ReMix Reviews - Lack thereof?

[Tex]

1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?

2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

 

1: When I joined the forums, I would comment on mixes from any game/ReMixer. But now I only talk about music from games and artists I am familiar with. I know this sounds unfair and close-minded. But that is how I am rolling for now.

 

2: I think the basic core of solving this is lifting listeners' tastes and opinions. Ergo, I endorse DJP ideas and echo what Skrypnyk said about the VGMix RPG-esque system. Also, I wonder if every poster could include their top 10 favourite ReMixes in their profile page. This was a feature in VGMix and OLR, too. And OLR turned into a barren ghost town after many user listening features were gone. 

[Rozovian]

I have to comment on this now that I got namedropped. THANKS WILL. WHY ARE WE YELLING?

 

I think it's all about pace. Back when I was active here, there were more of the big names around. When they posed, whether on a wip, on a posted remix, or in the community overall, people saw that these big names weren't celebrities in their ivory towers, but regular forum folks like us lowly unposted wannabes. And it inspired us.

 

The wip board specifically became a place for me to help others get past the hurdles I had gotten past, and in the process develop a more critical ear and improve my own work. So the place became important to me. Still is, but running the sd3 project has eaten a lot of the enthusiasm over the years, so I've had less energy for the wip board, and now just do my duties as a workshop mod, and not much else there. I'm hoping I can make a comeback and fill a couple of pages with predominantly "last post by Rozovian".

 

I think the wip board's current slow pace is because it's become less of a community. There's not the wip crew of the old days. There's evktalo and timaeus222 and others who are active and do a great job at giving people feedback. There's the whole mod review thing. But I think we're missing the community we had back then. Everyone has their own circles now, whether Facebook or YouTube or SoundCloud or something else, so the comments are spread all over the place, and they don't show on the forum, so forumites don't engage with them, Facebook folks don't engage with Soundcloud comments, and the whole thing gets spread too thin. I like Soundcloud. But I don't like their comments system, specifically because it draws the comments away from the thread on the wip board.

 

On that note, back to reviews. pu_freak's completely right about how remixes appear on social media and get a lot of their responses from there instead of in reviews. That's a big part of it. I think the ability to drop a brief "nice work" comment on Facebook gives people a reason to not bother giving something more in-depth, no matter where that comment would end up.

 

We can encourage reviews. OA and DA had a reviews month back when, and gave out a little badge to everyone who made it to 500 reviews. And there's been those initiatives to get every remix at least one page of reviews (we need a new one, with the new forum having more posts per page). Maybe it's a bandaid. Or maybe it'd create a feedback loop, where people can piggy-back on other people's reviews.

 

Will had questions for us.

 

1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?

 

Back when, it was that I spent so much time posting on wips. Then it was that I didn't have time or energy for it. Now it's that it's not a habit for me to hang out here. I drop by to check for new things to mod review, but that's about it. I don't think I was ever the one reviewing the new mixposts. Rather, I'd make playlists, listen, and comment on the ones I really liked. Which reminds me, I need to review April Rain, if I haven't already, because it's spectacular.

 

What just happened to the formatting?

 

2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

 

Just start reviewing. Find someone to agree or disagree with, and create a discussion about the mix. Make a list of your favorite tracks and review them. Just get more activity going overall. I think there'll be a feedback effect from this.

 

I would also like to be able to read all comments an artist has received on their posted mixes. It's a convenient way for the remixer to find comments on their most recent works, which might lead them to reply, thus posting more in reviews and getting the activity up.

 

I'd also like to see the design of the forum posts get a trim so there's less whitespace, making threads easier to read when there's not row after row of whitespace. I posted about this somewhere before. I think it's detrimental to forum activity that you often can't see more than one post at a time on a laptop screen. That would make it feel more like a conversation than disparate posts.

 

I think the no-favorites policy could be revised to allow for "here are my favorite collabs from the past 3 years, check them out, give them a review; what are your favorite collabs?"-type threads, probably monthly themes and very specifically crafted by staff so as to not flood the community with various favorite threads. "Remixers having made their debut here over the past year", "remixes of games released in the past 5 years", anything that reminds listeners to drop a line on any remix is good, and once there's more of a culture of reviewing, I think we'd see more reviews on new mixposts as well.

 

We could do a monthly podcast, talking about the remixes posted that month. We could make awesome music videos to get more YouTube presence and maybe draw people here. We could raise ocr's profile on reddit. We could do lots of things. But I think it all comes down to a few people leading the charge, and building a community out of the people who follow.

 

...which makes me wonder what actually happened back in whenever I allegedly single-handedly kicked the wip board into high gear.

 

Now that I'm staff, I feel I have to get permission to do stuff, so that dampens my initiative. Not maybe for reviews or posting on the wip board, but for doing more overall. Speaking of which, I'm apparently not a workshop mod, just a music boards mod. Is that intentional?

[zircon]

I really think a big part of it is the rise of social media and YouTube. Forums - in general - are way less popular than they used to be. Facebook and Twitter have supplanted forums as a way to have discussions. Not to say that all forums are dead, but any younger remixers are going to be from a generation where forums just aren't really a thing. From what I've seen, the forums that are still thriving tend to have an older audience and are not frequented by young adults, teenagers, etc. (which is what many of us were when we came here.)

What has also changed is how people listen to music. There's been a dramatic shift away from downloading MP3s and having a music library, to just streaming your music. YouTube is one of the top, if not THE top, places where people discover and listen to music. OCR's presence on YouTube is very significant with over 100k subscribers and 40m views. If you're consuming your music on YouTube, you're going to leave a comment there and not bother to register on a forum. There's nothing wrong with that, though the nature of YouTube does not lend itself well to in-depth reviews.

 

In short, OCR isn't dying. The decline in activity on the forums can be seen across many forums as people move to social media for discussions. Also, people aren't leaving as many reviews here because many more people are discovering and listening to ReMixes on YouTube.

[timaeus222]

1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?

2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

 

To more specifically answer these questions personally:

 

1. I usually do, but when I don't, it's because:

• I have to go do something else important and I put it off for the moment; then I might forget
• I don't have much of a reaction to the ReMix; I don't need an emotional reaction to feel the need to comment, but if I think the ReMix is so-so or "heard this before," I might not say anything; indifference, basically, but not dislike

2. This is a very difficult question. Any number of actions might help, but we can only hope it'll work. Here's what I would say or agree with:

• Instigate reviews through making some yourself, leading the way (WillRock)
• "Featured" or "Great" comments was a good idea (k-wix) and that's what I would suggest too; gives incentive to try harder
• Another judge tryout to get more on the panel?
• Tell your friends about OCR
• Integrate social media comment widgets/platforms/whatever as a possible option within the reviews forum (TO, Jorito)
• Have an "all comments received on reviews" page accessible (from your profile, for instance; Rozovian)

The decline in activity on the forums can be seen across many forums as people move to social media for discussions. Also, people aren't leaving as many reviews here because many more people are discovering and listening to ReMixes on YouTube.

Yeah, I definitely agree; I've been seeing some ReMixes that got people all excited over on YouTube, with very few comments on OCR.

[Best Dude55]

Well, I'm still really new to the forums here so I'm not sure that my input will be as helpful as others'.

 

However, the reason I don't really comment on stuff (on either posted stuff or workshop stuff) is simply because I don't feel I have enough experience to where I could give any helpful constructive feedback. I wouldn't want to suggest something and have it be completely wrong and take the person's track in the wrong direction. I feel that I'm still a long way away from being able to give helpful advice/reviews to others.

 

Also as a new member I can agree with others that the time it takes for submissions to reach the panel also kind of deters me from being more active. For me at least, I can't even remember the ideas I had going on remixes that I haven't touched in a year, so if it takes that long to get judge feedback I might not remember what musical direction I was working with on that. But this thread isn't about that so I don't want to discuss that too much.

[timaeus222]

However, the reason I don't really comment on stuff (on either posted stuff or workshop stuff) is simply because I don't feel I have enough experience to where I could give any helpful constructive feedback. I wouldn't want to suggest something and have it be completely wrong and take the person's track in the wrong direction. I feel that I'm still a long way away from being able to give helpful advice/reviews to others.

 

If you're not confident that you know what you're doing, that's okay. I think you should comment anyway, and if you feel the need to ensure that the other person knows you're not confident, maybe make a disclaimer for instance, like "I could be wrong, but...", "Take my advice with a grain of salt, but...", etc. The more perspectives the better, IMO. Gives a broader view of what people think, and doesn't expose the ReMixer to only one or two peoples' methods. There are many ways/approaches to accomplish similar results, and some ways/approaches work more easily than others.

[Jorito]

1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?

2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

 

For question one: I think I'm some 10 years older than most people here (28? heh, get off my lawn, youngster!) and that means 2 things in my case. The first being that general life and work stuff takes up a lot more time than it used to do. Back in high school and college I definitely had a lot more spare time on my hands, and I guess that goes for most forum users here too. I think there's quite a few of us past the school/college period and that also probably means a reduced amount of spare time.

 

As for the other thing, being an older person here it also means that the games I played and get nostalgic about tend to be older as well. I grew up with 8 bit home computers and a PSX, and that means a lot of the newer games don't mean anything to me. That also means I typically won't review and comment.

 

And about question 2: I'm not sure if increasing the number of reviews is a useful goal. Personally I don't really care about the number of reviews (of my own tracks). I'd to like to see a more active community here, but I'm not convinced focusing on the number of reviews is the way to get there. It's also something of this day and age I guess, where user interaction is spread between the site and various Social Media. Typically you see something across the board, also in my other niche hobby, but also something in my work (news media/brands).

 

In stead of having one platform (the forum) with a lot of reactions, you now have 4 platforms (forum, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook) where the total number of reviews/reactions is probably not as in-depth as in ye olden days but in total numbers it's probably larger. I think it'd be cool to just pull in the comments/reviews from the Youtube, Facebook and Twitter postings in the forum as well and see what that does. Maybe there's more cases where doing something similar makes sense; currently the site is leading and all Social stuff is based on what's on the site, but the circle from Social back to the site is not there atm.

 

Might be interesting to think about that, embracing all these platforms and combining them in stead of trying to force the audience (back) to the forums. The community is probably still there, just more scattered and, in today's society, also more fleeting.

[Eino Keskitalo]

So I've been wondering about something. When I joined OCR in around 2008, seemed like there was a quite an interest in new mixposts. Mixes would get 10-20 reviews, 30-40 if you were lucky. And i'm talking quite in depth reviews, people actually took the time to post honest positive feedback.

 

Fast forward to 2015! - Now, seems like you're lucky to get 5-10 reviews. So my question is this - what happened?

[snip]

1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?

2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

 

Awws, I should've gotten myself posted earlier.

 

1. It takes me a lot of time to give thought-out comments, and I rarely have that lately. I can usually think of something more to say than "hey I like this cool" but processing that into actual sentences takes a ton of time for me.

2. I wonder if reviews could be made more profilic than just forum posts.. maybe counting them separately (not just posts count, but also review count, why not also "workshop comment" count.. would raise their profile). Not as much to reward people who do the reviews, but highlight the importance of the comments.

 

2) To avoid answering this question with another question, why are the number of reviews relevant?  Or even why are reviews themselves relevant?  If posted mixes already got judged and approved by individuals, then there really isn't much more someone else can say about it.  I'm not sure what one person could even say about a mix other than they like the style of the mix, or the game / original song being mixed, otherwise they're just talking about what is happening in the song which I've always found incredibly redundant.  Reviews kinda just serve to stroke the ego of the artist (which don't get me wrong, LOVE it when that happens to me), and places like YouTube and Facebook have made using the review forum obsolete.

 

Reviews really only matter before the mix is submitted for approval, where it can help an up-and-comer out with mixing or writing, or give a vet some advice if they're going through sound fatigue.  Any criticism can be used to improve or alter the mix, and people can go more in depth with their review.  To be critical of a mix after it's been posted is a bit of a waste because the mix isn't going to be touched up, altered, and resubmitted.

I often find a lot to criticize or comment on that the panel or writeup didn't cover, and I'm sure there's a lot that can be said about my posted pieces that hasn't been said already.

 

This probably isn't what you mean with "what is happening in the piece", but I really like to read "readings" of pieces, what they say or seem to mean to a particular listener. You don't have to understand music in a technical/theory level to do this, which is nice (though you have to be able to write about what you think or feel)

 

Of course, constructive feedback for a specific piece is most useful when the piece is in progress, but I find feedback after the song has been released very useful in a more general sense, where I can apply it to current work, or just get my bearings where I am going.

 

Maybe it matters that my rhythm when making things is very slow. I take a lot of time to finish a piece and finished pieces stay long with me, I like to listen to them a lot. So they're still within my "active knowledge" so to speak, and I can apply feedback on them to my current work too (this is also why I don't mind the long wait on the panel etc that much, personally).

 

I understand as much as anyone that people put a lot of time and of themselves when committing to learning this art (not the midi-rippers which there seem to be more of now than ever but that's a different subject) and for that reason I've often favored not commenting in the forums out of consideration that my comments might not be taken as constructive by the remixer-to-be and I also know that there are a near infinite amount of ways to approach anything so the last thing I want the person who's work i'm commenting on is to think that I think my way is the only way.  There is a lot of self discovery that's needed and if everyone followed one or two mixing engineers to the T (Tee?  Ti?) then that would sacrifice any potential for something unique to come out of all that self discovery. 

Man, you should definitely not stop from commenting. You're not pushing your views to anyone. You're making your view available to them. It's their responsibility to handle that. And if you said something controversial perhaps, more people would hopefully join in on the discussion. It should only be a good thing, right? Self-discovery in a vacuum sounds like a bad idea!

 

I could comment more in workshop, just super busy right now. Once you comment, people usually reply and/or PM you with new versions always asking more more more,

 

I never get that. O_o

 

evktalo and timaeus222 and others who are active

[snip]

We can encourage reviews. OA and DA had a reviews month back when, and gave out a little badge to everyone who made it to 500 reviews. And there's been those initiatives to get every remix at least one page of reviews (we need a new one, with the new forum having more posts per page). Maybe it's a bandaid. Or maybe it'd create a feedback loop, where people can piggy-back on other people's reviews.

 

Haha, "evktalo" and "active", I've fooled you somehow. Now this timaeus222 guy, always posts good, helpful and thought-provoking stuff whenever I post a wip myself.

 

The mindset I've had when posting reviews (to finished or WIP pieces) is that it's an opportunity for me to learn. If I can articulate my thoughts and feelings about a piece, it'll improve my own music making. I'll also learn to listen better and closer, and I'll learn more about e.g. mixing, about which I definitely didn't have a clue about before coming to OCR and I've improved a lot in that regard. But I try to review other people's work so that I could improve myself, it's a selfish motive which I think makes it more honest - I'm not aiming to influence others (as much) but make making music clearer to myself.

 

I've been thinking that we should definitely have that December reviews thing, especially noticing that the newer mixposts need to catch up with the number of reviews. Let's do it!

[timaeus222]

(1) Of course, constructive feedback for a specific piece is most useful when the piece is in progress, but I find feedback after the song has been released very useful in a more general sense, where I can apply it to current work, or just get my bearings where I am going.

 

[...]

 

(2) Man, you should definitely not stop from commenting. You're not pushing your views to anyone. You're making your view available to them. It's their responsibility to handle that. And if you said something controversial perhaps, more people would hopefully join in on the discussion. It should only be a good thing, right? Self-discovery in a vacuum sounds like a bad idea!

 

[...]

 

(3) Haha, "evktalo" and "active", I've fooled you somehow. Now this timaeus222 guy, always posts good, helpful and thought-provoking stuff whenever I post a wip myself.

 

(4) The mindset I've had when posting reviews (to finished or WIP pieces) is that it's an opportunity for me to learn. If I can articulate my thoughts and feelings about a piece, it'll improve my own music making. I'll also learn to listen better and closer, and I'll learn more about e.g. mixing, about which I definitely didn't have a clue about before coming to OCR and I've improved a lot in that regard. But I try to review other people's work so that I could improve myself, it's a selfish motive which I think makes it more honest - I'm not aiming to influence others (as much) but make making music clearer to myself.

 

(1) Exactly! I think that's even the point of the reviews---to help the remixer improve. Not necessarily on the specific posted track (which might be a popular misconception apparently), but it can be applicable or generalized to current WIPs, or even just kept in mind.

(2) I agree! I really think that it would be very difficult to figure things out on your own, and Plato agrees (Meno 80d, Paradox of Learning)!

(3) Gee, thanks!

(4) YES! It's just as helpful to yourself as it is to others that you give feedback. Not only does it allow a fresh perspective to someone else, but it also gives you the practice in writing refined advice. Being able to take advice is one thing, but how capable you are at articulating advice to others can influence how well they understand what you mean, or perhaps even how likely people will trust you.

[MindWanderer]

However, the reason I don't really comment on stuff (on either posted stuff or workshop stuff) is simply because I don't feel I have enough experience to where I could give any helpful constructive feedback. I wouldn't want to suggest something and have it be completely wrong and take the person's track in the wrong direction. I feel that I'm still a long way away from being able to give helpful advice/reviews to others.

Just one comment here:

There's a lot of technical discussion here, but that's not all music is about. Maybe offering detailed advice on compression or decluttering a particular range of frequencies would be a technical suggestion out of your reach, but saying "this aspect doesn't seem to gel with this other aspect" or "this transition felt abrupt to me" are things that don't require a trained ear or a technical vocabulary.

Also, music is art. Different things appeal to different people. If there's something you really like or dislike, and no one here seems to agree with you, that's fine. In fact, that's good! A hive mind when it comes to art is a terrible thing, and puts expression and appreciation in boxes. That's especially true here at OCR, where, even though there's a panel of judges that disagrees on occasion, they're mostly looking for the same sorts of things, and are explicitly selected based on their agreement with other judges' decisions (that's part of the "test" to become a judge). Your opinions are no less valid when it comes to enjoyment and appreciation, as long as you're not hostile about it.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

In short, OCR isn't dying. The decline in activity on the forums can be seen across many forums as people move to social media for discussions. Also, people aren't leaving as many reviews here because many more people are discovering and listening to ReMixes on YouTube.

 

  

 

What you've described sounds exactly like it's "dying". What else is substantially decreased activity because there are "better" alternatives and a shift in public interest supposed to mean? It's like saying "Sure, people don't really go to video stores anymore, but that doesn't mean they're dying. There are still some left, but with a smaller customer base. Most people just prefer Netflix now, is all."

 

Nothing that's "dead" ever truly goes away most of the time as far as technology is concerned. When I worked for a movie company, brand new movies we'd get were often sent directly from Dreamworks or whatever on VHS. So VHS still around...but it's definitely a dead format.

[CelestialSonata]

I can relate to what Best Dude 55 is saying.  Though I've had my account for years, I'm still new to the forums and have only recently started to post more, looking to be active in the community.  My thoughts on this.  Looking at everyone's post count is like looking at an XP bar.  It's hard to tell myself that my critique or advice will be worth anything compared to someone whose posts are in the thousands (high XP).  In my mind, how can I give advice if I don't have any arrangements published?  Perhaps others have these reasons for not putting their thoughts in, especially the newcomers.

 

A suggestion.  Can you cut down the review time by not having custom detailed writeups, but instead have a document that lists all the possible improvement points, numbered, and have the review be simply like: "Submission denied.  See reasons 144, 40, 32."?

[timaeus222]

You mean like this?

http://ocremix.org/info/Submission_Standards_and_Instructions

 

and this?

http://ocremix.org/info/Direct_Rejection_Letter

[Rozovian]

Bored, had time; thread so far, summarized:

 

Problems/causes/observations:

 

Will: you wait for about a year, and get a writeup from DJP and about 2 comments on the site.

 

BS: William Harby, who has not reviewed a mix in months. 

 

ACO: OCR seems super dead in general compared to when I first came here a few years back. 

 

ACO: I notice even in the workshop, it's not uncommon now for mixes to get over a hundred views but absolutely no response.

 

timaeus222: Maybe it's the idea that the 'classic' ReMixers are in high demand for moar moar moar STUFF, and people want stuff from Sixto, zircon, etc.

 

timaeus222: Maybe with the newer ReMixers coming in, people don't know what to expect because the person's brand new or rather new.

 

timaeus: Maybe it's because there have been ReMixes from "new" games that people aren't as familiar with, like Guild Wars 2, Beyond: Two Souls, and Fittest.

 

timaeus: Maybe people are more busy these days; I know I'm really busy these days.

 

Will: Seems like "classic" ReMixers are not exempt from lack of reviews so I doubt thats it.

 

Will:  I also doubt its due to games, since again, popular games are not exempt either. 

 

Will: Lack of new members?

 

Garpocalypse: A significant part of OCR is the nostalgia factor. [...]  But the nostalgia wears off quickly when you have to live it everyday.  Psychologists call the decrease in response to a stimuli over time "habituation"

 

ACO: Lots of the newer games don't have music that is as simple and melodic as the older ones, so it's tough to remix or when remixes of it pop up on the site

 

timaeus222:  it looks to me like there's a lack of new members. [...] statistically, less people are joining the OCR forums per year, at least since 2010. :/

 

pu_freak:  I have much less time than a few years ago. When I look at the active people at the forums [...], I have a feeling that the average age is higher than when I first joined these forums

 

pu_freak: YouTube and Facebook. [...] I listen to the ones from there. That means I never visit the OCR homepage anymore

 

BS: it might be hard for a site that takes 6 months to a year for judgements to maintain an active member base.

 

BS: it's time that we get replaced with the new generation of remixers, but it's harder than ever for them to actually be a part of OCR

 

Patrick Burns: I think there are a lot more avenues to find and share nostalgia these days

 

Patrick Burns: our arrangements don't add nearly as much in the post-redbook audio era. [...] Appreciating arrangements of already well-produced material requires a listener who's much more fixated on the music than the average listener, imo.

 

Patrick Burns: We've just got so many other options to fulfill our music/digital/social/creative needs these days.

 

SystemsReady: Holy shit, it takes 6 months to a year for remixes to be judged now? [...] that does make me FAR less inclined to submit anything.

 

djp: I sense some defeatism, here, and I can see where it might stem from, but this is when we need people stepping up, not stepping back

 

Skryp: why are the number of reviews relevant?  Or even why are reviews themselves relevant?

 

Skryp: The forums themselves have gotten very slow, very boring, very dead and dying, and so the question should be "How do you suggest bring the overall forum activity back up again?".

 

Skryp: I don't think asking or having one person try and lead a march in improving reviews will have any long lasting effects around here.

 

k-wix: Don't have as many personal connections as i used to on the site.

 

k-wix: If you make it onto the site, the mix is probably awesome and worth listening to, so I don't feel like feedback is needed at that point. 

 

Bowlerhat: it's actually really important to see as much reviews as possible to your remix [...] because it can be really motivational to see people like your music.

 

Garpocalypse: the environment where students and working professionals were nearly reduced to tears [...] I was initially attracted to OCR because it got me away from that into a more stress free environment.  Now, with all of this music out there, it's no longer a similar minded group of people who care enough about their art to want to help each other [...] and instead it's a lot of people who all want praise for their work [...] people should be encouraged more to speak their minds on the forums here as long as it has a constructive purpose to make the remix better.

 

Garpocalypse: The length of time it takes for a person to get judged and posted is an issue 

 

Garpocalypse: I jumped if someone I knew such as Brandon Strader, Willrock, Darkesword, Avaris, Gario or other posted remixers whose work I enjoyed took time to comment on mine. Even if the comments were harsh they were much easier to take because I was familiar with who they were beyond their name just showing up in the forums.  Now we are at a time when most of the remixers from earlier days of OCR have all moved on

 

Garpocalypse: the panel is separating itself too much from the community it once created and it's having detrimental effects. 

 

BS: I could comment more in workshop, [...] people usually reply and/or PM you with new versions always asking more more more

 

The Damned: sarcasm

 

Rozo: Back when I was active here, there were more of the big names around. When they posted, [...] it inspired us.

 

Rozo: I've had less energy for the wip board, and now just do my duties as a workshop mod, and not much else there. 

 

Rozo: I think the wip board's current slow pace is because it's become less of a community. There's not the wip crew of the old days. [...] Everyone has their own circles now, whether Facebook or YouTube or SoundCloud or something else, so the comments are spread all over the place

 

Rozo:  I think the ability to drop a brief "nice work" comment on Facebook gives people a reason to not bother giving something more in-depth

 

Rozo: Now that I'm staff, I feel I have to get permission to do stuff, so that dampens my initiative. Not maybe for reviews or posting on the wip board, but for doing more overall.

 

zircon: a big part of it is the rise of social media and YouTube. Forums - in general - are way less popular than they used to be.

 

zircon: What has also changed is how people listen to music. There's been a dramatic shift away from downloading MP3s and having a music library, to just streaming your music.

 

Best Dude55: I don't feel I have enough experience to where I could give any helpful constructive feedback.

 

Best Dude55: Also as a new member I can agree with others that the time it takes for submissions to reach the panel also kind of deters me from being more active. 

 

Jorito: I grew up with 8 bit home computers and a PSX, and that means a lot of the newer games don't mean anything to me. That also means I typically won't review and comment.

 

Jorito: I don't really care about the number of reviews (of my own tracks). I'd to like to see a more active community here, but I'm not convinced focusing on the number of reviews is the way to get there.

 

CelestialSonata: Looking at everyone's post count is like looking at an XP bar.  It's hard to tell myself that my critique or advice will be worth anything compared to someone whose posts are in the thousands (high XP).  In my mind, how can I give advice if I don't have any arrangements published?

 

--

 

Suggestions:

 

pu_freak: copy the write-up to YouTube as the first comment?

 

djp: We upgrade our forums to IPS 4.X

 

djp: We build the workshop out to integrate with the rest of the site

 

djp:  We thus allow content creation & promotion on two tracks - the instant gratification, "look what I made" track for anything posted on the workshop AND the featured, canonized track for accepted mixes

 

djp: We automate the submissions process via the forums

 

djp: All of these changes serve to reinforce the forums and the benefits of registering & participating

 

djp: We consider some form of trackable reputation points or awards or whatever for the most active/helpful members 

 

djp: every review helps!

 

Will: All it takes is one person to start doing some reviews and it might kick things up a gear. 

 

k-wix: When the song gets posted, it could be posted with all of the information that the judges talked about, might spark some conversation and debate. Would be great to actively discuss the track WITH the judges.

 

k-wix: Featured Comments [...] Could have its own section on the main page to encourage people to actively comment and get featured.

 

Bowlerhat:  I've never left a review myself [...] I think that after reading this topic I just might start doing it.

 

The Orichalcon: Is there a way to integrate comments on remixes posted to Youtube into the equivalent comment thread here? [...] Now the comments are split up amongst different media, thinning out the numbers.

 

Jorito: Include the Facebook comments and Twitter replies too, in that case. Effectively you'd centralize the discussion on the site.

 

Txai: I think the basic core of solving this is lifting listeners' tastes and opinions. 

 

Txai:  I wonder if every poster could include their top 10 favourite ReMixes in their profile page. This was a feature in VGMix and OLR, too. And OLR turned into a barren ghost town after many user listening features were gone.

 

Rozo: We can encourage reviews. OA and DA had a reviews month back when, [...] maybe it'd create a feedback loop, where people can piggy-back on other people's reviews.

 

Rozo: Just start reviewing.

 

Rozo: I would also like to be able to read all comments an artist has received on their posted mixes.

 

Rozo: I'd also like to see the design of the forum posts get a trim so there's less whitespace, [...] That would make it feel more like a conversation than disparate posts.

 

Rozo: the no-favorites policy could be revised to allow for "here are my favorite collabs from the past 3 years, check them out, give them a review; what are your favorite collabs?"-type threads

 

Rozo: We could do a monthly podcast, talking about the remixes posted that month.

 

Rozo: We could make awesome music videos to get more YouTube presence and maybe draw people here.

 

Rozo: We could raise ocr's profile on reddit.

 

timaeus222: Another judge tryout to get more on the panel?

 

timaeus222: Tell your friends about OCR

 

Jorito: embracing all these platforms and combining them in stead of trying to force the audience (back) to the forums. The community is probably still there, just more scattered and, in today's society, also more fleeting.

 

evktalo: I wonder if reviews could be [...] not just posts count, but also review count, why not also "workshop comment" count.. [...] Not as much to reward people who do the reviews, but highlight the importance of the comments.

 

evktalo: I really like to read "readings" of pieces, what they say or seem to mean to a particular listener. You don't have to understand music in a technical/theory level to do this, which is nice (though you have to be able to write about what you think or feel)

 

evktalo: if you said something controversial perhaps, more people would hopefully join in on the discussion. It should only be a good thing, right?

[Chernabogue]

That Rozovian guy clearly has enough free time to comment more on remixes, rather than making those long posts.

 

More seriously, I think the social network/YT argument is the main one. People shifted to social networks rather than forums, OCR did too.

[KingTiger]

Q1: like evktalo said, it's hard to make time to process all my thoughts (there's usually a lot on any given mix) into text. And generally, if I'm going to write a review, I want to invest the time to really give those deep thoughts and make them clear to the artist. This includes technical stuff as well as the not-so-technical stuff that MindWanderer mentioned. Also: time; since I feel like I barely have enough time to make my own art (music or otherwise) most of the time it's hard to make time to review other people's stuff. However I promise to make an effort to do more of it. (The significant amount of personal/life issues I'm having right now probably doesn't help either)

 

Q2: What Rozovian said about podcasts/themes/etc sounds great. Again time though. I think about the OCR Talkbacks; I feel like they were impactful. Also all the things that DJP has planned (which he's talked at length about before) are extremely significant; in my opinion; if/when the site goes that direction/incorporates these elements, I for one plan to get behind it so hard.

 

EDIT: That in-depth detail is the kind of thing I like when I receive reviews/comments as well (hint, hint).

 

EDIT EDIT: There, I did what I said I would. And now I'm going to bed /zzzzz

[Brandon Strader]

Well I think this thread has proved 1 thing, the lack of reviews isn't because OCR is dead or nobody's here, it's because you're all asses

[zircon]

  

 

What you've described sounds exactly like it's "dying". What else is substantially decreased activity because there are "better" alternatives and a shift in public interest supposed to mean? It's like saying "Sure, people don't really go to video stores anymore, but that doesn't mean they're dying. There are still some left, but with a smaller customer base. Most people just prefer Netflix now, is all."

 

Nothing that's "dead" ever truly goes away most of the time as far as technology is concerned. When I worked for a movie company, brand new movies we'd get were often sent directly from Dreamworks or whatever on VHS. So VHS still around...but it's definitely a dead format.

 

But as I said, OCR on YouTube and social media is thriving. We've been putting out lots of great albums and remixes almost every day and YouTube is now a major way that people consume that music (we went from ~400k views per month to ~1m per month). OCR is not just these forums, it's an organization. The organization is not dying. 

[Crulex]

So... 2 questions:

 

1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?

2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

 

1. My lack of ReViews lately can be attributed to my new job, which had for the past two months drained my time and energy. Adding to that, I've been kinda burning myself out on video game mixes and needed a little break so that I could come back to it and give decent reviews again. But I'm just about to the point where I think I can slowly get back into it, so I may start again soon.

 

2. I've personally always enjoyed the little "December is Reviews month" scenarios we had, like fighting Larry with reviews FF style. I know it has several pros and cons and it doesn't really apply beyond that one month and all, but those were always fun ways to get people to actually listen to ReMixes and reviewing. Even without prizes, a cool story or idea could be incentive enough to sway people sitting on the reviewing fence.

[djpretzel]

2. I've personally always enjoyed the little "December is Reviews month" scenarios we had, like fighting Larry with reviews FF style. I know it has several pros and cons and it doesn't really apply beyond that one month and all, but those were always fun ways to get people to actually listen to ReMixes and reviewing. Even without prizes, a cool story or idea could be incentive enough to sway people sitting on the reviewing fence.

 

Let's do it again, then. And we'll try and organize some prizes, too!

 

 

But as I said, OCR on YouTube and social media is thriving. We've been putting out lots of great albums and remixes almost every day and YouTube is now a major way that people consume that music (we went from ~400k views per month to ~1m per month). OCR is not just these forums, it's an organization. The organization is not dying. 

 

Indeed, if you look at mixes submitted/posted, albums released, and total engagement over social media, things are great.

 

The MAIN thing we're seeing less of is forum activity, and almost ALL of my plans for the future of the site surround the forums and what we can do with them, so I'm not too worried.... I just need the time to implement these changes, and support from staff in planning it all out.

 

 

In stead of having one platform (the forum) with a lot of reactions, you now have 4 platforms (forum, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook) where the total number of reviews/reactions is probably not as in-depth as in ye olden days but in total numbers it's probably larger. I think it'd be cool to just pull in the comments/reviews from the Youtube, Facebook and Twitter postings in the forum as well and see what that does.

 

I've actually been thinking about how that might work. Does anyone have experience doing comment aggregation and representation across multiple social media platforms? On its surface, it seems like a CRON job that does API calls and caches results back to a table we can use to then present the data on the mix page... would actually be kinda cool... just not at the top of my priority list at the moment...

[Jorito]

I've actually been thinking about how that might work. Does anyone have experience doing comment aggregation and representation across multiple social media platforms? On its surface, it seems like a CRON job that does API calls and caches results back to a table we can use to then present the data on the mix page... would actually be kinda cool... just not at the top of my priority list at the moment...

 

In essence that's what it is. I've done a ton of work with these kinds of Social Media platforms, and conceptually have a pretty good idea of how one should do this. In general it means following the accounts (or particularly for Facebook the Page, for Twitter the account, and for Youtube the channel due to the way these APIs work) find the correct OCReMix post(s) you're looking for, get the comments (potentially with some extra API requests) and store them somewhere. With some glue, rate limit handling, oauth access tokens and (if needed) some kind of strategy to backfill this data for older remixes I think you're good.

 

I could even build it, but the last programming language I touched is Node.js; haven't touched PHP in years. But I'm happy to advice and assist if somebody is up for it.

[CelestialSonata]

Perhaps the ability for the remix posters to input their YouTube video ID, SoundCloud audio ID, or whatever.  If filled in, the API will take care of it and pull in the comments.  I wouldn't combine the comments into one thread though.  The conversations flow within their own platforms.

 

I'm a PHP/JavaScript programmer, so I can also help out if needed.  It's interesting to see how many programmers there are on OC ReMix.

[SystemsReady]

I've worked with Facebook and Twitter aggregation before......it is not fun, tbh. :/ Facebook's dev tools and resources are a mess, if you're lucky to even find out where they are on the site that is, and Twitter has been doing some immensely annoying stuff with their API like limiting the amount of calls you can make in a day.

 

I'm a PHP programmer myself, with a dash of front-end JS/jQuery work and a lot of HTML/CSS experience...but I'm sorely hurting for a paid job and am working on a commission at the moment.

[Brandon Strader]

Let's do it again, then. And we'll try and organize some prizes, too!

 

 

Yes

 

First Prize: Two OCR discs

Second Prize: One OCR disc

Third prize: ReMix Request

 

The remaining top ten (because you've got to have a reward be far-reaching enough that people won't consider it a lost cause to even try)

 

Paid vacation including room and board to their local city's luxurious sewer system, complete with fold-out table, dollar general table cloth, and enough seating for 2 humans and several rats. That's a joke, but just imagine that in your head.. it's like a Disney movie. 

[Chernabogue]

I really like that idea. If you need another stupid trailer like I did with OA, let me know.