this is copy of my dialog in audio forum

 
the weekend is here ..........
i reeeeeeeeely want this work to be voted on so it can enjoy a battle within a month or two of its composition
please comment and vote
as bandamp entry criteria requires 15 possibly 20 ongoing votes i only need 5 more .........
but the point of this rant is,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
the battle criteria and system is not good ................ in fact it is very poor
most members are not aware of the entry criteria.....The rewards are obscure.
Any brand new song doesn't stand a chance based on current voting habits of existing members.
Battle entry should be an instant buzz to those entering.
most members do not really want to wait months before a song qualifies to enter into a silly competition
i throw this open 2 debate
please

how do we resolve this

My thoughts are....

it might be better to just junk the battle............. the site certainly survived without it

how about a chart rating system instead.... (based on listens....downloads???? )

kersploosh

the fish

please post a response

Here's an idea

As far as I remember, you need to review three songs before you post your own composition onto this site, right?
Well, how about introducing a similar obligation to voting - you need to post 3 reviews AND vote, say, 5 times before you are allowed to hoist your song. A bigger number of votes might trigger more reviews, I hope.

Seemingly, everyone who wishes to post his song on bandamp HAS to (and does is willingly) do reviews, why not make bandampers do the ratings or otherwise they (we) won't be able to post song?

Jim

PX suggested 'compulsory voting' in another of these 'battle discussions', I understood what he was getting at and I did sort of agree, though I didn't think then that it would be a very 'user friendly' way of getting people to vote.
But now that you put it in the way you have JPB I see more in it,
It is compulsory to review 3 songs before posting your own, what about 'you must vote 6(?) times before the voting system is open for your own song'?? !!
In such a situation members/reviewers/voters will know if someone has also 'fairly' voted on other peoples work first.

Though I agree completely with swordfish :
Especially the 'instant buzz' thing. That's what budding musicians on-line are looking for.

Having thought about this again I don't think the battle / voting concept is working because every song is just bunged into one forum, the Audio Review, there is no distinction between songs / noodles/ collab searches.
I think you would get more response if people knew "This is the Battle/Charts page - VOTE!!!" or "This is the collab page, listen, take part, comment, don't vote!!!"
I simply think that chucking every thing on one long page like a Lucky-dip is not a very professional message to the 'outside world' : Join bandAmp and enter the latest song from your up and coming EP up against a 10 year old banging out "fuck your parents, somebody feed me!!!" in our famous battle! 

Unfortunately there will always be a gripe by someone about the new system if it should change. Not everyone will be pleased all the time. I just wish there would be a way to force users to vote, but I don't see a way of doing that without turning away more people. But what I don't understand is if the battle bothers you, why do you continue to use it? I don't mean to be rude, but just leave it alone if you think it's a popularity contest or only certain people only rate certain songs of friends or something.

Anyways, I think one way would be to figure out a mathematical way to calculate the ability to enter into a battle. Something like... a way to weigh the song with votes, vote average of the song, and the average vote for all songs tallied into a magical number that can be used to determine if it's eligible. Maybe some math wiz can come up with a better way of calculating it. Just a thought from someone who has no say in this. :/

"how about a chart rating system instead.... (based on listens....downloads???? )" (Swordfish)

Have to agree.

chart rating based on listens and downloads? then it would be impossible for quite new
songs to get a high rank... i mean.. a part of the selection would work, because better music
will be downloaded more often, but it would take about half a year or so till your new song has a chance... or did i get something wrong?

nop.. you're exactly right. A system like that wouldn't work. People coming across the site will say "hey what are the top songs?" and indeed these songs will keep getting more and more listens/downloads thus will always stay on the first place until the end of days. I've seen similar things happen to "most popular moblogs" - which were completely non-maintained outdated blogs but kept getting hits because they were on the top 10 places.

Ergo - bad idea!

well thank you all for responses
Assuming the battle sort of keeps its current format ( I think it has to )
i would lke to extend the thread a littleand ask for a little clarification..... as follows

please could someone post the bandamp battle criteria clearly...(on its own page?)
please refer to votes required to qualify in particular!!!

prizes perhaps .............. (but that aint 2 impportant)see later....

from what I can tell ....qualify threshold (number of votes) should be dropped (tricky) and the 'time lag' restricted (hmmmm) i.e. how long a song can be eligile for a battle...
i have an idea for this....

would like 2 discuss with moderators first to iron out idea ... jim and pup

all moving sands fer discussion...of course
automatic place in the house mix fer the winner perhaps.....( NOW THAT IS A GREAT PRIZE)

Thats good enough fer me!!!!!!!

Splashythoughts on a long runnin debate

the fish

Votes needed are 20+.

Good... Now,

The suggestion is to LOWER the required votes to 15+, not that I so much agree to that, but that's the suggestion. But there's something far more interesting going on regarding the whole battle thing. I'm sitting here with TritonKeyboarder and he's getting very worked up by noticing all stuff being malfunct while the claim is that everything is working fine. Now, I'm worried about his blood pressure, so I thought I'd step in and post something to this thread again.

THE BATTLES ARE NOT WORKING PROPERLY AT THE MOMENT. AND THEY ARE NOT USER FRIENDLY.

April's only valid entry (having received sufficient votes) is Sea Of Life, and it got real high marks (92% some) however for some reason it said it came in 4th. But it also says that Free got into the hall of fame, while it only has 18 votes. This is a clear and obvious malfunction and should be fixed Once and For All.

Also, from the front page of BandAmp it is totally unclear that there even is so much as a battle going on. In the Audio Review it is totally unclear which songs are in battles and which ones are not, these two things can be fixed without too much hassle IMO.

First of all, place the Voting Tool on the Front Page so that people who just come dropping by will immediately be confronted with the battle feature. Then, give the songs that are in a battle a VISIBLE TAG in the Audio Review, so everyone sees that they are... And combine that with a piece of text that shows up in fat red letters on the song pages themselves: "THIS SONG IS LISTED IN THE BATTLE. PLEASE LEAVE A VOTE!"

For the coolness of it it would be great to get the percentages shown when one clicks on "View Entire Battle" for finished battles. Even for songs that didn't make the thresh... Else, what is the point of that summary...

Also, when I came onto BandAMP for the very first time (some time ago), the songs that were in a battle were LISTED on your personal member page, with the header "songs you haven't voted for". That list could be long, and sat annoyingly in the way of a clean personal page-viewing, so one WANTED to vote for those songs to make that list go away! It worked like a charm for me! And back in those days, with less active member than we have now, voting was a way more everyday practice for all... So maybe get that feature back...

Anyway, what it comes down to: we can talk and discuss stuff over and over again but lest we get something ACTUALLY CHANGE, nothing is going to come out of it.

Sorry to sound bossy and/or impatient, but I'm just not very into all this battle stuff ranting and suggestions that keep going nowhere all the time. I just want to see some changes made, and if they don't work then atleast something was tried... And it might change for a new, better system for all I care, it's not that the suggestions I'm giving here should be permanent, but I JUST want to see some ACTION....

Thank you for your attention, I will say no more to this whole battle stuff anymore. Ever. Unless changes are being made. If not, then I'm just not giving these issues another second of my time, and will delete any new thread started over it as it being "meaningless spam".

wow wot a superb answer ........

love your ideas and sentiment pup

hope you enjoying holiday

best regards to you and carsten .......... hope u both having a great time

signor fish 

Well Pup,
  Gotta agree with you whole heartedly..  But there is
still some room for doubt there. That is, There Still
needs to be a time limit on how long a song can go
on and continue to remain in the battle.. Even though
there are monthly winners, it seems that a song which
had been up for over two years had finally won in
one of the months I believe.. I am now looking for it.
I saw it a while back so it may take me some time to
find... that's why I say, I believe...  hey since when a
new month ends, it also knocks off the oldest month
showing, I can't say yet if I may have seen it in one of
the months that have scrolled off since I came here
a few months back...
 To go on, I think that 90 days would be long enough
before a person had to then, even re-record or revamp
his or her song before it was re-entered again..
 Now, how about this? No more then 2 songs in the
battle at one time... that way folk can't space them out
where they would keep someone in the battle concurrently
till time as we know it ceases.. (lol)  Two songs and until
the second one posted was finished with it's 90 day
run...  15+ votes sounds just about as fair as possible..
 Ok, "semi-forced" voting...  PUP, the list at the top of
say thirty songs, would be a little much.. How about a nice
pretty RED annoying banner - flag linked to the voting
that would go away when the person had finished the
voting... I think  please take the time to vote...... would
do well and wouldn't sound so demanding as taking up
half a new comer's screen, which who knows, may in
fact run one or two off... I do like the suggestion to
get a vote so many times to allow....  this cured me of
my laziness to review and rate.. but now also I think when
people have the problems quite a few of us did when trying
to upload only to have our credits used up and the songs
either were sounding like alvin and the chipmunks, or just
plain didn't show back up, should get some credits awarded
back to those persons... but that is just my own personal rant
there.. I know I spent the better part of three days fighting
that when it was a major thing here a couple of weeks ago..

 Ok do I hear a yeigh or neigh from the powers that be on
this??  Do you believe these suggestions to be ok or maybe
all wet?? (rofalol)  I had pondered a novice and intermediate
levels suggestion, but was holding that for a much later date
when this rant had died down.. gotta keep the things fresh
and alive, right?? *giggles*

as long as I don't come off sounding to heavy there, ya know?


Blessings,

Dan - Blueyes

Hum hum, the time limit of songs being in a battle is easy: until the battle ends. It's like this, never has been different. If a song did not receive a rank in the battle, then it can be put into a next one. This is OK and fair enough.

No previous battles were scrolled out of sight. The available Halls of Fame are and will remain available afaik, accessible from the Browse section on the front page.

One can only put 1 song into the battle (and have 1 OTHER song in the next) - it's like this, and hasn't ever been different, and should remain this way.

I really don't care about old songs being posted into the battle. I've done it, I'll keep on doing it. I mean, what's so bad about it? Just because it starts off with a number of MORE votes, doesn't mean the average of those votes will turn out higher than it would if it would have been posted later. In fact, the more votes a song has, the more the average of those votes make sense. It's not giving you an advantage being able to post old songs into the battles, other then it starting off with sufficient votes to receive a ranking... But that "sufficient" votes part for songs that were posted later is the REAL problem we're trying to deal with. I've posted a number of suggestions which I think will atleast work a little... One has got to set priorities, first things first.

As the list of "Songs you haven't rated yet" used to sit, iirc, on the bottom of one's profile page. Right now I'd put it just before the blogs posts start, and limit the number of songs showing up there to not make it that clogging in appearance, showing up random titles everytime one returns to the page. It's starting to sound more and more complicated, something which I'm trying to avoid...

So, as for the powers that be - SlasherX is a designated programmer for the site, who is here to fix bugs and implement features that the member agree on having implemented. So far he's been doing a great job at fixing bugs, and putting in the voting tool - now it's time to Fix / Upgrade the Battle feature of BandAMP. So, slasherx, could you help us out, please?

things done so far:

Votes 15+ (this is a reason why that other song was included in the hall of fame, because of some tweaks i was trying. not a bad song either), Pink link for battle entries this month regardless of you clicking or voting for it already (the pink link is the only indicator you'll have, each user can't have this change based on their votes... for a few reasons i can't explain), voting tool in the top right menu listed as "Vote" (couldn't think of a better name). That's it so far.

Guys, you missed the meaning..  a song cudda been
on a person's list for 50 years, that doesn't mean
they can't enter it.. it's the three month / 90 day
limit for a song to be in the battle before it is
scrolled off and then must be redone or say wait
a month -30 days before it can be re-entered..
I apologize if my meaning was unclear.. hey that's
the reason I type those small russian novels.. because
I am trying to make sure I am not misunderstood..
 And you guys, like the list of songs needing rated
rather then a nice annoying red banner link across
the top of your page?? ok that again, was just my
idea of an alternative way of bugging them into
rating without being as intimidating about it,
and possibly running newbies off.. was just an idea
as the rest was.. I didn't include the novice - intermediate
thing because I had already typed the beginning of a
preface that would make tolstoy roll over in his grave..
(lol)

blessings,

Blueyes