Rating and Comments per module and artist

[MagnarTBL]

Hi,
Either this is something you have historically exclude (maybe because other sites like modarchive.org already have it), or just the timing to implement stats and comments has not been right yet.

Personally, I like ratings and stats. And also the ability to leave comments on others work. And I would very much like to see that even here on AMP per song and artist.

However, it should be implemented without messing the layout too much (which other sites kind of failed doing).

I like the speed and simplicity in how things are listed and presented at AMP, but it would be also very nice if these features could be implemented without making too much impact.

Cheers Magnar

[Asle]

Hi Magnar

 There's no historical choice to exclude comments at all. Rating, on the other hand, is ..err .. banned. To close this rating topic, before continuing with the comments, here's what can be said. AMP aims to be a repository. Rating is subject to taste, and, taste is based on scale that varies. We want facts, nothing else. I was admin at Nectarine and I know for a fact that it's not good to allow votes
 Now, about comments. Well, I can split my reply into several parts :
- No comment for now, as there is no user management. So, nothing is open. Plain and simple. And this very point closes the topic I guess
- There has been some discussion about adding _author_ comments (so, not listeners). But we don't really know how to display those. A new page ?  A popup ? etc.
- we already have some info about music files (displaying samples and all), and some party ranks (all in the DB right now). But again, no time spent to think about a way to display those.

 All in all, I guess that comments are welcome as long as they come from either the author or someone very close to the author (same group, same dev team, etc.).
 I would push it to add those "modinfo" data, as well as party info, when available.
 In fact, I'm planing to add a new button in the module list, like "info". But then, once clicked, then what ? Why not discuss it here ? Monty ? Crown ? Curt Cool ? Anybody ?

Cheers
Sylvain

[Monty]

Like Asle said, we need user management and authentication systems to put comments or rating. I started to work on it about to years ago, my idea was to implement a download basket you can fill with mods and receive later by email in one big archive.
I was also thinking of a few selectable preferences like "mod. or .mod", "Windows(tm) friendly names or original".
As a matter of fact, it's not yet finished

My opinion about rating is almost the same as Asle.

Comments in the other hand could be done by some enthusiasts wanting to share their knowledge, much more a review of a composer and advice on what to listen and so on.
Displaying it can be done easily by adding a new line featuring a preview of the review at the bottom of each composer table in search results and displaying the full text when looking at the complete ID card.
Maybe by selecting each week a review and displaying it at the top of the homepage we could help people discover great composers deserving more popularity.

About detailed mod informations, I think we should discuss how to display this together Asle (lunch or diner next week?). I've some spare time to spend on AMP, I'll work on this topic.

[Asle]

lunch will do. Any day of the week
call up or send mail when the timing is right for you.

Sylvain

[Crown]

Guys, please avoir popups as many browers block them by default. I believe a small logo indicating that we have comment on that specific tune (a light bulb for example) so that anyone can click on it so that it opens a new page with all explanations from the composer. 

[Monty]

Detailed modules informations using a php library done by Asle is already working, but I had problems with some garbage characters found in samples names, regex was the key but it took me an evening to solve it.

This feature should be available soon. Some further tests needed before releasing it.
Stay tuned  

[swirlythingy]

Regarding sample info and that: would it be possible to implement some alternative display options giving various levels of detail (show sample names, show author comments, show both, show neither) in the module lists?  This would save opening new windows all over the place, and it means people could either quickly browse a module list, or expand the author comments to decide which mods were best to download, and so on...  Of course the light-bulb system would still be useful if you only want to read the info for one song.

[Crown]

Well done Monty!  thx

[Monty]

Regarding sample info and that: would it be possible to implement some alternative display options giving various levels of detail (show sample names, show author comments, show both, show neither) in the module lists?  This would save opening new windows all over the place, and it means people could either quickly browse a module list, or expand the author comments to decide which mods were best to download, and so on...  Of course the light-bulb system would still be useful if you only want to read the info for one song.

Sure, nice ideas, but to implement such features we need to put Javascript everywhere.

We'll start with the infos displayed in a new target/window/frame/whatever.

[Ijon_Tichy]

I was going to make a new topic, but I this one suits this purpose well. I was thinking of adding a new field with information of this sort:

- where a module was used, e.g.
From "Dune" (C) 1991 Virgin Interactive/Cryo.
Loadertune from "Bacteria" musicdisk (C) Crusaders.

- original composer/tune, e.g.
Original composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg [from Peer Gynt]

- other info, e.g.
A Polish folk song.

I'm aware that any feature needs to be nailed down to the last detail to be implemented and all I have for now is a general idea. Things to be determine would be
- where to insert the column
- how to call it to avoid confusion with modinfo
- how to display this info (if popup windows aren't preferred, maybe a little js tooltip sort of thing)
- how to verify the information if submitted by the community

Any chance for this?

[Asle]

Hey,

 This was more or less on my TODO list since the day I was on-boarded on the AMP project (quite some time ago now ). However, aside any technical consideration, we are talking about a _huge_ job, here.
 Let's take your example : Bacteria by Crusaders. Now, if you click on MOD.drums by El Cubo, (modinfo) it would say somewhere that this is the loadertune of this musicdisk. I'm willing to bet a lot that soon enough, there will be question to know what are the other musics in this musicdisk.
 Basically, that leads us to doing a Kestra, but bigger . It's obvious people will want to search by production, or original composer or whatever extra information that may be input. So this is not just "additional" information but well structured database fields.

 Still, let's be open and imagine that we somehow manage to do that (the technical part). I fear there won't be enough manpower and/or spare time to do the fill-up part.

 I don't want to be the one saying "NO", but I doubt it'll see the light of day. Moreover, as it is, Crown and Monty are only rarely around here for professional reasons ... The simple things we do now (upload - CD creation) is all the time we can spare.

 Anyway, these are of course good ideas. I would love to do these searches by production, but ... Well, maybe one day.

Sylvain

[Crown]

Asle,

would it be possible to have visitors to take an active role in linking a mod to demo, etc.

Wouldn't that ease/speed-up the process?

[Asle]

In theory, yes.
But there's some work, here. People may want to provide us with a link, like it was done in Nectarine or is done at Bitfellas. It means some connection to those sites (Kestra/Pouet).
We could also provide the whole she-bang, but I don't think it'll get very popular if people have to input everything (not talking about human error rate).

This must be thought over, prior to any move. Let's just get sure of what we'd like to do.

Sylvain

[Crown]

That's right. Furthermore there are lots of broken links on POuet, etc. Which makes the update pretty painful. Well that's something we can discuss next time we visit the italian restaurant. 

[Asle]

well, if you show up this time ...