WIP boards

[DarkeSword]

I'm pretty sure we'll never institute an RPG system since that's VGMix's approach...

MAYBE WE SHOULD HAVE ACHIEVEMENTS?!

[zircon]

I'm pretty sure we'll never institute an RPG system since that's VGMix's approach...

MAYBE WE SHOULD HAVE ACHIEVEMENTS?!

(11/40) I See What You Did There

Call out a poster on the Works in Progress forum who is attempting to pass off someone else's ReMix as their own.

(6/40) Thanks For Nothing

Encourage a poster on the Works in Progress forum to submit a mix that gets a unanimous three NO votes.

(20/40) K-Wix Stamp of Approval

Write at least ten reviews of three hundred words or more in the Works in Progress forum.

(37/40) Intense Boredom

Be the most recent poster in at least half of the threads on the first page of the Works in Progress forum.

(38/40) Grand Rexy

Be the most recent poster in all of the threads on the first page of the Works in Progress forum.

[Sinewav]

#ocrwip is a million times more useful than the WIP boards. Most of the people who hang out in the channel are really cool and just sit there waiting for something to evaluate. I've been in there a number of times and I got some excellent feedback.

I'd also make the suggestion that you put a link to your WIP board thread in your sig. It usually only helps a little, but it does help.

zirc: instead of "appointing" official WIP reviewers, why not just give a special "Pro-WIP Reviewer" (or something like it) status to regulars who regularly give good advice? It would make the distinction clear that they are a voice to pay heed to, but aren't necessarily on the same level as the judges.

Maybe you also could appoint a judge or a moderator not to review songs, but to screen the quality of reviews? Just a thought.

[Nekofrog]

I just hope I'm one of the people who gives out decent advice and doesn't type up 4 paragraphs of crap

[Fishy]

zirc: instead of "appointing" official WIP reviewers, why not just give a special "Pro-WIP Reviewer" (or something like it) status to regulars who regularly give good advice? It would make the distinction clear that they are a voice to pay heed to, but aren't necessarily on the same level as the judges.

Maybe you also could appoint a judge or a moderator not to review songs, but to screen the quality of reviews? Just a thought.

I support these suggestions.

[DarkeSword]

zirc: instead of "appointing" official WIP reviewers, why not just give a special "Pro-WIP Reviewer" (or something like it) status to regulars who regularly give good advice? It would make the distinction clear that they are a voice to pay heed to, but aren't necessarily on the same level as the judges.

What's that really going to accomplish though? It's still not getting more people to comment on tracks in a good way. Becoming a "Pro-WIP Reviewer" isn't enough of an incentive, IMO.

[Fishy]

On reflection thats a bad idea. People would start ignoring valid criticism from the non Pro-Reviewers.

[Jillian Aversa]

I agree that many WIPs go without comments, but you can't blame people from wanting to contribute advice more to songs that are further along. Sometimes people there are new to remixing completely - just experimenting - and post their stuff without really thinking about what could be improved. It's hard to give helpful advice to those people, other than "read the standards and try some tutorials."

This has come up from time to time in the judges chat, but so far we haven't had any great ideas for how to improve that area of the site.

[Sinewav]

What's that really going to accomplish though? It's still not getting more people to comment on tracks in a good way. Becoming a "Pro-WIP Reviewer" isn't enough of an incentive, IMO.

Well the idea wasn't to get more reviews, but to give the WIP posters a way to differentiate between good and bad advice. Fishy makes a good point though. Non-Pro reviewers might get discouraged when some people ignore their advice, even if it's valid.

[avaris]

Damn lots of good points made. Overall the most consistent thing said is that #ocrwip is friggin sweet...fo realz. Frankly the best way to get feedback on a song is in realtime IMO. It's much easier to develop a meaningful discussion in real-time than to try and post back and forth on the forums.

If anything the "Grand Rexy" award should be implemented.

The "Pro-Reviewer" distinction would help people to distinguish bad/good feedback. But zircon's and fishy's points pretty much shot that down in a hurry. If someone is honest enough with their own music they should be able to tell when someone's general feedback is good or complete shite.

There really is no clear cut easy way to improve the situation besides people taking it upon themselves to improve the situation. Frankly if there was a better way it would have been implemented already.

[DarkeSword]

(20/40) K-Wix (Time)Stamp of Approval

Write at least ten reviews of three hundred words or more in the Works in Progress forum.

Fixed.

123456789

[Rozovian]

This is something we talked about when the feedback checklist appeared, and it got sort'a heated there.

Among the problems is that most people only know in theory where the bar is at. They can tell if a remix is really good, but not necessarily when it's bad. It becomes something of a newbfest where newbs and n00bs gather and applaud each others semi-competent works (in some cases), and when someone comes in with actual criticism, they're badmouthed behind their back.

Reviewing reviewers? Someone's precious time's gonna go to that, too.

As I see it, the wip board needs more people with a clear idea of where the border is. I've talked to Liontamer about this, some time ago, and recognize several of the suggestions mentioned in this thread. All solutions I've had or read are flawed, some more than others.

[atmuh]

It's called WE'RE BUSY

if the moderators are not too busy to edit 5 of my posts per day they are not too busy to listen to a few WIPs

[DarkeSword]

if the moderators are not too busy to edit 5 of my posts per day they are not too busy to listen to a few WIPs

Why are you saying that to Unsung Plumber? He's not a mod.

And your posts are deleted because you treat the boards like a chatroom. It's not a chatroom, it's a message board. Don't spam with pointless crap like "hey man whats up," and don't take every opportunity you can to post off-topic one-liners pointing out that you feel you're being treated unfairly. You're not.

[Sinewav]

Just throwing more ideas out there...

It doesn't solve to problem of the quality of the reviews, but maybe we could get more reviews if we launched some kind of "WIP awareness month" campaign... we had a good turnout with Support OCR month, and the whole remix review writing campaign... why stop there?

I personally rarely go onto the WIP boards, not because I'm uninterested, but because I forget that they're there. When you enter the site the layout imediately draws you toward either the newest remixes (which I'm sure is intentional) or the Community Discussion boards. When you enter the forums main page (assuming you don't click straight to CommDisc) the WIP boards are all the way at the bottom of the page. Out of sight, out of mind.

[DarkeSword]

I personally rarely go onto the WIP boards, not because I'm uninterested, but because I forget that they're there. When you enter the site the layout imediately draws you toward either the newest remixes (which I'm sure is intentional) or the Community Discussion boards. When you enter the forums main page (assuming you don't click straight to CommDisc) the WIP boards are all the way at the bottom of the page. Out of sight, out of mind.

The WIP forum is on the front-page.

[Nekofrog]

I think it's also the quality of 75% of the WIPs up, too. Some poor soul will come in to take a look, find that clicking randomly mostly yields some yutz who has no business remixing but throws something up that is pretty much entirely bad, and drives that person away.

The proportion of good mixes with potential to crap mixes with no real thought behind it is ghastly.

[blue.nocturne]

I notice that sometimes the WIP forums moves too fast, so it ends up becoming a bumping war. And yep, the quality of some of the WIPs are quite a turnoff.

I feel I have an obligation to still post, but it's really hard to be constructive without crushing all their hopes and dreams.

You know, like the Judges Decisions forums.

[LuckyXIII]

We gonna be seeing "Sacred Flute" in that Latest Remixes column anytime soon?

[NeoS]

Great discussion.

I really like that "seal of approval" idea.

I'd like to point out that some IT related boards have something like that idea implemented. If the majority of the users find a post helpful, they can select a rating from -2 to 2 points to that post. If a post gets 0 or less points it automatically gets "hidden" from the thread. The reader can change the filtering though, so all posts can be read.

Back at the problem at hand: Some people live on "The-continent-that-is-not-America" A.K.A. the rest of the world. So the IRC channels aren't always a best option, since I'd have to stay up very late to get some feedback.

I used to do that by the way. But i've got a fulltime job now, a study, my own house to keep clean, etc. etc.

I'm really glad people don't take my post wrong. I really don't want to make OCR look bad or anything, it's just really frustrating when (in my situation) you post a near-completed remix and want some critiques to find any flaws in your mix. That's why it's hosted on vgmix also. I just want as many feedback as possible. I think I know what feedback is bogus and what isn't, so I'll just filter it out.

[Tensei]

Back at the problem at hand: Some people live on "The-continent-that-is-not-America" A.K.A. the rest of the world.

Why hello thar fellow countryman.

To be honest, the chat tends to become pretty active around 21.00 or 22.00 PM, you should remember that there's also a lot of other Europeans hanging around in #ocrwip. Besides, you can always just pop in, link to your wip and ask for feedback, go AFK and do whatever you need to do, then come back and see how many people have responded.

P.S.

You shouldn't remove the link to said wip in that thread, if you hadn't I'm pretty sure you would have had a lot of feedback already

[NeoS]

Tensei-San, you know we shouldn't be online around 21:00 hours in these exciting times with the European Championship Soccer and all that! We should make arrangements for our boys coming home with the Cup.

Anyway, I became so effin' frustrated I removed the url. Stupid me. I'll put it back.

[blue.nocturne]

Well, I think there could possibly be that in order to make a new topic, you must first reply to two, three other currently posted WIPs. I notice some people ONLY post topics. Sure there are people who only review topics too, but with that extra little boost it could make it more active and productive.

Also, I don't think all people who give reviews need to know where the bar is completely. If they like the song, it gets bumped and hopefully someone who does know where the bar is posts too. I notice once a topic reaches 5-6 posts, people reply more often, so getting it started seems difficult. After all, if no one posts, then I would assume no one likes the song or cares about your genre/game remixed, so it is disheartening to get nothing.

But yeah, that certified reviewer ideas sounds awesome. Only problem I see with it is that they will get a lot more tired than judges because the WIP board updates constantly, the remixes don't sound as nice since they are WIPs, and it may be more work than being a judge. (not necessarily, judges are working hard ) The nice part though, is that the Certified Reviewers wouldn't need to collaborate, so it would go a lot faster.

Then again, it's not as bad as DJP's job. Going through hundreds of mp3s and then writing a 5-paged essay after each YES. Reading those essays take quite a bit of work, I can't imagine writing those every time a YES is made.

Or Larry's job of making sure everything is up to standards.

@LuckyXIII: It'd be nice, but it's ultimately up to the judges. If it does get accepted, gotta wait 2-3 months probably.

[Nekofrog]

I honestly wouldn't mind some kind of evaluation from the current judges as to the WIP-regular reviewers so that WE can actually improve OUR WIP reviewing, possibly even more in-line with their vision. Nothing hugely detail orientated, just some feedback.

I especially would like to know if what I post there is pap or actually usable, quality info.

[DrumUltimA]

I honestly wouldn't mind some kind of evaluation from the current judges as to the WIP-regular reviewers so that WE can actually improve OUR WIP reviewing, possibly even more in-line with their vision. Nothing hugely detail orientated, just some feedback.

I especially would like to know if what I post there is pap or actually usable, quality info.

I've done that a few times. I know things would get nuts if everybody did it, but I'm sure once and a while couldn't hurt.