in as scattershot and low-effort way as possible, then to be excluded from THAT would be ultra-shitty, even though I'd rather dismissive review sets not happen at all (unless they're funny and clearly not to be taken seriously, anyway).

In regards to a previous point, you said that people whine only about the quantity, and not the quality, but really it's the quality of the reviews which led me to this. In smaller fights, people have a tendency to spend more time reviewing; when there's only 15 minutes of music it's a lot easier to spend an hour doing a good job, but when there's two hours of music, even just listening to the whole fight (while paying attention to it, anyway) is a major undertaking. Honestly I'd rather see a handful of high-quality reviews than a glut of low-quality ones, but with 30 entries per fight we only get a handful of low-quality ones.

Reïst wrote:

Billy's Little Trip wrote:Disclaimer, I've had a few Bacardi and Cokes, so I may be just talking a bunch of crap here.

... so why did you write it?

That's why I said I MAY be talking a bunch of crap, to answer your question. I figured I'd hit submit anyway, since I typed all that stuff, and wait for some snot nosed kid to discredit me.

Apparently I misunderstood Charles anyway. Big surprise there, huh? 8)

Yowza, what a topic... why do I like more titles? More opportunities for friend flooding or rather, a better chance of being in a fight that isn't won by flood. Ah fights... really gots to get back into them.

<img src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... tput=image">

Hey, cool. A useful graph.

Another thing I think may be useful for getting more reviews would be having a better idea of when the voting period will end. I have sometimes not listened or reviewed, assuming that the voting was ending, and found out that it did not and I would have had time. Also, I have run out of time to vote and felt bad about it. Just a thought.
-bill

HeuristicsInc wrote:Hey, cool. A useful graph.

Yes - that recent week with over 130 entries was great.
Did Fluffy do the graphics for The Great Global Warming Swindle

fluffy wrote:Fluffy's graph

So, to state the obvious, just by eyeballing this, it appears that there were more songs on average when there were multiple titles.



Steve

jack wrote:reviews aren't mandatory, and nobody should feel obligated to do them.

Who are you and what have you done with Jack?

sdurand wrote:

fluffy wrote:Fluffy's graph

So, to state the obvious, just by eyeballing this, it appears that there were more songs on average when there were multiple titles.



Steve

As long as we're doing data (nice graph by the way), It seems to me we've also had a decrease in total votes lately, not to mention votes per song.

Ray - pretty sure that peak is the 11-title fight that immediately preceded the most recent change to single titles (Influential Film excepted).

Ross wrote: Ray - pretty sure that peak is the 11-title fight that immediately preceded the most recent change to single titles (Influential Film excepted).

Were there 130-ish songs that week?

I counted 129, but I can't count. They averaged around a dozen songs a fight, 9 and 14 songs the lows and highs. I gotta admit, I like a dozen songs a fight pretty good.

Yes, the peak is the 11-song week (remember that week the optional challenge was to enter as many songs as possible, too). The average songs per fight was still lower than what we're currently seeing.

sdurand: I don't know whose eyes you're using but the average songs per fight is CLEARLY lower during the multiple-fight weeks. Yes there are peaks and valleys but those always happen. Unfortunately I didn't have any decent graphing software available right now (I ended up using Google Spreadsheet to make that) but I finally got around to reinstalling gnuplot so hopefully I can get something more useful in a bit. But first I have to shower as I've been out all night at a party (WOO).

I also got the statistics for votes and was meaning to make a separate graph for that.

Per-title vote count doesn't seem to be particularly correlated to fight size. But that's to be expected, since there's a LOT of variables in that. (Also, ignore all the '0 total votes' ones since those are just ones which have no vote data recorded.)

<img src="http://beesbuzz.biz/crap/sfstats/votes.png">
<img src="http://beesbuzz.biz/crap/sfstats/ttlvotes.png">

Also the entry-size graph, as both raw data and trend lines (putting the raw data over the trendlines made the graph too cluttered):

<img src="http://beesbuzz.biz/crap/sfstats/entries.png">
<img src="http://beesbuzz.biz/crap/sfstats/entries-trend.png">

sdurand wrote:So, to state the obvious, just by eyeballing this, it appears that there were more songs on average when there were multiple titles.

fluffy wrote:sdurand: I don't know whose eyes you're using but the average songs per fight is CLEARLY lower during the multiple-fight weeks.

I think that Steve was actually referring to the number of songs total (including all fights) being higher during the weeks where there were multiple titles, and not the number of songs per fight. It is interesting that more people overall seemed to be participating when there were multiple titles. When there were multiple titles, was it common for individual SongFight! participants to do multiple songs (for more than one title), and that alone would drive up the numbers? I do realize that there was more to it than that, and it is a curious phenomenon.

Well, again, the whole point to my rambling is that total songs per week isn't the issue, it's the songs per individual title. Fewer songs in a fight (even if the total number of songs in all fights) leads to better quality of reviews, because it's no longer so overwhelming for people to consider reviewing music and doing a decent job of it.

When the multiple-title system came around, a few people would enter into multiple fights, but people were generally good about only entering one fight. There wasn't a specific rule against multiple submissions but there was a guideline that it's better to spend 3x the effort on one song than to try writing three songs.

It's telling that even during the massive 11-title fight, the average number of songs per title was still pretty low.

Yes, yes. I haven't been here for long but I don't disagree with anything you've got to say. I can't see any way that multiple titles and smaller individual fights would be detrimental, other than it being more work for the administrators. You aren't 'rambling' in the least and you make some very valid points.

Is there any way that some of the workload could be taken off of the fightmasters when it comes to uploading the entries, etc.? Do you know what sort of system they are using right now to do that work? Is it all manual? Is there any way that something more automated could be set up so that the process would be a bit simpler and could be done more efficiently?

I have no doubt that these sorts of questions have already been addressed long before my time. I bring them up because otherwise it's all a matter of us complaining about an issue and only hoping that it will be addressed, adding more work for the admins while we just enjoy the results. I wish that I could see a way where some of that workload could be spread out a bit more. I know that I would be happy to volunteer time to such tasks if it were possible for me to help. Otherwise, though, we seem to be at the mercy of Spud and JB, who seem to have enough keeping them from quick updates already.

Again, though, fluffly, I absolutely agree with you. It seems that smaller fights would bring higher quality reviews for participants and less 'review fatigue' for those who want to give critiques. On the side of the participants (as opposed to the admins), it seems like a win-win.

So what? Stop with the graphs already. If logic and numbers were all it took to sway JB and Spud to make changes, then....well, I don't know, but I think we've already established that they don't operate that way.

I know I have been a strong proponent of the 1-fight format, but honestly, I don't really care anymore. I thought some things (both personally and globally) would happen if we switched back to one fight, but nothing really did as far as I can see. If it were my decision, I'd change it back to multiple titles just to end this thread.

To me, the big problem with SongFight seems to be a lack of interest from people not actively involved in the fights themselves. Back in the early days, there were over a hundred votes for 10 or 12 songs. Now, there are 75 or so votes for 30 songs. Where have all the listeners gone and why? That's what you should be asking yourselves.

You are totally at our mercy. I like the sound of that.

Spud wrote:You are totally at our mercy. I like the sound of that.

What does that mean? Are you referring to me or someone in a previous post?