Comments on: Music Talk and Charts and Challenges, Oh My!

Music Talk and Charts and Challenges, Oh My!

mathowie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:52:49 -0800

New stuff for Music! We've added a Talk section, a page dedicated to Challenges, and made the Charts more obvious.

The Talk section is something we've been kicking around for the past year or so. Where can musicians uploading music to MeFi talk about how they record, what they write songs about, and where could they collaborate? It doesn't quite work in MetaTalk because it's for a smaller audience and can quickly get too specific for the general site discussion that takes place here, so we made a new virtual copy of MetaTalk, but for just MeFi Music-related things on Music itself. You can post a limit of one thing a week to the Music Talk section. The Challenges have been going well, giving people something to chew on each month and gracing fans of the MeFi musicians with tons of new material every month. The problem was, we didn't have anywhere to archive old challenges and show off the songs they've uploaded (each challenge has a player with just songs for that challenge). We created a dedicated page and will be filling it with the previous challenges as we track them down (each month we were wiping them completely so it's hard). We've always had a Charts page, but it wasn't very obvious in the past, so we added that as a top level tab. That's it, go forth and enjoy the new stuff.

By: Jofus

Jofus — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:55:13 -0800

Yay! This is awesome, thanks everyone!

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:57:51 -0800

Also, we've trained a quartet of ponies to wear straw hats and sing barbershop; they're available at reasonable hourly rates to interested recordists.

By: cashman

cashman — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:03:30 -0800

Yay!! It looks pretty swell.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:11:12 -0800

mathowie=patron of the arts.

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:17:21 -0800

Very cool, bravo!

By: sleevener

sleevener — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:36:32 -0800

What's the hourly rate for the ponies to absolutely not sing barbershop?

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:40:13 -0800

Finally, I can call out frenetic on his dastardly lack of Theramin and Huaca.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:41:20 -0800

It used to be $16/hr, but in response to price adjustments from our competitors in a nearby metropolis we were compelled to raise that price by 25%.

By: porn in the woods

porn in the woods — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:47:21 -0800

It used to be $16/hr

Same as in town.

By: sleevener

sleevener — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:52:20 -0800

Just got a reproduceable database-looking error message when trying to preview a comment over in the Talk section.

I hope a pony dies every time that happens; I don't even make $20 an hour.

By: god hates math

god hates math — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:53:07 -0800

Oh damn - Like I need another place to nerd out about recording techniques. You guys rule.

By: pb

pb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:57:45 -0800

sleevener, thanks for the heads up. It's working now.

By: ORthey

ORthey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:58:40 -0800

This ROOLZ!

By: sleevener

sleevener — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:58:54 -0800

Cool. The Talk page is very awesome, by the way, I know I'll be hanging out there a lot.

By: sleepy pete

sleepy pete — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:04:58 -0800

Hey, thanks a lot for doing this. It's really a great addition to that part of the site.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:24:02 -0800

Fantastic. Thank you very much, this is going to be a very, very good thing.

By: danb

danb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:24:57 -0800

This is awesome, mathowie and pb, thanks!

A minor suggestion: the contributions to MeFi Music should be changed to "n posts" instead of "n songs," since n now includes both MP3s and threads on the new Talk page.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:34:27 -0800

WIN

By: pb

pb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:35:15 -0800

Thanks danb, I updated the wording on profiles and in the music rss feeds.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:36:34 -0800

Really fantastic. Thanks.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:37:31 -0800

suggestion: on Challenge page, have the playlists pop-out-able.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:50:16 -0800

Talking about music is like moderating about architecture.

By: pb

pb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:50:55 -0800

pop-outs ahoy!

By: PercussivePaul

PercussivePaul — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:53:36 -0800

Barbershop ponies (no straw hats though)

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:04:20 -0800

I'd like to restate my reaction to this. I was kind of multitasking when I left my previous comment, and so it ended up sounding very, very mellow, which isn't at all fair after I had been bustin' the admins' balls about features like these. So, here, for the record, is what came to my mind when I discovered this thread earlier today:

NOOOOOOOOMAMMESSSSSSSSSSS..............qué chidoooooooooooooo, that's the best fucking newwwwwwwwwwwwwwws, pinche mathowieeeeeeeeeeee, qué buenoooooooo, al fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!

and thanks again.

By: Sailormom

Sailormom — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:06:36 -0800

Wow! Looks great. Thanks.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:01:52 -0800

Overdue revision: mathowie and pb = patrons of the arts.

By: pb

pb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:15:56 -0800

To be completely honest I actively oppose the arts, but matt issued a direct order in this case.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:01:54 -0800

WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Holy crap, things just keep getting awesomer and awesomer!!!

By: motty

motty — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:31:06 -0800

Hurrah for this and thank you.

By: davejay

davejay — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:48:40 -0800

HUzzah!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:50:26 -0800

Astro Zombie writes: Talking about music is like moderating about architecture.

Note: "Comments" have been disabled for this user's Music posts.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:00:12 -0800

HUzzah!

Through subliminal capitalization of the first two letters of this archaic and largely disused shout of enthusiastic approval, davejay has once again indicated his support and endorsement of Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. Your political activities have not gone unnoticed, comrade davejay, and I'll be bringing this up at the next General Meeting.

By: sleepy pete

sleepy pete — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:24:35 -0800

NOOOOOOOOMAMMESSSSSSSSSSS..............qué chidoooooooooooooo, that's the best fucking newwwwwwwwwwwwwwws, pinche mathowieeeeeeeeeeee, qué buenoooooooo, al fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!

this should be everyone's response when there's a new something or other on the site.

By: chococat

chococat — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:24:16 -0800

NOOOOOOOOMAMMESSSSSSSSSSS..............qué chidoooooooooooooo, that's the best fucking newwwwwwwwwwwwwwws, pinche mathowieeeeeeeeeeee, qué buenoooooooo, al fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!

this should be everyone's response when there's a new something or other on the site.

Yes, but shouldn't it have more upside down exclamation points?
¡Qué niño tan fuerte!

Love the new improvements.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:31:20 -0800

By the way, on the challenges page, the current challenge is very hard to read with the plain text theme.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:45:17 -0800

quartet of ponies

Break a leg, guys!

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:19:08 -0800

micayetoca: "pinche mathowieeeeeeeeeeee, qué buenoooooooo, al fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!"

chococat: "Yes, but shouldn't it have more upside down exclamation points?"

Umm... there's like 39 upside down exclamation points there... how many do you think this announcement warrants?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:27:42 -0800

the current challenge is very hard to read with the plain text theme.

Shift-refresh to get the latest CSS changes -- it should have looked ok from the start.

By: chillmost

chillmost — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:16:08 -0800

Ahh. There be updates to Music. Might this explain why I couldn't upload a file about 10 hours ago? It kept loading and loading and loading and....

I just said fuck it and went to bed. I'll try later today.

By: Karlos the Jackal

Karlos the Jackal — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:00:20 -0800

Are there ground rules for the talk page in regards to how specific or general (or "chatty," I guess) posts can be? That is, on the spectrum from, say, "do you have any suggestions for improving the intro to this song" to "so hey, let's talk about intros and how we approach them and we'll mention some awesome ones," is there a line drawn in there somewhere?

By: NemesisVex

NemesisVex — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:53:59 -0800

Does the Music Talk section have it's own RSS feed?

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:56:43 -0800

Karlos, I think both of those are reasonable points on the makin'-music spectrum.

By: chococat

chococat — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:07:42 -0800

Umm... there's like 39 upside down exclamation points there... how many do you think this announcement warrants?

Huh. I'd read those as the letter "i".

By: chococat

chococat — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:11:51 -0800

Are there ground rules for the talk page in regards to how specific or general (or "chatty," I guess) posts can be?

Ya Karlos, I agree with cortex. Those both seem like kosher topics, completely.

However, I'd love a general banning of Quizes, Polls, Top 5 lists and the like. That would make me happy.

By: danb

danb — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:36:09 -0800

One more (potential) issue: I tried posting a Talk thread immediately followed by a new song. I suppose there's a one-per-day limit on Music posts generally, but there's no indication that that's the case. I was able to upload the MP3 and fill out the title/description fields, but hitting "Post" just refreshes the page.

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:44:43 -0800

Ooh. Interesting and, yeah, I think an unintended consquence, danb. I'll poke pb.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:26:09 -0800

Umm... there's like 39 upside down exclamation points there... how many do you think this announcement warrants?

Huh. I'd read those as the letter "i".

Unfortunately you are right. Emotion trumped good spelling, as it often does.

And here's another vote for preemptively banning Quizes, Polls, Top 5 lists and the like. I think the point can be made that we need to prevent that sort of chatfilter in order to preserve the often called "usefulness of the site".

A subsite like that (Talk, within the Music section) can be easily hijacked and turned into a very chatty and useless space for "the band you like sucks" type of fights, which would be a shame, as it was intended to actually be a useful resource for the people who use Music (and whoever wants to join in a constructive manner, of course).

We've been longing for this subsite for a long time, and it would be a shame to see it go down the drain like that.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:56:41 -0800

You should be set to post your song danb, I fixed that bug.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:11:17 -0800

NemesisVex, here's the RSS Feed for Music Talk. I also added a link to the feed to the bottom of the Music Talk page.

By: danb

danb — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:25:13 -0800

You should be set to post your song danb, I fixed that bug.

Hmm. Looks like I'm still having the same issue. I'll try it again tomorrow.

By: danb

danb — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:22:36 -0800

It lives! Thanks pb!

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:23:54 -0800

One question: do the posts in Mefi Music close after a given period? In my opinion it would be best if they didn't -it can't hurt- but I was just wondering.

By: pb

pb — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:56:05 -0800

Nope, they don't close. They're open forever like song posts.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:20:08 -0800

WE NEVER CLOSE!

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:14:58 -0800

It's great to hear that. And pb, thanks again for the new section, I'm loving it and people seem thrilled (and it's only starting). I'm sure with all the good karma you'll accrue for this your next life will be a constant delight in a trouble free world.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:49:24 -0800

flapjax at midnite: "WE NEVER CLOSE!"

Has this eponysterical thing gone out of favor yet? I'd like to know what the kids think about it nowadays.