First off,I want to say thank you to mud and to Downchuck,for all your great help.
And since the code is being turned over to us,I was thinking we should have a list of things we need,things we need to change,add,delete, etc etc etc.
Or just random things that could improve our community.So just throw it out there and we'll see where it goes from there!
1.Lyrics Tab

let's be organized about it, of couse (i think organization was implied in Meow's post!), so let's try not to post the same thing like 14 times..

(this may end up getting moved to the tech support forum, since I imagine that we're going to get lots of that in here.  Or, it might be in the Ideas and Feedback forum :P  Heck, it can't be in both very well, so maybe that's why you put it here in the Pit.  Good call, MM  )

oh, hey-- i'll speak for kings really quickly..

*ahem*

A lyrics tab on our My Home part of the site!  We wanna be able to see a list of the lyrics that we've posted!  the search thingy is rather defective, and it's really hard to find lyrics that you or another member has posted, short of goingto the forum and page searching for their name

Thanks TLS :]
But I would also like your opinion :P

Should check around, this post has been done several times.  But i guess with the way things have changed, it may not be the worst idea to start a fresh list.

Lyrics Tab
Revamp or remove the battle system
Improve search indexing
Replace Lace
Fix/improve stats on a song-by-song basis
Fix the link to the mailbox on the home page that takes you to a dead page

There's more, but that's a good starting point.

'Loading Images' has to be looked at
Sticky thread could be considered
Various new Forums need to be discussed (Interviews, Video upload/link, Links, Collab Review)

O and a Lyrics Tab    lol Cheers TLS

Yes Sooo many ideas have come out and found their way into these forums, we could go looking for them all or we can make a serious effort to gather as many as possible in one place now that the time has come (nearly!).

Links opening in a separate window would be nice

- Song and lyrics seperated from forum content, and given their own interface. ( Chitchat and discussions shouldn't mix in with the nittygritty music stuff / feedback! )
 - A new fresh design
 - Possibly recoding portions of the forum code to be more music-site-oriented.
 - Better profiles
 - Unlimited song uploads
 - New flash interface (The AMP)
 - Sticky threads are a must
 - More content outside the forums, expand the site to include other stuff.
 - Update lace
 - Make stats fucking rock like they should
 - Searching should be better
 - I personally think bandamp shouldn't be just a forum interface. The announcements shouldn't be forum postings, should they? Shouldn't they be in a more blog and comments format? I'm just thinking the forum format restricts bandamp from its full potential

So fucking excited!!!!!!!!!!

heh.. so much for not repeating ourselves :P

Playing on the mention of sticky threads...

I think that new songs should automatically be sticky for at least a few days, since some of them tend to get buried more than halfway down the page if nobody goes and rescues it by replying to it in order to get it at the top again.  I sometimes feel like members who upload their song watch it's position on the page in order to keep it at the top... which makes perfect sense, but I think it turns into a competition to get your song at the top of the list, even if it means replying to your own song after every single post that someone else makes on it.



Second... about the comments that ZachBlume made, I think that adding some new interface to bandamp would be great (though a heavy-duty coding task if we're not yet prepared for that yet).  My personal suggestion regarding this idea about giving the lyrics a comfy home is that when viewing your songs in your My Music section of the site, you could set a few options for each song... like..

(i'm going to start referring to the hypothetical personage as "me" or "I")

-Allowing users to see the tab (the tab could be just a txt file-- nothing fancy).  This could allow me to upload a txt file (or just write it into a blank text box, like the reply boxes all over the forum) containing the tab if I want to.  Then, on the song's actual page on the forum, if my "Tabs" setting is on, users would see a link somewhere in the post (like the header maybe, where the "Quote", "PM", and "Edit" buttons are) to a text-file tab.  Like this, then at least those users who don't wanna post their tabs, will do it later, or to whose songs the Tab option doesn't really apply, they can leave the option disabled to prevent a gay dead link from appearing in their post's header.

-Could do the same as above, but for the lyrics.  This ought to show up as a little more than just a link next to the "quote" and "edit" buttons, though... I often want my lyrics to be right in the user's face, so that he understands better what I'm singing.  Hey, I know-- we can have the lyrics put into something like the quote boxes that show up in forum posts.  Example:


the quote box could get rather lengthy, but hey-- it's no different in length than if I were to post all of my lyrics on the page anyway.



okay, final suggestion for TOME 1 of TLS' SUGGESTIONS for BANDAMP ...  Zachblume raised the concern about chitchat that takes place on peoples' songs.  Personally, I try not to do this (except for when we're disucssing a song like PetermonfblahblahIforgotHisname's upload "Just listen" ), but it will surely happen.  Maybe when a user is posting a reply to a song, a checkbox could be listed under/above the smilies... It could read:

X Posting as critique
_ Posting as commentary

... and you may select one or both.  (it ought to default to just Critique though.)  THEN, we could add two checkboxes at the top and bottom of the page someplace that allow the browsing user to check or uncheck the kind of posts that s/he would like to see.  This way, if I want to see ALL the replies made to the song, I can do so.  But if I would prefer to only see the real critiques, I may so select using the checkboxes.  Or, if I'm out to just be annoying and read up on the usless commentary, I could choose to only see the commentaries and to not see the critiques.  Default option should be to see both, in my opinion.  We would have to trust users to enter their post's content accurately for this to work, but it would be no worse than without such a feature.

k.. so those are my ideas for the moment.  later, chaps.

TLS

I 100% disagree with uncapping song uploads.  I will go against this till I die.  It is too easy right now, I would fight to make it more reviews per upload.

Announcements in a community have and always will be a subforum.  That shouldn't change.  A blog should be in a blog format.

Edit: TLS, I think songs should be ordered by date.  I don't think it's fair that a song from 2005 should be competiting with the attention of today's songs.

i agree-- hey, that reminds me... there was talk a few years back about how there was a Review quota that you had to meet in order to enter your songs into a battle.  Aside from any discussion about the current usefulness of the Battle system, I think that a similar setup would be good for the song upload idea.  There are way too many users who get really excited when they find bandamp and they go to town uploading everything they've got, and then none of it gets reviewed.  Ever.

I think the spirit in which avinashv is speaking is that we want to cut the crap, so to speak.  We want the song uploads to be following quality over quantity standard.  We want the songs that are uploaded to mean something enough to the user that s/he puts it up there with confidance. 

I'm afraid that I have to agree with avinashv on this one, ZachBlume.  Heck, I don't even know what the current cap is, but it's not imposing on me, and I know users like Transistorize (a long-time inactive, now) who had lots and lots of songs up.  The song cap doesn't seem to me to be a pressing issue.

as for ordering the songs by date.. i sort of agree, but there are some good songs out there from before that I haven't heard of before, nor have other users....  mmm...  this would certainly solve the battle for top position though..

Battle : the battle would work fine for songs uploaded back in time..if it works just like mud intended.. that is votes are strictly tallied not by the vote amounts but by the percentage.. that is.... review the song and vote (stars) that gives a percent amount. It then won;t matter if the song has been up here for 30 yrs  if the song sucks it will have a low % amount and will not win. IE  20 votes at 100%  gives 100%  50 votes at a combines % amount of 60% would not win. this way quality wins and quantity does not matter. That is the way the voting is supposed to be working now.. this idea works for me ..but I do think that there should be a cutoff time like lets say 3 months or 6 months.

Battle length  I think the battle every month is OK but seems at times to be a little much.. I can't get on here  enough to get to listen and vote on every song that is entered into battle some months. This is not always fair because I might vote pretty high on a songs that I like but there might be a way better song in the battle that I won't get to and possibly could have won but did not get the vote/votes
 
 
Maybe think of the battle in more like weeks instead of months like 6 weeks long or 7 weeks long ...just a idea that I had.


I think there should be some kind of separation between work in progress uploads asking for collaboration work  and actual finished songs.  I mean it works fine now but there are sometimes I would just like to hear finished songs and know that they are finished when i start the player..
another idea I had.

Stickies are a good idea in certain forums/tabs  I think lessons, gear, something like that should have stickies for certain things ..but the pit  announcements and news ( i think news should be a separated tab. forum) may not really need stickies.

 I also had an idea that certain forum tabs like announcements and news etc should have a limit of lets say a year or two then be removed as they will no longer apply. Edit: i mean the threads in these forums/tabs

lessons and gear ect. naturally should stay  with mods overseeing the threads so that if there is multiple thread question about the same thing they can all be tied together. that way it keeps from having  500 threads about things like ..how do i record my songs.. when there is 200 threads that explain that already...tie that one directly to the older one if possible.

chat improvements with a quick pm window available.

I think there should be some mandatory reviewing at the first ..but if this thing gets like garageband  you'll have people giving out hateful reviews just to mess with people and they won't even listen to the songs they'll just post a comment like "this rocks"  or whatever they can get by with just to get the review out of the way so they can upload their own music.

You will always have people doing this .so the best thing IMHO is just let em put up there songs after the amount of reviewing is done and those that come into the community and become part of it will keep reviewing and those that just "use" the site for just another upload place for their songs will soon be found out.

love the idea of the pay-pal donation for prize thing..nothing like dangling a prize to get the juices flowing.

I have more ideas but i think this thing is way too long for anybody to really want to read anyway.