1/20 - 1/21

[Mike Lamb]

In the last waking moments..

Reviewing this fight was a lengthy affair. I am glad I did it in the evening, after I was done not doing all the other stuff I had to do today. I've been gone from SF for awhile, and I'm really glad we're back. I'm doing what I can to get both our tracks on track, and to bring back some life to SF, as it seems to have been flagging for awhile.

QOTD: How would you re-invigorate the SF community?

[Ross]

I'm just going to try to be active. Answer the QOTD, write reviews, record songs. Not sure what else to do.

Had a verynlazy post birthday today, but it was nice.

[fluffy]

Knowing the conversation that led to this QOTD I think I'd like to see the following:

1) Having more music-related discussions on the forum again would be good

2) Having an easier way of reviewing fights, and not feeling like everything has to be reviewed fully. Usually I get a few songs into a fight, then start skipping around, then get sick of everything and just want to give up on it. I think an alternate means of doing review-only stuff (such as randomly having a few songs to do and then bundling everyone's reviews together in aggregate eventually) could work a lot better for some people, at least if they're here to actually have their songs reviewed.

3) Also a mechanism like the old GarageBand (the one before Apple took over the name) thing where you got two songs to listen to, selected which one was better, and then gave brief reviews about what you liked and didn't like of each one... that's a pretty good way of getting a taste for things and letting songs bubble to the top. Obviously that doesn't fit in with the Song Fight voting mechanism, BUT it could be a way for people to pre-vet songs to listen to outside of the fight.

4) I need to write songs but usually the titles don't inspire me anymore. "French Toast" did but I was too busy that week to get anything done. But it's also easy to make excuses like that. My head just isn't in a music-making space in general lately. Maybe I should work on album covers since drawing stuff is where my brain is living lately.

5) also fuck all y'all who are moving the conversation over to places like Facebook and Reddit and the two of you on Google Plus

6) also I'd like the level of discourse to improve here. Less crapping-up threads with miscellaneous bullshit, more talking about what the thread is actually about. Also just seeing a higher level of respect for each other in general would be nice. I know I'm guilty of being part of the antagonism problem lately. But yeah like, if someone asks you to take a particular tangent somewhere else, please just do that.

Even as a forum admin I don't have the authority to establish any sort of community rules or anything (I'm just here to keep the boards running at a technological level) and I certainly don't want to overstep my bounds or anything. And of course my opinion about how the forum should be is just my opinion. I'd like to see this return to being somewhere that people can feel safe about talking about music and making music and the things that inspire them to make music without fear of everything turning into bullshit about shagging cattle or whatever.

Also, this is required listening. It's just as true now as it was in 2002.

[fluffy]

also before anyone calls me on this:

5) also fuck all y'all who are moving the conversation over to places like Facebook and Reddit and the two of you on Google Plus

6) also I'd like the level of discourse to improve here.

these are the jokes

[Ross]

Your mystery reviews are a fun idea, may drive some response and interaction.

Right now I am thinking I am #10.

I also enjoyed the old garageband site.

[fluffy]

Well, the mystery isn't buried too deeply. (And yes, you were #10.)

[Caravan Ray]

....I'd like the level of discourse to improve here.....Having more music-related discussions....

I was just thinking exactly the same thing. Musical philosophy anybody?:

[Caravan Ray]

Your mystery reviews are a fun idea, may drive some response and interaction.

Right now I am thinking I am #10.

I also enjoyed the old garageband site.

Yes - garageband was fun.

I found some other site that did that head-to-head rating thing too - but I can't remember what it was.

Would be cool if some nerd could work out how to do that with random songs from the SF back catalogue so the old classics could somehow bubble up in some sort of rated list based on results

[fluffy]

There was a thing that would rate ANYTHING head-to-head called 'What's Better," although that site is long-gone.

I've thought about making a songfight "what's better" from time to time but I'm fundamentally lazy. Also, recontextualizing ratings outside of a fight's historical perspective is a big no-no for various reasons.

[Lunkhead]

It would be trivial for me to add to the Jukebox a page that loads two random songs from the archive. I never used the old GarageBand though so I don't think I quite get how it worked from your descriptions.

- loads two random songs
- you listen to the songs
- you pick the one you like more
- you write a comment
- then what?

What is done with the information about the "winners"? And the comments?

If I have specific details it might be fun for me to implement, though, tbh, I don't think it's going to do much to rejuvenate the community. Judging from the virtually nil traffic the Jukebox gets and the total stagnation of somesongs I think any rejuvenation would have to happen here on the boards and/or on songfight.org. I don't think there's enough action to support side channels these days.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I also liked the "guess which review is yours" idea. Very cool because it kind of forces you to slow down and read all the reviews that someone took a chunk of time to sit down, listen to about an hours worth of music that often isn't in their genre of enjoyment, and write reviews.

I also agree that if reviewing was easier, it would happen more. The new "review this weeks fight" set up is a step in the right direction, but still doesn't streamline the process enough.

My suggestion from a layman's point of view. If the "review this weeks fight" was a form with a standard set of fields with check boxes and a comment space that had a limit of characters like a comment box on youtube. It might make the process seem less overwhelming, especially on the big fights. It doesn't have to be used by those that prefer a custom review, but it's there for those that might not otherwise review because of the time required. It would also have to be designed in such a way that it doesn't create more work for the Fight Masters. As in, it automatically puts the band names in the review form.

As far as the "stay on topic" comment. Personally, I feel that part of the realness here at Song Fight is that people can be open and talk the same way they would about a topic as if sitting in a pub having a discussion over a beer or diet coke. If rules start limiting people to strict discussion methods, it will drive away real people and there will be nothing left except a few lonely robots.
Yes, I know that's over exaggerating the situation, but I think in "on or off" and "black and white" scenarios. It's a bad human habit I have.

[Ross]

So many people are mobile these days. An app with a "post comment" button that goes straight to the boards might be interesting.

[fluffy]

It would be trivial for me to add to the Jukebox a page that loads two random songs from the archive. I never used the old GarageBand though so I don't think I quite get how it worked from your descriptions.

- loads two random songs
- you listen to the songs
- you pick the one you like more
- you write a comment
- then what?

What is done with the information about the "winners"? And the comments?

The winners bubble up to the top of the rankings (I'd actually use something like the Chess ranking algorithm to affect the score but that's just me). The comments get associated with the individual songs.

[Ross]

As I recall, garageband was not a head to head contest, I recieved several songs to rank and review, andnI did. But if what I got was two songs that I thought were both 5 star songs, I gave them both five stars. The more people rated random songs, the more of a reliable average of overall ranking you get. More like rotten tomatoes than a tournament. But people have to be honest, if everyone just give a 1 star ranking to the ones that aren't their friends it can really muck things up.
Garage band was not weekly and was a much larger pool of songs and reviews, so the aggregate data was somewhat reliable.

Also, the submitter could rank the reliabili of rht e reviewer. The higher the reviewer was rated, the more their reviews counted in the ranking algorithm.

[fluffy]

That may have come later, Ross - the last time I used it (which was years before the mp3.com merge shenanigans, and I think even before Song Fight existed) it was very much a head-to-head thing. But yeah it wasn't weekly, it was just a "hey if you want to post a song, you gotta rate 5 other song pairs first" deal, and the selections were totally random (albeit within a genre). I wasn't suggesting it as a replacement for the Song Fight voting algorithm, anyway - just as a possibly fun alternate way for people to experience the archive and/or the current fight.

[Ross]

I understood and I wasn't trying to poster "counter" to yours, I was just throwing more stuff in the thought mix.

[Caravan Ray]

I like the head-to-head thing.

You get 2 random songs from the archive, then answer the question - Which song did you like best? Song A or Song B.

You like Song A, so it gets 1 point added to it's tally.
Song B gets -1 point

Over time - songs that are liked by more people will have a higher score than others. It could make a nice list. Yes - it is "recontextualizing ratings outside of a fight's historical perspective", which apparently is "a big no-no for various reasons". But, you know, they used to say the same about sideburns and safari suits .

[Niveous]

Here are my feeling on the issue (these are only my opinions so take them with a grain of salt).

One issue that the community has is that we tend to create disposal music. It's the nature of the beast. We make songs in a short span and then review and vote in that same short span. A winner is declared with little or no fan-fare and then we are off to the races again. There is very little focus on the long history of music that songfight has, nor do we focus on promoting or reworking the songs after the main fight. When someone does the reworking, such as Fluffy or Jim of Seattle, it does get some talk flowing and we should push for more of that. We need to do things that make the music live on past the week of the fight. Podcasts, videos, whatever gets the great music that this community does into more hands and keeps it growing.

I also think that the community could use a boost when it comes to experimentation and collaboration. If the community isn't talking a lot about the music, then maybe its because there aren't enough things that they find interesting. Someone needs to step up and be the next Nirvana. I don't mean a grunge band specifically, I mean a band that causes a breakthrough, something that sparks a revolution or an evolution. That can happen when we embrace experimentation more. I also believe that we collaborate more often, those types of breakthroughs are bound to occur naturally.

Speaking of collaborations, I think the community should do more when it comes to doing things outside of the forums, like more Songfight: Presents shows. Not only would it help foster the community but it could lead to more collaborations and allow the songs to continue to live by getting played. I think that's a win/win. Then we just have to figure out how to make Songfight Live more special.

And lastly, new blood.

[roymond]

Old blood here. I have to produce some music again and my work would be mostly done. When I'm not making music I have little to contribute. But I hear what Niv is saying...put legs on this stuff like Presents, and podcasts. And video interviews.

Speaking of SFL, I'm thinking of VT/NH...Live Green or Die. A little different, but rehearsals, local performances and crashing can happen on my farm, and the big gig in Jim's neighborhood?

[fluffy]

Niveous, you raise some good points, although we've already had several folks who have launched their real music careers from here (MC Frontalot, Spinto Band, Josh Woodward), and each of them have ended up bringing some new blood here as well. Every time Frontalot name-drops Song Fight we get a huge influx of nerdcore rappers, for example.

I really love the early experimental days of this site. pricklypears and NiL and drew's billions of pseudo-bands are what got me going. That's why I linked to the 15-16 Puzzle song earlier - in the early days it felt like a revolution in music, and today it mostly seems more like people just trying to polish certain thigns that are just like the other things that they like, and meanwhile all the people who made the early days fun and interesting are long-gone (and in some cases even bitter about how the site has turned out).

I'm not sure more new blood is necessarily the important thing - we already have plenty of people submitting music, but most of it is just not very much fun to listen to, much less review and share constructive feedback on. I feel like what we need is a new way of finding the gems that make it easy for the new blood to get interested in being new blood.

We have several archive-perusing/preserving projects, such as multiple wikis and Lunkhead's amazing SF Player, but they're still missing the valuable "spark" that makes them useful for actually discovering great, missing stuff, and I think a lot of that is simply because of the fear that allowing songs to automatically be re-rated outside of the confines of their original fight will somehow ruin them. Spud has made it abundantly clear that he does not want an ongoing vote where new songs are put up against old songs, and I get his reasoning, although I disagree with it.

To me, actually listening to a fight is a chore, something that I feel obligated to do when I've entered, and it's no longer a joyous act of discovery.

CRay: The big problem with a simple +1/-1 is that it unfairly biases really high (or really low!) scores towards older content. The Elo rating scheme is much more fair, as newer and overlooked things can move much more quickly to its natural rank within the ecosystem (and part of its effect actually causes natural churn at the extreme edges, since if you have an established high-rank item that goes up against an unestablished or low-rank item, the low-rank item actually gets points no matter what - in the chess world, a newbie going up against Kasparov will give the newbie a lot of points no matter how it turns out, while Kasparov loses points just by merit of having gone up against the newbie anyway).

What I'd be afraid of with standard scoring systems (+1/-1, average rating, etc.) is you'd normally have a few very deeply-entrenched songs that stay at the top, without any breathing room for new things to show up. This is what happened with SomeSongs, for example. Elo has a built-in "freshness" factor that has nothing to do with arbitrary things (like "ratings in the last week" or whatever), and that combined with a random-pairing what's-better system means that you aren't just going to have people listening to the top few songs and going "yep, still like it" and keeping them cemented there.

Oh and back to Niveous: hell yes on Presents shows. Every time I go to a live show I get pumped and invigorated about actually making music. Then I make a song, and then I have to review everything else, and then I lose interest for another year.

[Niveous]

I'm not sure more new blood is necessarily the important thing

It's not. I value all the other stuff in my post much more than the new blood. But good new people who get interested in the community is a plus.

[fluffy]

Oh, incidentally, http://www.songfight.org/ratings.html is where Spud talks about his distaste for retroactive archive ratings. I don't think that explanation or its stated concerns have aged well.