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March 21, 2014

I almost wonder if adding five-star ratings would cause less useful feedback to be provided. "I gave a rating, that's sufficient."
In terms of 'Featured' terminology substitutions, perhaps something like 'Promising', 'On the Rise', etc. would be more appropriate? Terms that imply that there is interest in the item, but not that the item is in any way a part of the official OCR library.

Nah, perhaps I wasn't clear: FEATURED will be the actual, judged, canonized mixes - like what we have now. WORKSHOP will be everything else, including WIPs, Finished, Submitted, etc.

So the replacement term for FEATURED wouldn't be "promising" it would be BADASS

March 20, 2014

I think this is my only concern. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea, so long as you keep the OCR-level stuff separate from the WIP-level stuff...
On the other hand, I think it's vitally important to keep the two databases as clearly defined and separate as possible, because if they start to run into each other, some of the impetus to strive for track perfection and bettering oneself as an artist gets lost. I'd fear that some people would take the attitude of "I got lots of likes in the Workshop and it's in OCR's database somewhere, that's close enough for me."

Well, people already do this... with YouTube. i.e. "I got tons of views on YT, screw OCR!" - just because there's a barrier to entry doesn't necessarily guarantee people will strive to meet it & refine their work. Some will, some won't. However, I completely agree that a major challenge will be clearly & cleanly delineating "featured" (i.e. judged) mixes from "workshop" (wip, finished, submitted). I'd love to use the word "official" instead of "featured" for the judged mixes, but we run into major problems with copyright owners when we refer to fan arrangements as being "official" in any way, shape, or form.

If people have ideas about a better word to use ("certified" has the same problem as "official") than "featured" - I'm all ears!

I feel like this would betray both the workshop and OCR's long-standing rule of not adding a rating system for posted remixes. Granted, these would not be "posted remixes" as far as being on the front page of the site, but rating would be just as damaging to them as it would to a front page mix.

That remains to be seen; generally speaking, we've felt that ratings would cause drama and deter people from checking out mixes from lesser-known games, in lesser-known genres. For workshop mixes, though, it could actually INCREASE attention above the current baseline such that the overall level of traffic/interest was higher on average, even for mixes of obscure games, with fewer reviews. As for drama - making ratings optional on a per-mix basis I think would really help address this.

How about instead of ratings, make it a thumbs up or thumbs down system that only a workshop moderator can add to a workshop mix? This would denote whether they think the mix is ready for prime time or not. Changing the system in the way described would make workshop moderators obsolete when it is their opinions that matter in the workshop. Excuse my french but I don't give a darn what XxssjGoku69xX thinks of my mix, whether he rates it a 2 or a 10. If I'm posting a mix in the workshop, I'm posting it there to get help, and feedback from someone who is at least on par with myself musically such as a workshop mod. I've personally seen horrible advice going out over the workshop and it's really discouraging, and I feel that is a more important thing to address than adding ratings which would more or less be akin to making the situation worse. I don't think OCR has to have VGMIX functionality, OCR was always better than VGMIX, and it was better for a reason.

Well, first off, thanks. However, I think you might be underselling the community a bit - while I'm sure there will be those who abuse such a system, I feel like the overall reaction would be positive and supportive. Making ratings optional again is a key component here. As for likes/dislikes - I don't want dislikes or thumbs down on the site, period. I kinda feel like they're more insulting and less helpful than even a 1-star review.

Besides, I think OCR should support vgmix right now, not go into competition with it. Beyond how much that would hurt OCR's systems, it wouldn't be particularly kind to vgmix.

This is a weird sentiment; if there's one thing you can count on, it's that I'll do what I think is best for the site & community, regardless of whoever else is doing whatever else. There have been several non-OCR attempts at making something like this work, now, and I think we should give it a shot ourselves and see what we can do. And as a side note, we've been considering something like this far before the resuscitation and re-resuscitation of vgmix/vgremix. It's not unkind for us to make long-term plans for the future of OCR and eventually act on them, and in my mind we're primarily in competition with ourselves first, and YouTube/SoundCloud/BandCamp second, as we have to make a cogent argument as to the value-added that we bring to the table.

If this is something you really need to add then I will support that, and might even use it, depending on how it works out. But like I said, if all I get are reviews and ratings from XxssjGoku69xX then I'd be less likely to ever use the workshop. IMO the more important functionality change would be to emphasize workshop moderators and their input on that forum. Have their responses highlighted or something. Maybe change responses from people who aren't posted remixers to be greyed out and only visible if you click it. In the interest of receiving quality information rather than quantity information.

Highlighting staff reviews and potentially also reviews from featured artists (composer or mixers) is an excellent idea. Agreed that it has tremendous value.

Stop picking on XxssjGoku69xX, I love that kid ;-)

Lastly I would not want works in progress on my artist profile. I do not currently have a lot of threads in the workshop because I am against releasing incomplete material. This new system sounds like it'd be a way to highlight unfinished works and I'm not cool with that as an artist.

Hmmm. Well, I'm going to consider that a feature request for an opt-out artist profile flag "List Works-in-Progress on Artist Page" - but I'm not sure how many others feel that way, and it somewhat defeats the purpose, so it might not end up as a high-priority feature request.

I'm going to second this for obvious reasons.
and this. I wouldn't want people to say "Oh yeah! I got posted on OCR! I'm official now!" if they've literally just posted something in the Workshop forums and it actually wasn't judged/dped or approved at all. Getting a mixpost is an honor, and you know, just posting something that wasn't evaluated isn't really an honor. You'd just liked what you'd done and had wanted to share it, but that'd be about it.

I know WE think of it as an honor - and it should be - but I think a good cross-section of the public are completely unaware one way or another. I'm hoping that by differentiating between "featured" mixes and "featured" artists vs. workshop mixes and forum members, we can still emphasize this difference, and it will still be meaningful. This is indeed a risk, but I think it seems like more of a risk to those of us "inside the fishbowl" looking at OCR with a great deal of familiarity and/or baggage.

and this. Except I would agree with Argle that "Likes" would be more friendly than star ratings. I'd add that perhaps we could just have Likes, but no Dislikes. Then it'd be just the number of Likes you have, rather than the ratio of Likes/Dislikes you have. It would at least make me feel better if I were a beginner than in a star rating system or something like that.

As mentioned to Brandon, I'm pretty strongly against dislikes. What I'm currently thinking is this:

Likes (only - no dislikes) enabled for ALL workshop mixes, period
5-star ratings optional on a per-mix basis

I'm still unsure how best to handle versions. Some have proposed that only mixes marked as "Finished" should allow ratings, but that does make things a bit more complicated, especially if artists can toggle a mix BACK from being finished into WIP state...

Emotionally, I'm leaning towards that as well (as i said, ratings can be useful but are evil)....but the disadvantages of having just a purely "Likes" based system have to be considered:
It'd be way more prone to hype of individual mixes (and individual games). Once a mix reaches a critical amount of likes it'll just keep on generating more exponentially cause of improved exposure. So popularity gaps are increased.

Having a separate, more informative measure for voicing (dis)approval lends itself better to people discovering hidden gems that only have few likes, reviews and ratings, though very enthusiastic ones.

I believe the best possible system requires the inclusion of this controversial feature, the challenge is making it neutral enough, minimizing the negative impact on the community. Compromises are in order.

Well, again, this is JUST for the workshop. Featured mixes will continue to work in their normal fashion, although likes may be enabled for them as well (without ratings).

Another thought: i think it might be best if the (still optional) ratings were coupled with a mandatory review. Nothing too detailed necessarily, but with a moderately low word minimum.
Just to pull back on the newgrounds "blam this piece of crap!" factor, yknow.

I think that should be doable; it's definitely a decision point to be considered.

Cool, sounding pretty good! I was actually thinking some of those would be direct "nah". Promising.
I already link youtube videos to the wip posts. Can the system keep track if other people have posted the same source and offer that? Or will OCR end up in court for that?

You're so demanding In a perfect world, association at the song level would bring back existing YT previews of the source tune. Initially, manual entry might be much cleaner & more flexible.

Being able to enter the source link in some separate manner than in the message might be good. It'll highlight to posters that it is good to include the source, at least. And people who give feedback might find the link to the source in a standardized place.

Agreed.

One additional thing that came to mind regarding this synergy is making changes to a submitted mix. I do this since I am still poor at determining if a piece is good/finished/etc.
It'd be cool if I could make changes to a submitted track that isn't in panel yet, at the cost of bumping the track back to the end of the queue, which I would find reasonable. The thing is if I try to send in an update in an "unofficial" manner (sorry Larry) I worry which version will end up in the panel/etc. I suppose the same goes for approved pieces too - the system would support an update and there would be some appropriate evaluation process (I would find complete re-evaluation reasonable actually - serves me right but the staff would know what would be reasonable for them).

Very fancy. Sounds like a "Phase 2" sort of thing, but I get what you're saying.

Okay, final->submit satisfies in-site submitting and the opt-out satisfies seeing if the artist is aiming for an OCR submission. The latter would be useful when you give feedback, since if they do aim for OCR, one can try to give feedback that would help them fulfill the submission standards. If they don't, you can keep the feedback more general. I quite often wonder about this when I give feedback. To fulfill that role though, the opt-out should be considered when the thread is created (of course the artist is free to change their mind about that any time).

Welllllll... at ANY time? If a couple judges have already weighed in, we won't want to interrupt that process, as it'll introduce chaos and redundant work. Needs to be considered - there's really a workflow/lifecycle here, with business rules that need to be fleshed out.

I do think marking the piece as finished should be clearly separate from submitting, the latter should be a process clearly in itself so that the user knows it's important (this might be obvious but it's not clear from the above). So the opt-out above shouldn't control if the mix ends up in the panel queue, it should just be informational.
Right now workshop has three categories for ReMixes: Work-in-progress, Finished, Mod Review. I could imagine using: Work-in-progress, Release candidate, Mod review, Finished, Submit(ted).

The way I've used the current categories "Finished" means a release candidate where I think it's finished, but am taking in more feedback (and usually end up changing the piece quite a bit). "Release candidate" is of course a software term, not a musical term.. could be better. It might be useful to differentiate "finished" from "release candidate", the latter meaning almost/possibly finished, but the artist is still willing to incorporate feedback, useful for both those who give and want feedback.

--Eino

Again, good stuff. This will all be very useful when we spec out what it is we can actually achieve :nicework:

March 20, 2014

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March 19, 2014

Seems to me there are 2 separate groups, people who want to post WIPs and get constructive feedback, and people who want to post finished tracks and reach an audience looking for remixes. There should be a system that satisfies both groups.

Well... I strongly agree. Certainly we'd maintain the current capability (via thread titles) of marking something as WIP or Finished, and certainly that would be emphasized wherever workshop mixes are being listed, throughout the site.

Beyond that, and making ratings opt-out on a per-mix basis, did you have any specific concerns about the system I've been describing not being able to make both audiences happy?

Some imaginable use cases I can think of that I'd enjoy (brainstorming a bit too):

click on a favourite remixer's profile, see a list of their public WIPs, go give feedback YES

click on an obscure game in the database, notice there's a WIP from 2010, go pester the remixer in the comments for an update YES

automatic source link for WIPs (dreaming.. legally grey area) KINDA

see at a glance if the remixer is intending their wip to be submitted to the panel eventually TBD

see at a glance if the remix was already submitted to the panel TBD

upload the wip mp3 to OCR for hosting YES - DETAILS TBD

submit the finished remix to panel in-site TBD

listen to a previous version of a WIP when giving feedback to compare improvements TBD

soundcloud-style timestamp comments KINDA

--Eino

Great stuff man; I edited in responses based on current plans.

Regarding automatic source links, well, you'd be able to link and/or embed YouTubes, and there are a lot of YTs out there. This isn't truly "automatic" but it should be easy enough for a submitting artist to quickly find the source tune(s) involved and embed them into the body of their mixpost, for quick reference. I think that's a good way of addressing this use case.

Regarding SoundCloud style timestamp comments - that would be far too much custom development & wheel-reinventing to implement ourselves. And why bother, when SoundCloud's done such a good job? Instead, as with YouTube embeds, we'd allow SoundCloud embeds, which of course support timestamp comments. Hopefully this will have two effects:

Get more of the community using & comfortable with SoundCloud, which has a lot of utility and...
Drive more traffic to ReMixer's SoundCloud pages!

All of your points about synergies between the workshop and submission queue need to be sorted out, and we're going to have internal staff decisions about what we think is best and makes the most sense before presenting our plan to the community. I can of course confirm that the judges panel isn't going away, and that mix evaluation will still be a core operating principle of the site. One option under consideration is that everything posted to the workshop that's marked as final will be also considered a submission. We could potentially add an "opt-out" of formal judging/featured status, but that's something we need to decide on internally and weigh the potential impacts. I love your thinking though, as you've touched on a lot of the potential impacts/uses of the planned system.

March 19, 2014

I think it's important to make a rating system optional. I would not like having every remix I post in the workshop to be subject to a rating. I often post early works in progress that aren't in ready to be rated, I'd feel less compelled to post incomplete work were it subject to a rating. Maybe that's just me, but I'd wager other people probably feel the same. I'm concerned that remixes from newcomers who have just started remixing would tend to receive lower ratings. I'm also concerned that people would be more likely to skip over remixes that have lower ratings.
If the rating system were to be optional, my concerns probably wouldn't be an issue.

Thanks for weighing in and making your opinion known! I really want this to be optional as well; how would you feel, though, about the implications being that the mix might not show up in some prominent places - for example, a list of trending/popular mixes - if ratings were disabled? Is this an acceptable compromise?

We need to encourage people to leave ratings enabled, because we'll want people to use the rating system as much as they're comfortable with, but at the same time we want to give artists like yourself a choice, for each mix... it's just that the choice might come with tradeoffs.

March 19, 2014

Lol, wasn't aware of how loaded the vgmix topic is for you.
If neat integration of these features into the main site proves successful, i'm all for it.

I was thinking along the lines that if there's a second site, it should not be an ocr franchise thing. IF one decided to make something separate, it would definitely be better to give it its own identity.

If you can work the core features of vgmix into ocr without succumbing to chaos and bloat, then GREAT! Godspeed.

Not vgmix specifically - just the idea that another site is REQUIRED and that we can't make this work here.

When the smoke clears and we've got something running & automated, I actually expect it to REDUCE chaos and bloat in the long, long term. In the short-term, like I said, bumpy ride, but we're gonna need more than godspeeds - we're gonna need support, feedback, testing, patience, and optimism.

If you've got a list of specific suggestions, concerns, etc. regarding this entire notion, throw 'em at me here and we'll compile at some point. I'd like to talk this through a bit more with anyone willing.

March 19, 2014

the idea with vgmix was that the people do QC via a rating system. i don't particularily like rating systems but it's the only way i know of to introduce user governed QC.
if you don't have that you'll just end up with another set of judges and a kind of B-site inside the main site, pretty much like OP suggested.

you could try to come up with a rating system as neutral and minimal as possible. maybe just a favorite option. or a "this needs more/less attention" rating to go with that. i dunno.

genre specific charts of some kind would probably help with ease of access.

All of this can be supported.

We know from experience that there are certain artists who HATE rating systems, so I'd PREFER to provide an option to disable it on a per-mix basis, with the understanding that those mixes might not show up on trending/popular lists as prominently.

It would make zero sense for the workshop to function as a microcosm of the main judges panel. A ratings system indeed makes sense, and like I said, I'd prefer to make it optional. A way of "liking" mixes WITHOUT rating them at all should ALSO be present. A way for artists to upload the mix but also embed a soundcloud or youtube preview would be supported. And of course, comments AND tagging (which handles genres to a certain extent) would be supported.

If you add integration with OCR's game, song, and composer database on TOP of that, well.... I honestly don't get where the need for a completely separate site comes into play. Granted, we don't have ANY of that yet, and right now it's just a forum - which actually works pretty well, all things considered - but this is very much the plan. For this year, unless significant facts change.

As we have done in the past, we will reach out to the community for feedback on building this new workshop, and I've no doubt people will have a ton of great ideas. The challenge will be integrating workshop content alongside featured content in a way that brings additional visibility to the former without compromising the integrity/visibility of the latter.

I think we can do it, and I don't get the pessimism about "oh it needs to be another site". Perhaps people feel like the judging system here is so entrenched that anything that presents a feature-rich alternative will never happen, but I think we can - and SHOULD - try to make both systems work.

Ultimately, it's the 21st century. If people want to release VGM arrangements, they have a multitude of instant-gratification options that make a lot more sense than a dedicated site, unless you ALSO care about community and integration into a larger, VGM-centric context. SoundCloud, BandCamp, YouTube, Tindeck... the list goes on. There needs to be value added. At OCR, the value added has historically been:

a curated, judge-evaluated collection of arrangements that conform to a loose set of meaningful standards
a database of games, albums, songs, composers, etc. that provides additional context
a badass community & staff
stability, continuity, and promotion

I believe we can KEEP all four of these things INTACT while also adding on an enhanced workshop area that helps meet demand for instant-gratification, quick-feedback, ratings-enabled, community-curated mixes. Any separate site that wants to tackle these goals still needs to worry about #2 AND #3 AND #4. #2 can be solved in a number of ways that involve various technical compromises, but would be largely redundant effort. #3 & #4 are pretty difficult, when it comes down to it, and don't come overnight no matter how amazing a website you build.

To be honest, I'm a little tired of the "it has to be a separate site!!" way of thinking. It feels defeatist to me, a little pessimistic, but most of it all it makes an artificial argument that a site has to be defined by a single means of content approval/workflow. There are already several sites out there, for one. vgremix.com, gameremixes.com, etc. It's been done, it's being done, and I feel like we've seen years of why just standing up a website that offers this functionality isn't enough. On top of that, I feel like OCR has proven and continues to prove that we're capable of amazing things when the community comes together. If we add this type of system to what we've got, it might be a bumpy ride for awhile, but everything I've seen from staff, visitors, and artists suggests we can work our way through it and emerge with something awesome.

My personal observation is this: plenty of folks seem willing to weigh in and say "OMG WE NEED VGMIX BACK" or "IT HAS TO BE ANOTHER SITE" or express unfounded pessimism that we can't make this happen. Ultimately, if you care about the community, you should WANT us to succeed with this idea. I deeply hope that when we begin these efforts in earnest, we'll get constructive feedback and not kneejerk dismissal.

As we get closer to making this real, we will absolutely start a thread detailing our specific plans, point-for-point, and soliciting community feedback. I can at least confirm that ratings, likes, reviews, genre tagging, embedding soundcloud/youtube previews, file upload, AND integration with the overall OCR database are all on the table. If you add all that up, like I said... I'm psyched, because I think it'll be rather awesome. Just need to get it done!

March 19, 2014

We just need a second big site in the style of VGMix...it'd be so healthy for the remix scene!
If anything, in case djp found himself with a lot of spare time, he could tackle a site design in that vein and find reliable people to maintain it.

Further developing OCR is probably a full time hobby in itself though. But he could do some networking for such a project on the side, and with any luck find some talent to take most of the workload off him.

So, not talking a full blown sister side, but some organisational nudging and oversight to get the right people out of the woodwork. Giving such a site the OCR brand wouldn't be advisable anyway, it needs its own identity.

probably not saying anything new here...i expect that djp was very interested in the revival of VGMix.

Pursuing the netlabel route and all is a logical step.

I just wanna note that devoting some energy to this idea would be the biggest service to the VG remixing scene possible, imo.

Even if it's just on the back burner, if you keep an eye open, things might fall into place in a year or two...

Also twigy, i think you play too much starcraft, or LoL, or something with metal themed tiers anyway

Disagree; I've always felt this was something that we CAN and SHOULD achieve HERE, and that's the plan for this year and next. Essentially, we're going to replace the existing workshop forum with "Workshop on Steroids" - where instead of just posting a thread, you'll be able to associate the mix with a game, songs, integrate into the main OCR database a bit more, embed a soundcloud or youtube, and optionally enable ratings and reviews and likes.

It should be rather awesome, and rather popular, and the key is that it will be integrated on game, system, composer, etc. pages. "Featured" mixes will still be promoted more prominently - that's a given - but "Workshop" mixes will really become first-class citizens in most ways that are meaningful.

This is a niche art form, and I believe centralization makes more sense than bifurcation.

What do you think? I'd love to use this thread to discuss these plans.

March 17, 2014

Absolutely noted; will be handled in the redesign, and I'll try and handle it BEFORE the redesign. Some minor changes should be going live in the next couple weeks, and if I can work this in, I absolutely will.

March 14, 2014

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March 12, 2014

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March 12, 2014

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March 10, 2014

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March 10, 2014

Wadda punk...

Happy bday, of course! :ocrgreen: :pretzel:

March 8, 2014

By "minimum resolution of 1200 pixels," do you mean it has to be a bare minimum of 1200x1200, or simply 1200 altogether? I could do it either way -- I'm just a bit confused on that part.

1200x1200 resolution; higher preferred, if manageable!

1200 total pixels would be like a desktop icon ;-) Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

March 7, 2014

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March 6, 2014

We've extended the deadline an extra week - new cutoff is 3/31!!

March 5, 2014

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March 5, 2014

Do you guys have a logo designed? My buddy was live streaming himself drawing his cover last night and we weren't sure what to do about a logo.
I really want to show off the progress so far... but since this is a contest I don't know if I should!

No logo yet - it's entirely optional, but if you wanna take a stab, as long as it's on a separate layer from the actual cover art, that'd be awesome!

March 5, 2014

So, with the eventual move to IPB, will the move be to IPB 3.X or IPB 4.0 which is supposedly coming out in Q2 this year?

Exactly. We're not sure about this yet. Hopefully IPS4/IPB4.

At any rate, it's far more important that we make the RIGHT enhancements to the site... ultimately "V6" - and any version number - is just a milestone for a certain set of functionality & corresponding GUI changes. Nothing's broken right now, just a bit dated. It's extremely hard to work on improvements while continuing to maintain an active site, I can tell you that much. Patience is appreciated.

March 5, 2014

Quick question - does the person need to submit every level + title, or is it more a pick-and-choose type of thing where they do what they can? I know at least one person who might be able to help, but I doubt she'd have the time for every stage and the title.

Pick-and-choose, absolutely.

March 4, 2014

Wait you mean
V6 is actually happening?!?

It was never not happening, it was simply deferred as we:

Dealt with life & continued site operations, and more specifically...
Weighed our options with regards to the future of vBulletin and any alternatives

Yes, we are slow & deliberate, but we've also been around for 14 years, with almost zero downtime, putting out some great music. Rather than doing radical overhauls or site resets on a regular basis, we've been pragmatic, and that pragmatism has contributed to stability & our ability to do a lot of other cool stuff, so I'm not crying.

This year though, this year...

March 4, 2014

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive
Just found it sort of funny.

Not intending to be disrespectful of anyone, I'm just an extremely sarcastic person with a seriously dry sense of humor which doesn't normally come out correctly through text. I apologize.

No worries. And seriously, legitimately, if you know people you think might be interested, and you want this album out ASAP (as you probably do, as do I), let 'em know!

March 4, 2014

well this just goes to show that "late 2013" most certainly was about half a year off.
hahahaha

Late 2013 = December. Half a year = June 2014. Nothing certain OR "most" certain about it not being out sooner than that.

Time spent making observations of this nature is time wasted not actually helping with the task at hand, which is the thread topic.

Your "hahahaha" combined with the sentiments you've expressed towards OCR on other forums, where you thought you wouldn't be found, suggests to me that perhaps you're no longer interested in participating in anything we do... please let me know if this is accurate, and I can ban you to prevent the temptation. Otherwise, yeah... this type of comment doesn't seem helpful at all. If you can think of on-topic ways to actually chip in, let's go with those instead...

March 4, 2014

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