VGMix

[Ramaniscence]

Should OC ReMix really be so very concerned about how another website views its own attempts at improvement? A better WIP system would hardly be an attack on VGMix. As you mention, VGMix would still be the only site where all finished remixes are automatically posted.

And if somehow the VGMix community is offended, I think that has more to say about their sensitivity than any insensitivity on OCR's part. They've had years to implement their vision. Do they really expect another site to hold itself back because it might look like it's moving ever slightly toward the vision of an inactive website?

I, for one, look eagerly forward to any improvements in the OCR WIP process.

EDIT: And for clarification, I should also mention I still hold hope for a finished VGMix 3. I was a huge fan of VGMix 2 until the day it was hacked to pieces.

DJP is talking about making the "Works in Progress/Completed" boards as the place where people could get their completed works posted...similar to VGMix.

[Moguta]

DJP is talking about making the "Works in Progress/Completed" boards as the place where people could get their completed works posted...similar to VGMix.

Yes, but a post on the WIP board is not the same as being posted as an actual OC ReMix / VGMix. And can't folks already post completed versions on the WIP forum if they want?

Even if you don't see the distinction between posted as a WIP vs. posted as an OC ReMix, there are a number of features that set VGMix apart that will never change. Most notably is the community-driven judging & ranking, which Dave himself has stated will never be a way that OCR evaluates remixes.

Eager as I am to see VGMix 3 in the future, if an already active & driven site wants to incorporate some of the better aspects of VGMix, why not? There's still quite enough to set them apart, and plus who knows when VGMix will rise again?

[norg]

for whatever it's worth, there is absolutely zero animosity between vgmix and ocremix. the only animosity that might exist is between maybe a few people but those people do not represent the whole of either community.

i need to find the pictures of virt and djp french kissing a couple magfests ago or whenever it was. just in case anyone had any doubts. (:

there is a ton of crossover between both communities. i think each specific site serves a slightly different purpose and offers differing services when all is said and done, but ultimately both serve the overall same goal of good remixing.

have at thee.

-= george= -

[zykO]

bleh

after all the work we've done over the past several years to squash all the bullshit, i have to read through 8 pages of fingerpointing, trolling and utter nonsense?

the situation is actually very simple. people don't work as hard or are as committed when the position is for no pay. professionalism has a way of taking on only two forms... one of unconditional passion and one of unconditional obedience to the dollar. when you have regular guys like you and me working on a site of that magnitude, it is hard to keep them from deprioritizing coding vgmix.com when more important matters in life come up. especially if it ain't payin the bills, if you get me. virt is the only person who has the determination and passion to take the site's coding head-on as an amateur coder/programmer. quite frankly, unless you're paying someone, you ain't gonna get the job you want. period. if virt could have paid people to do it, he would have. this would be done, functional and for all intents and purposes impenetrable (not completely, of course, but much more so).

give vgmix a break. it'll be there when it is there. you have to understand that there are likely those who are even more upset about it than you. also, listen to everything norg says.

[Sir_NutS]

I actually miss VGmix2 a lot, and if it were still up maybe I would still be an active remixer now. I never considered VGMix a WIP dump like many people did, for me it was more of a place that allowed me to get my music out there more easily. The Process of submitting a song to OCR, is incredibly outdated and I hated it back in orange OCR, still hate it now. Considering how much OCR has advanced in features and design, it's a shame that we still have to use an obnoxious system for the most important aspect of the website, when it comes to remixers.

In the last days of VGMix2, yeah it wasn't very pretty. People wasn't reviewing, and you uploaded a song and most of the time got 0 Feedback (a lot like OCR's WIP Forums), which was destroying the spirit of VGMix to me. When I read about the things they were doing to promote users to review stuff I got pretty excited, but seeing as how the project has been pretty much abandoned, well, it's pretty sad.

I think that reworking the WIP forums into something more helpful is a good idea, but if you want to gain some of the spirit that made VGMix great you should start by offering a more streamlined song submission system. An ideal setting in my mind would be something similar to what VGMix2 had, it was very nice to have a wizard that guided you and allowed you to specify the details about your song (game remixed/collab partners, among other things). Hell, this data could even be used for when you want to post the mixes, to be able to do it within your own admin system directly using the data supplied by the user so you don't have to "build" a submission information. And when you think that this could allow users to "follow" more effectively their submission status (say, by having a "status" page showing where it is sitting in the judging queue, how many judges have reviewed it so far, what the hell you could even streamline the posting process and give estimated front page posting dates etc.) this could add a fresh and modern face to a process that right now is something annoyingly archaic, and even make the site administration easier.

Anyways, enough of my little rant. I'll make it short by saying that although its a dead project by now I really hope VGMix can come back in full in the future, and I still believe in their vision. And also, I think a lot can be done to OCR to catch some of that sense of connection that VGMix had, starting with the song submission and WIP Forums. In the days of completely streamlined websites and the "web 2.0" being glorified I think OCR still needs a lot to catch up to.

[djpretzel]

And also, I think a lot can be done to OCR to catch some of that sense of connection that VGMix had, starting with the song submission and WIP Forums. In the days of completely streamlined websites and the "web 2.0" being glorified I think OCR still needs a lot to catch up to.

Well, that's just it - it's "glorified," exactly as you say. A lot of folks spend days/years on every last little AJAXified wikitastic meta-moderated doodad they can add, but ultimately, sites like OCR are about content. We've never really dropped the ball there, in my opinion, and we've been around since 1999, so whether it's web 1.0, 2.0, or 5.0, I feel like the core mission of the site has been, is, and will continue to be met. We'll work on the WIP forums and the submission process, but we've got other priorities as well.

The very nature of running a website is playing a constant game of catch-up - it's the Internet. I'd add that I believe it's important to build on a foundation rather than throwing everything out over and over again. A more advanced WIP/submission system can perhaps offer the best of both worlds, but it'll be a lot of work, and if all you're going to contribute to that is "OMG U SHOULD BE MORE WEB 2.0," that's not particularly helpful.

[Sindra]

VGmix is still around?

Thought it faded into obscurity after everyone suddenly had lives and couldn't finish it.

[Sir_NutS]

The very nature of running a website is playing a constant game of catch-up - it's the Internet. I'd add that I believe it's important to build on a foundation rather than throwing everything out over and over again. A more advanced WIP/submission system can perhaps offer the best of both worlds, but it'll be a lot of work, and if all you're going to contribute to that is "OMG U SHOULD BE MORE WEB 2.0," that's not particularly helpful.

Obviously all I said wasn't only "OMG U SHOULD BE MORE WEB 2.0", evidenced by the wall of text I wrote. I gave some valid tools that can be considered for implementation to make the website more streamlined. Seems like constructive feedback is considered crap around here without even taking a moment to considerate the points made? maybe it's my english which is not very good. *shrugs*

I didn't say in any moment that you should scrap OCR as how it is now and start from scratch, on the contrary, I said that OCR has made advancements in its design and structure, all I did was point out the aspect of OCR that I think are way outdated and could use a bit of consideration. In my post there isn't a spot where I say you should cover ocr in every widget possible, nor I said you should play catch-up with the internet's trends. However, one thing is to play catch-up, and another is to have a system that is almost a decade old and, although it's working, it could be much better and could be streamlined more to make your life and the remixer's experience more pleasant. "If it's not broken, don't fix it", I guess?

OCR is about content, as you said, and nothing that I said goes against this, on the contrary, some tweaks(or a new implementation) to the current song submission/WIP system will make the content easier to handle and offer a better experience to the people around here, I don't think anyone can argue to that. I don't say it's as easy as cake to implement new stuff in this scope and make it work with what we have, I know it first-hand because that's what I work on and that's what I've been doing for years, but that doesn't means that new technologies shouldn't be considered. Anyways, I tried to be helpful, and I don't see how those suggestions can be resumed in "OMG U SHOULD BE MORE WEB 2.0". If that was what I really meant to say, people around here know that I would have said it that way and get away with trolling.

[djpretzel]

Fair enough, but I guess I'm just far more interested in specifics... it's easy to say streamline this, automate that, etc., but we've got an existing infrastructure based on vbulletin, wiki, etc. and I'm always interested in the solution that makes the most sense, is easiest to maintain, and truly represents a step forward. Sometimes that means we move a bit slower, but it also ensures the site as a whole is maintainable. At any rate, I don't mind constructive criticism, and I even agree with you, it's just that it had already been said, and chiming in to echo the sentiment is less helpful than specific recommendations.

[Liontamer]

Mike, I'm not sure what prompted djp's reply, but it looks like he read into the mention of Web 2.0 as the addition of bloated features, plus it was mostly theoretical with no mention of code or programs, which doesn't help Dave as much he'd want. Also, I could see how he read into your post as "that sucks, so do this now," since you used the words "hate" and "obnoxious," but reading between the lines, your idea was presented fine and was respectful.

Your idea regarding the submissions process was substantive, and I understand what you're talking about with your ideas for streamlining it. Something like that would be very cool (with pretty much all of the features you suggested) as long as it was stable and thought out well.

There would need to be a way to confirm that a submission was from who it said it was from (perhaps emailing the submitting artist based on whatever required email address they use to submit with the form, as well as how to deal with hosting subs, but the overall idea could be doable.

Dave would just need to have the time to code it and integrate it into the site, and that seems like something he doesn't have time for in the foreseeable future. It's definitely not that no one would want to implement to idea. In fact, it's something that's been proposed in depth before. But the list of other tasks to do would have to be cleared off before that idea could become a priority, plus the current music selection system isn't broken despite being slow. Again, that's not saying it's great in terms of speed, because it sure as hell isn't. It's just saying that because the submissions process is still doing a good job of actually selecting the ReMixes (i.e. YES or NO), increasing the overall speed of the process is not as critical as some of the other stuff we're working on right now.

[Sir_NutS]

Well, obviously I can't get into specifics because, although we work in the same field I have no idea of how the site is coded and what tools you're using, the most obvious of course are the language (php) and the forum engine (VBulletin)which don't really give me any specifics to comment about.

The things I was thinking about, and that I glossed over were broad recommendations based more on structure rather than tools related to the core system that keeps OCR running, because that is only known by DJP and I can't really say hey you can maybe add this or this module here and there because that is only known by him. Anyways, maybe as DJP said, they were pointed out but I think no one gave any suggestions on structure ideas. Something like, for example, having a database of games (which you already do) with which you can feed a submission system will do some admin work easier as, and I am again guessing here, I think right now the e-mail format in which submissions are received forces the admin to maybe fill out a form with the new remixes-to-be-posted data, filling every field manually which could be pulled right away from the submission itself. Hell, for all I know DJP could be filling the database manually, for every new remix. As I said, I wouldn't know.

Mike, I'm not sure what prompted djp's reply, but it looks like he read into the mention of Web 2.0 as the addition of bloated features, plus it was mostly theoretical with no mention of code or programs, which doesn't help Dave as much he'd want. Also, I could see how he read into your post as "that sucks, so do this now," since you used the words "hate" and "obnoxious," but reading between the lines, your idea was presented fine and was respectful.

Yeah well, I just think that the email system is a bit counter-intuitive, to say the least. It worked some years ago, but right now it seems archaic to me, but I'd say, bear with me on this because as I was saying I work in this field and maybe these flaws are more evident and glaring to me than to the common user, and while I can see ways in which this can be done better maybe most of the remixers don't mind.

There would need to be a way to confirm that a submission was from who it said it was from (perhaps emailing the submitting artist based on whatever required email address they use to submit with the form, as well as how to deal with hosting subs, but the overall idea could be doable.

Yeah I think that it could be solved by requiring subscription before submission. Most remixers become part of the community anyways and most websites that deal with content require you to subscribe as well. This could be exploited, and there are a lot of things to take in consideration, but as you said, it could be doable.

Dave would just need to have the time to code it and integrate it into the site, and that seems like something he doesn't have time for in the foreseeable future. It's definitely not that no one would want to implement to idea. In fact, it's something that's been proposed in depth before. But the list of other tasks to do would have to be cleared off before that idea could become a priority, plus the current music selection system isn't broken despite being slow. Again, that's not saying it's great in terms of speed, because it sure as hell isn't. It's just saying that because the submissions process is still doing a good job of actually selecting the ReMixes (i.e. YES or NO), increasing the overall speed of the process is not as critical as some of the other stuff we're working on right now.

yeah, regarding the submission system, my point is not about the speed at which songs are judged. That is a variable that can never be controlled, because there's the human factor behind it, and there are periods where you won't be able to have every judge available and the judging process will inevitably slow down. I think that what can be done better is how people deal with the submission. I think that having an e-mail address and say, "hey, send your stuff here" leaves most people hanging. They might know the submission was complete, they get an e-mail response after all. But it's mostly like (and I'm going to use an analogy I've been using for years when discussing this) dropping a rock in a well. You know the rock will get to the bottom, but you don't know how deep it is, you don't know when it's going to fall, if it got stuck in a wall, or if a wormhole appeared in that spot and swallowed it.

After some time you see the song on the judges panel, and you can see it stuck there. You can't know how many votes it has received so far, how much more will you have to wait till you submit your next masterpiece? I think a lot of nifty stuff can be done around this. I think most remixers would agree that having a section where you can effectively keep track of all of it would be really nice. You log in, and you get a message etlling you that your submission has been accepted and is on queue for future posting, congrats! or you receive a message that says your submission has been denied and suggests you check the judge's decisions to see how you can improve it, or you could get a message asking for missing information etc. Think about it, on the admin side, if information is missing, you just set a flag up and state the missing information on that submission, and the system sends a message to the remixer asking for this and puts the mix on hold for other judges to know. All this could be automated, and it could be very awesome.

But brainstorming is the easiest part, right? and I understand that, I also understand that DJP has a job and I really don't know how he can keep the site running while also doing other things in his life, but we all want a better OCR, I don't think it hurts to make suggestions, and if the progress OCR has made is any indication, DJP is as enthusiast as any of us about making OCR better. It just seemed off that he would take my comments like that. Oh well.

Also, I'm no admin, not even part of the people who help with the website, so maybe this has been discussed over and over internally, but I wouldn't know, I guess I can't be blamed for that.

Anyways, I've talked too much. Keep up the good work, as I think that you're doing great (but it could be better! )

[Bleck]

Though it faded into obscurity after everyone suddenly had lives and couldn't finish it.

the rofl thing is how this is pretty much exactly what happened but it only took Sindra one sentence

[Sindra]

Yay summarization.

[zykO]

and yay for everyone getting their panties bunched up over something, as simply validated through observation as the status of vgmix, is without the need for 8 pages of debate.

really.

[Sinewav]

The purpose of VGMix was much different than OCR's. VGMix was much more of a community meant for people to build off of each others' skills, while OCR is clearly meant to showcase only the best of best. After things cooled off between Dave and Jake, I think both of them would have told you that neither of the sites were trying to compete with each other.

[SoulinEther]

I could swear that Larry's post read like a judge's review of a submitted remix, lol.

At any rate, I don't mind constructive criticism, and I even agree with you, it's just that it had already been said, and chiming in to echo the sentiment is less helpful than specific recommendations.

I probably should PM this or something because I'm not sure if you'll read this here. But here goes.

How exactly do you suggest we go about making specific recommendations? I think there are obvious issues behind opening a new thread in Community asking a very broad question, such as, "How do we make the site better?", and even "How can we improve the WIP/Feedback forums?" might result in ideas that are too unwieldy, unclear or underdeveloped for real progress to be made. Besides, if every interested user posted in it, and if every forum troll posted in it frequently, it would become difficult to sort through the ideas, let alone consider the advantages of one over another.

I'm not exactly sure if this community can handle it, but... as in some open source software projects (KOffice is coming to mind), when some software/group of software reach(es) a point of maturity and stability, but need new features or a slight overhaul, the maintainers of the project might hold a competition of sorts where people submit a complete, detailed description of the changes they would like to see implemented, perhaps even including mockups of how the software would look with the changes. And best of all, because of all the work involved, it prevents every single user from writing up such a suggestion, and it helps ensure that there is some coherence to the ideas being suggested.

I propose OC ReMix hold a similar event, where people submit basically a paper/essay/proposal (vocabulary is failing me, I'm sure there's a better word for this) that outlines, details, and helps envision what changes should be made to the site.

The main problem though is that only you really know the in's and out's of the code that makes this site tick, and I guess I doubt you're willing to give too much information away, although information may not be necessary, since you're going to be the one who is implementing it anyway. If an idea is just impossible to implement with the current infrastructure, then it just can't be implemented.

And, once everyone submits their fully-elaborated ideas, you could (or ... the judges? or someone? this will probably be the most time consuming aspect) figure out which idea(s) are the easiest to understand and visualize, the easiest to implement, the easiest to maintain, the most useful, the fastest, the least compromisable, etc., and perhaps even fuze aspects of different ideas to create the actual site.

AND even if the main goal of this method is to limit the ideas that pour in, I still believe it is possible to include any user that wishes to make suggestions: through devolution. Obviously it would be difficult for one person to read every user's ideas, but if a subforum could be devoted to the discussion of ideas of how to improve the site, where users interested in making a proposal can take the ideas discussed within it and present, as a thread, a draft of their proposal to the community, and then (here's the devolution) each individual proposer can deal with the feedback they receive on their own ideas and finally create a substantive proposal to be submitted for evaluation.

Which, ironically, would make this sort of like the WIP forum, where users are instead critiquing other users' ideas and synthesizing them to make their own massive... proposals.

And of course this would need a serious (and not-too-distant) deadline. You can't just leave it open-ended: procrastinators with good ideas will not be able to sit themselves down to write their ideas (I don't know about you but I get some of my best ideas and thinking done under pressure), and because the proposal(s) (themselves) will take time to implement. Plus the average user is none-too-patient: a deadline would do much good for people to see that steps are being taken towards change, to know that, "Alright, by x date, we'll have seen all the ideas and given input on them, and we'll know that the ball is now in the admin(s) court."

Now the ball is in your court Mr. Pretzel. (this is making me hungry) I've given you my idea. What do you think?

[Sindra]

Wait, when did this become a debate?

[SoulinEther]

Wait, when did this become a debate?

Wait, what? Are you referring to earlier or my post up there?

[Sindra]

The whole damn thing.

It's like a high school debate on who does the most work for what site.

"I've got the biggest musically-inspired dick!"

"No I do!"

[Moguta]

I Love You All!

[EdgeCrusher]

I need to be banned from vgmix more

[Strike911]

I think the common ground that we can agree upon is that a musically-inspired-dick is a rather humorous mental image.

[SoulinEther]

I think the common ground that we can agree upon is that a musically-inspired-dick is a rather humorous mental image.

Definitely.

[Sindra]

I do what I can to bring the masses together.

[DarkeSword]

The whole damn thing.

It's like a high school debate on who does the most work for what site.

"I've got the biggest musically-inspired dick!"

"No I do!"

I don't really see that. It's more of just people saying "VGMix is down and that sucks," "Yeah but this is why its down," "Yeah but it still sucks," "OCR should have more VGMix-like tools," "VGMIX IS NOT OCR WIP BOO U CANT REPLACE IT," "Yeah, but it'd still be nice to have VGMix-like tools for artists," "Web 2.0," "Stop fighting you guys!!" "Umm, nobody's fighting anymore."