so then ....

[cjdenecia]

[Krispy]

I wonder what is meant by 'serious'.
Is anyone looking to make any money out of this? Or are we just a club which always welcomes new members? Is it a business?

Give me the info about Craig's list and I'll take a look.

[jaymz]

[ingolee]

[ingolee]

[cjdenecia]

[Krispy]

Two things: we did try plugging AP on Facebook (cj with help from those with accounts there). Little to no interest. Those who used to come here for the forum don't seem interested in the review site.

I'm happy to put a few ads of free sites, but maybe we should have a box on the new member registration page - how did you hear about Audiopolis?
Will ask Gregg about that when I whinge about the 'date of review' thing.

[cjdenecia]

[Krispy]

I just put this on UK free ads site Gumtree.com

[steban]

I am not disputing the site needs more reviewers. Clearly we do. The problem is we do not deliver reviews to the active reviewers. They are presently always at the end of a long line behind all the nonreviewers' songs.

That is not a reviewer problem. That is a systemic database problem.

I see the SQL setup and formula changes to be quite easily and seamlessly incorporated into our current database to rectify that structural flaw.

SQL code changes-

Add tablePaid

ID MemberID Amount PaymentMethod PayDate


Add tableFastTracks

ID MemberID SongID Genre FastTrackDate ReviewedDate


Current Formula to check song uploadability is

(Reviews) / Songs > 6
20 / 4 = 5 not enough
21 / 4 = 5.2
24 / 4 = 6
25 / 4 = 6.2 enough for an new upload

New Formula will be

(Reviews + Paid) / (Songs + FastTracks) > 6
(20 + 0) / (4 + 0) = 5 not enough
(21 + 4) / (4 + 0) = 6.2 enough for new upload or fasttrack


(21 + 4) / (4 + 1) = 5 not enough
(25 + 4) / (4 + 1) = 5.8
(26 + 4) / (4 + 1) = 6 enough for new upload or fasttrack

One does not have to do any further calculation, simply
* add payments as collected
* add reviews as always
* add FastTracks as selected
* always select unreviewed FastTracked songs in fasttracked date order in their genre before selecting from general pool

The one problem of this direct method is it is inelastic, linking the ratio of 5 to credits for reviews.
If one ever tried to increase or decrease number of reviews/ dollar cost for a review one would have to implement a one time adjustment to 0 out the balance.

I am not sure how we group songs for reviews. I would think we do not keep songs in GB style minigroups that only compete with each other. It would be much better to compete with any songs within the entire genre and round until the max number of reviews is achieved.

The impact of this one change will be amazing!

Active reviewers will receive reviews much faster. Sure, they will have to review or pay more, but they will be rewarded.
If there are 2 or more fasttracked songs in a genre, the oldest pair will be reviewed.
If there is only one fasttracked song in a genre, it will be paired with the oldest in the general pool.
If there are no fasttracked songs in a genre, the next pair will be from the general pool as is done now.

How can I or any of us promote our site as a great place to get feedback if we are a black hole caused by the glut of old inactive members?

I think we could implement this plan in 2 steps-

Step 1: FastTracks for 5 reviews. No need for all the Shopping Cart code.

Step 2: FastTracks for 5 reviews or $5 Payment.

Why do we want to eventually have a Shopping Cart? Well, we might want to sell all sorts of things one day. The T-shirt, the Expert Review, the mug with the disappearing musician on it, the FastTrack Review. Song Downloads (for you, Rick)!

Why do we want money? We might want to develop things that require money.

I still think the money raising mayor/dogcatcher idea is worth pursuing, but before we go there we need to do the easy fix on the broken review system.

And it is easy.

[steban]

As a followup, it is probably just as effective to lower the number of reviews required for a FastTrack. For example, 2 reviews might be sufficient, or 3. The whole idea is to reward people who are actively reviewing by making a fair way to bypass all the inactive members.

If we did this, it might complicate the formula/algorithm a little, as we might want to keep the initial threshold of 5 to enter a song; on the other hand, we could lower that threshold to 2 or 3 from 5 also, which would seem pretty cool, as a person will end up doing 12 to 18 reviews before getting 5 reviews.

Also, I suggested a means of giving review credits away to other bands, bands you like but are not a member of. To do that would require one more table.

tableGifts

ID Amount GiverID GiverNote GiverDate GetterID GetterNote GetterDate

The formula would then be ((reviews + pays + gifts) / (songs + fasttracks + giveaways)) - 5 >= 1

If we switched to 3, for example, that would be - 3, but it would also require a one time adjustment.

I suppose this all seems a little nerdy, but we are looking for specific implementable ideas, right?

Frankly, I like the idea of one review pair earning one fasttrack. That is easy peasy to imagine doing, and it would kickstart the reviewing for the participators. The more who participate, the more reviews get done. Win win!

Also, it is pretty necessary to come up with catchy names for this- fasttrack is just a thought. I liked GB's instant karma, it had a very positive submessage, but we don't want to plagiarize. I like the word Gifts for the giving/getting to other bands, but KudoBucks or Kudos or something cooler still would be slick, too.

[cjdenecia]

stebs, I appreciate the thought and concept of what you're doing here but ......

maybe .... we could just figure out how to attract more members to participate in what we have here already, which is NOT broken.

I'm not saying that what you've laid out can't nor won't be done - maybe, eventually. but I'm guessing your not really seeing the part of the conversation that went like this ... "I'm not gonna expect gregg to make wholesale changes and/or additions with the current membership numbers participating" - which is a paraphrased statement btw.

you're talking about treating the symptoms of the disease and not the illness itself. what good would all of these ideas do if the active numbers didn't increase? substantially? you can talk till the cows come home about how much better it'd be for the few but that's the point, the few. and nothing there represents a change from the concept of the site already, only the implementation of the system. so it's not likely, in and of itself, to attract new numbers.

and so much of what you're trying to do with all the variables are actually already built into the system. it's simply that the system is slow due to a lack of members. plus, I think you're trying to weight things too far too fast when the basic idea of the review pair is already randomized and pits songs equally, given an active community. no, there's no built in stopgates that reward activity yet but trust me, it's a topic that gregg and I spoke of a few years ago and it's actually not in the mix cus it's yet necessary - or not proven so by site function. for that, there must be more activity. let the thing pan out .... but know, it's numbers, not features which will save it from being broken.

hold onto these concepts. some of them might be workable in the future. but for now, even taking ingo's idea of a craigslist add is probably more likely to help the immediate problems. after the site move to the new server, we're a lot more inclined to fix some far more fundamental problems and do some housecleaning as well as make some far more simpler and long needed additions/modifications than we are to do anything that deals with commerce or immediately alters the balance of the review system which clearly, is not broken. cus this engine is simply slow, and for that, the fix is fuel. not more gadgets.

again, I ask, please concentrate on coming up with ideas that increase the site membership for an as-is vehicle.

[steban]

[cjdenecia]

[steban]