Offline

Could the order be randomized? It seems a little unfair to me that some songs have 40 comments but on the 2nd page there's like 100 songs that all have no comments at all.

At ludum dare (www.ludumdare.com) the entries on top are by the people who have given the most feedback without receiving feedback in return. That means that giving more feedback will cause you to rise to the top, where you'll get more feedback. Since we have so many songs, a system like this might make the most sense.

Last edited by johnfn (January 6, 2014 9:05 pm)

Offline
Cincinnati, Ohio

I dont know.. We talked about this last year but there really are just too many tracks for everyone to listen through them all.  having the instant feedback to know which ones are "trending" can be helpful.  if you make good tracks people will notice.  theres a cheat though if youre desparate/like to game systems.  favorite your own track and thats one more than a lot of other people so you jump higher in the rankings but its still just one "hit".  i got used to the weighted listings over the course of the year and it made it feel really good when people had genuine feedback to leave for me.  but im not sure really. Maybe a random system would be better?  im curious what others feel about this

Offline
PA, USA

Offline
spry wrote:

I dont know.. We talked about this last year but there really are just too many tracks for everyone to listen through them all.  having the instant feedback to know which ones are "trending" can be helpful.  if you make good tracks people will notice.  theres a cheat though if youre desparate/like to game systems.  favorite your own track and thats one more than a lot of other people so you jump higher in the rankings but its still just one "hit".  i got used to the weighted listings over the course of the year and it made it feel really good when people had genuine feedback to leave for me.  but im not sure really. Maybe a random system would be better?  im curious what others feel about this

It seems unlikely that quality will lead to popularity when there's currently a hundred tracks that don't have a single comment on them. Eyes are naturally going to gravitate towards the tracks that already have the social proof of comments, and away from the tracks that haven't been proven yet, leading to a "rich get richer" problem.

Last year it seems like there were only 50 or so tracks by the end. This time there is 8x that number, which means we might need a new approach. (I wasn't around for WB2012 though, so I could be mistaken.)

I'm not personally concerned about my track -  I feel like I already have a good handle on my weaknesses, and I'm using WB as a personal challenge thing. But I do feel really bad for all the people who haven't gotten any feedback at all.

Last edited by johnfn (January 6, 2014 9:08 pm)

Offline
The Wisconsin

Let's keep in mind that sometimes the tracks that truly need more feedback are usually not the extremely awesome tracks. Since Weekly Beats is meant to be a learning and growing experience, often the most useful feedback is the constructive advice given to people who are newer to music. I remember during 2012 that I learned so much just by getting steady feedback on my songs from people who knew a ton more than me.
Also, the ludum dare thing sounds nice, but if people were to get a handle on the idea, we might see a spike in useless "That was great!" comments so as to boost their own tracks. Possibly just put that system under a "In Need Of Feedback" filter option?

Offline
Dwight Davis wrote:

Let's keep in mind that sometimes the tracks that truly need more feedback are usually not the extremely awesome tracks. Since Weekly Beats is meant to be a learning and growing experience, often the most useful feedback is the constructive advice given to people who are newer to music. I remember during 2012 that I learned so much just by getting steady feedback on my songs from people who knew a ton more than me.

Word to this.

Dwight Davis wrote:

Also, the ludum dare thing sounds nice, but if people were to get a handle on the idea, we might see a spike in useless "That was great!" comments so as to boost their own tracks. Possibly just put that system under a "In Need Of Feedback" filter option?

Although you'd expect this to happen, it doesn't, strangely enough. I think it's because everyone there is a creator, so there's some sort of shared understanding that everyone has to be respectful about each others' work. And of course since this is a pretty small community, if we saw someone do it, we could penalize them appropriately.

Offline
Psydney

You have an entire week to listen to all of the tracks!

Offline
Sydney, Australia

I like the idea of using the ludum dare system on default. I think most people doing this challenge aren't in it for popularity, but rather to challenge themselves in a supportive group environment, so they wouldn't comment useless spam comments to try to push their track to the top. This way we also get more comments overall, because people have some kind of incentive to listen to and provide feedback on tracks. Remember that this should be part of the challenge, if no one provided feedback then this would be kinda pointless.

Either that or a random order on default would be nice.

Just for curiosity, how are the tracks being ordered by default right now?

Last edited by codekk (January 7, 2014 5:19 am)

Offline
Riverside, CA

Random order on every refresh would be pretty fair I think.

Offline
Los Angeles

Changed default track order to random.

Offline
St Louis

speak for yourself, spry, I listen to every track every week

Online
Portland, OR

I'm playing the tracks while I'm at work, should be able to get through them all without much trouble...

Offline
MJP

Here's another question - one of the options is "Artists you've favorited"... how do you favorite artists?

Offline
Los Angeles
kineticturtle wrote:

Here's another question - one of the options is "Artists you've favorited"... how do you favorite artists?

If you've favorited a track from a artist, all of that artist's tracks will appear. Which is irrelevant on week1 since there are no other tracks from the artist this year.

Offline
MJP

ohhhhhhhh I get it, thanks!

Offline
Gosford, Australia

default (random) order mixes weeks 1 and 2. intentional?