Ideas and suggestions

Written by Ansercanagicus on 18.10.2024 at 23:57

Maybe I brought this already, but it would be nice to have a way to upload info such as the time spent listening to an album, it would be complementary to the rating in the sense that albums only listened to a few times show a less accurate score.
it would come in five levels :
- not listened to yet,
- once by bits
- one full spin
- several times
- many times across the years

I hope my picture linking will work in order to illustrate my bullet list


(yes I know that touches the database and needs even more ressource, i'm just imagining it)

speaking about the ratings, we could have a pool of fresh ratings, and another one for mature reflexion. Like the "countless times" can be used 2 months after the first listen. These replayability stats are also interesting on their own as a non-subjective metric.

Neat designs! Is this meant for just personal displaying or does it form a public aggregate? Is it meant to be used to weight certain ratings?

Written by F3ynman on 19.10.2024 at 00:24

Neat designs! Is this meant for just personal displaying or does it form a public aggregate? Is it meant to be used to weight certain ratings?

It can be only personal in the first time. I proposed this system because it would help my way of using metal storm. Every week I'm browsing new releases, so there are those which I'm interested in, I'm just adding them to my collection temporarily. Then those I quickly dismiss, either because they're bad, or good but don't interest me. And then amongst a bunch of albums rated from 7 to 9 it happens that I'll come back to some very often, while others are just left in the dust. This information can go public too.

As for the rating wheighting, it seems clear to me that a rating attributed to an album not even completed is unfair, so these could be weighted down. I'm not the only one throwing bad grades on day 1, sometimes tanking the album. The problem with this system is that people who did not engage with the album are more likely to have rated badly, and people who listened to it countless times are more likely to rate it super good. So it would advantage the good ratings, but at least we would see a difference between an album no one was interested in, one that was good but quickly forgotten, one that may be rated lower but a lot of people are coming back to.

Next idea off my hat : display the mean score (over the ratings that you gave) of a band next to their name (or in the info tab), so when you browse the new releases you don't accidentaly pick the same lame band you listened and rated 5 and forgot for the third time.

This or have a custom blacklist for users.

Oh boy!

I saw the album votes page is truncated (I don't have the right word...paginated?) so it's not possible to CTRL-F to find what you're looking for. If I come across a band, I might select a user with similar tastes to see where to start, rather than assuming the highest rated album is where to begin. For example if I want to find "Best Band" in someone's votes, I don't know if I need to click on page 11 or page 42. Takes some time to find.

In short, if the page needs to remain as it is for QoL or data use limits, perhaps you can add a manual "show all" button? If not, perhaps a search?

Written by LeKiwi on 04.12.2024 at 22:02

I saw the album votes page is truncated (I don't have the right word...paginated?) so it's not possible to CTRL-F to find what you're looking for. If I come across a band, I might select a user with similar tastes to see where to start, rather than assuming the highest rated album is where to begin. For example if I want to find "Best Band" in someone's votes, I don't know if I need to click on page 11 or page 42. Takes some time to find.

If the user also have the rated albums in collection, you can try this url https://metalstorm.net/users/collection.php?user_id=123262.&wishlist=&tradelist=&c_where=bandname&c_what=At%20The%20Gates&sortby=rating

conversely you can inspect the votes of one specific album to see what your friend user rated it
(EDIT well in fact no, the "show all voters" doesn't actually show all voters)
https://metalstorm.net/bands/rating.php?album_id=1221

Written by Ansercanagicus on 06.12.2024 at 17:51

(EDIT well in fact no, the "show all voters" doesn't actually show all voters)
https://metalstorm.net/bands/rating.php?album_id=1221

I think you've found a bug. Actually, I'm pretty sure we've had this bug before where the bottom part of the page gets cut off.

Written by F3ynman on 06.12.2024 at 18:12

Written by Ansercanagicus on 06.12.2024 at 17:51

(EDIT well in fact no, the "show all voters" doesn't actually show all voters)
https://metalstorm.net/bands/rating.php?album_id=1221

I think you've found a bug. Actually, I'm pretty sure we've had this bug before where the bottom part of the page gets cut off.

Not only that, but that feature also has to go. On an album like Master Of Puppets with its almost 4000 votes, just opening the page puts insane load on our database. Idk what I'll replace that with yet, but for now I removed that data for non-logged-in users and it's going on my list of performance issues.

Written by Ansercanagicus on 06.12.2024 at 17:51

If the user also have the rated albums in collection, you can try this url https://metalstorm.net/users/collection.php?user_id=123262.&wishlist=&tradelist=&c_where=bandname&c_what=At%20The%20Gates&sortby=rating

That's interesting, thanks for pointing that out. Not very user friendly though I suppose.

Written by corrupt on 06.12.2024 at 18:35

Not only that, but that feature also has to go. On an album like Master Of Puppets with its almost 4000 votes, just opening the page puts insane load on our database. Idk what I'll replace that with yet, but for now I removed that data for non-logged-in users and it's going on my list of performance issues.

Some ideas:
1. For albums with more than X ratings, you can change the "show all voters" button to 10 separate buttons or you could make each of the numbers on the top chart "clickable" (think Amazon's rating system where you can click on 4-star reviews to see only those).
2. If that's not an option, you could remove all the numbers and only keep the usernames, grouping them under one number. e.g. I click on "1" (say you're looking for rating abuse) and it shows you all users who gave that rating. Not sure if this would reduce the load much.
3. You could potentially limit the number of clicks on "show all voters" by providing a search bar for (1) username and (2) rating.

Hope these are helpful.

I follow a lot of bands I realised that I spend a lot of time opening the links to all my updates each week. It's something I just do and never gave it much thought, but I realised I'd really like to see this simplified somehow. How about one of these or a combo:
1. The best one for me would simple be an "open all" button, though I can imagine there may be some concern or difficulty implementing that;
2. If that's not possible, just listing all the links up top so the user can spam through them more easily. Plus then if they have some addon/plugin/whatever that allow them to open multiple links they can do this themselves;
3. If not, an export all links to CSV could be helpful for some.

4. This one is a bit different: something like "add all to wishlist" or an "add to wishlist" button for album announcements might reduce the time spent clicking through all those.

That said, this problem/use case may be quite niche.

I’m sure it’s been suggested, but better filters for finding new albums would be excellent. Something like this:

-Decade
-Year/Range of Years
-Country

-Genre (you can select two, or subgenre)
-Subgenre
-Visible only/Include Invisible bands/Invisible
-Minimum/Maximum Number of Votes
-Active bands only
-Rating Range

Just a baseline idea. Also I’m referring to the filters like the top 200, not the Bands>Albums tab. I think the search filter could be really great but it’s not used much because decade, year, and genre with minimum twenty votes is a bit to narrow to find much outside what is already mainstream. As much emphasis as MS has on promoting lesser known artists, this would be a good way to stay in line with that because make could albums by smaller bands more searchable. Thoughts? Concerns? Hate mail?

Written by Vellichor on 28.01.2025 at 15:55

I’m sure it’s been suggested, but better filters for finding new albums would be excellent. Something like this:

-Decade
-Year/Range of Years
-Country

-Genre (you can select two, or subgenre)
-Subgenre
-Visible only/Include Invisible bands/Invisible
-Minimum/Maximum Number of Votes
-Active bands only
-Rating Range

Just a baseline idea. Also I’m referring to the filters like the top 200, not the Bands>Albums tab. I think the search filter could be really great but it’s not used much because decade, year, and genre with minimum twenty votes is a bit to narrow to find much outside what is already mainstream. As much emphasis as MS has on promoting lesser known artists, this would be a good way to stay in line with that because make could albums by smaller bands more searchable. Thoughts? Concerns? Hate mail?

Favorite as well

Written by Vellichor on 28.01.2025 at 15:55

I’m sure it’s been suggested, but better filters for finding new albums would be excellent. Something like this:

...
-Country
...

Filtering albums by country is something that I've wished for for a while. I think it hasn't been done because albums don't have info about country. But bands do, so how hard can it be to link album->band->country?

Written by F3ynman on 28.01.2025 at 17:06

Filtering albums by country is something that I've wished for for a while. I think it hasn't been done because albums don't have info about country. But bands do, so how hard can it be to link album->band->country?

Yeah I think the logical workaround would be to filter the band by country, not the album. I don’t actually know how difficult a new filter would be to implement but it seems like the framework is there already. I thought about suggesting city as well because that would really cool to filter my hometown for example, and see what the highest rated albums are for Charlotte bands, but I think that would require updating an entire database and at this point that’s an insurmountable task.

Written by Vellichor on 28.01.2025 at 17:30

Written by F3ynman on 28.01.2025 at 17:06

Filtering albums by country is something that I've wished for for a while. I think it hasn't been done because albums don't have info about country. But bands do, so how hard can it be to link album->band->country?

Yeah I think the logical workaround would be to filter the band by country, not the album. I don’t actually know how difficult a new filter would be to implement but it seems like the framework is there already. I thought about suggesting city as well because that would really cool to filter my hometown for example, and see what the highest rated albums are for Charlotte bands, but I think that would require updating an entire database and at this point that’s an insurmountable task.

I want a way to find out the highest rated albums from a specific country. Hard to do if one can only filter bands by country

Written by F3ynman on 28.01.2025 at 17:39

I want a way to find out the highest rated albums from a specific country. Hard to do if one can only filter bands by country

If you filter bands by country, it would only
display albums from those bands, so it would be functionally the same. An Italian band doesn’t release an album in Germany, so if you have it filtered to only German bands you would only see German albums, right? In the Bands>Albums tab this isn’t possible but I’m referring to updating the filters above the Top 200 that don’t get used enough, so it would be added there. But you’re right, in the Albums tab it would be nice to have country there as well. It would also be nice if to get to the filters above the Top 200, there was just a Discover tab that took you right to them.

I'd love to have a bit more visibility on the bands recently added to the site. At the bottom of the homepage we have "Latest band additions", but it only shows a few bands so if 10 are added since you last checked, you'll only see some of these. Also clicking the hyperlinked text just takes you to the full list of bands.

Since you can see when the band was added through the edit history, I'm assuming that it exists as a variable in the backend database. If that's true, the following would be a nice to have:

• A sort by option or filter for "date added" or
• A dedicated page which lists all bands in the order in which they were added to the site or
• If none of these work, perhaps just a possibility to subscribe to all recently added bands, say in the updates page or a notification for each

Written by LeKiwi on 31.01.2025 at 18:16

I'd love to have a bit more visibility on the bands recently added to the site. At the bottom of the homepage we have "Latest band additions", but it only shows a few bands so if 10 are added since you last checked, you'll only see some of these. Also clicking the hyperlinked text just takes you to the full list of bands.

Since you can see when the band was added through the edit history, I'm assuming that it exists as a variable in the backend database. If that's true, the following would be a nice to have:

• A sort by option or filter for "date added" or
  
• A dedicated page which lists all bands in the order in which they were added to the site or
  
• If none of these work, perhaps just a possibility to subscribe to all recently added bands, say in the updates page or a notification for each
  

That's not the worst idea, but it’s at least partially based on a misunderstanding. The "latest band additions" section doesn’t actually list all recently added bands, it only shows the most recently activated band profiles. These bands may have already been in the database for ten years or more. Additionally, only a portion of all profiles are ever activated, meaning many bands will never appear there.

In theory, the criteria could be changed to display all newly added bands, but that would conflict with other considerations. There are, in fact, certain band profiles that users shouldn’t just randomly stumble upon before a certain date. For example, as of today, you can see here which twelve bands won the Clandestine Cuts monthly user polls in 2024, but before February 1st, that information wasn’t meant to become known to the public. And those aren’t the only bands that were specifically added to the database for the MS Awards.

Overall, I think your suggestion is a good one, but "Latest Band Additions" simply serves a slightly different purpose than its name might suggest. Our goal is to give as many different bands as possible a bit of spotlight on the front page for a few days, whether they’re newcomers with an upcoming album or forgotten and overlooked bands from the past. The only common factor is that they must have an active and up-to-date profile.
You know, in 2024 alone, roughly 2,400 bands were added to the database, and I find it hard to imagine that anyone has the time or patience to check out 200 new bands every month. If all of these bands were showcased on the front page, each individual band would get completely lost in the crowd, as their visibility would often last only a few hours.

However, thanks for the heads-up about the link. The fact that it currently leads to a list of all bands sorted by fan count isn’t particularly helpful, since the "more bands" link directly below it already serves the exact same function. We’ll change that and filter new bands by their band ID instead. That way, people who are genuinely interested can see which bands have been newly added to the database, but we don't have to alter the front page display or its intended purpose. I think that would be a good compromise.

Written by Starvynth on 01.02.2025 at 07:20

partially based on a misunderstanding. The "latest band additions" section doesn’t actually list all recently added bands, it only shows the most recently activated band profiles.

Yeah I was aware, but usually what happens is that completely newly added bands often don't even go through the whole "invisible" phase and go straight to "activated". At least that's what I've noticed.

Quote:

In theory, the criteria could be changed to display all newly added bands, but that would conflict with other considerations. There are, in fact, certain band profiles that users shouldn’t just randomly stumble upon before a certain date.

That's fair. I don't want to spoil anything as such.

Quote:

You know, in 2024 alone, roughly 2,400 bands were added to the database, and I find it hard to imagine that anyone has the time or patience to check out 200 new bands every month.

Yeah absolutely - it makes no sense that someone could keep on top of that. My problem is this: I'm quite deep into the prog/avant-garde niche and sometimes I feel like there aren't any bands I haven't heard of (despite that being completely untrue). I use the band page to find new artists, but sometimes bands that formed in the past escape my radar because there's no filter for that (e.g. a band was recently added to MS which formed in 2022, but since I'm sorting by the "formed in" year I totally miss it).

Quote:

We’ll change that and filter new bands by their band ID instead. That way, people who are genuinely interested can see which bands have been newly added to the database, but we don't have to alter the front page display or its intended purpose. I think that would be a good compromise.

That's a great solution! Looking forward to it

It's possible that I may be misremembering things, but I recall you could click on an album in the MS Awards it took you to the album page. Fortunately most of the blurbs have the album linked in there somewhere, but sometimes it's not. What I recall I could do:

• click the category (e.g. alt metal)
• click the album from the list at the top which takes you to the blurb below
• click the band name or album name to take you to respective pages

Like I said, maybe I'm imagining things, but it would be great to get this (back).

Written by LeKiwi on 01.02.2025 at 19:35

It's possible that I may be misremembering things, but I recall you could click on an album in the MS Awards it took you to the album page. Fortunately most of the blurbs have the album linked in there somewhere, but sometimes it's not.

I re-added that probably while you were writing this post.

Written by corrupt on 01.02.2025 at 19:36

fixed

Amazing - thanks!

Written by corrupt on 01.02.2025 at 19:36

-

Also thanks so much for adding this! Does it also save the user nominations at the end of the voting period? Usually these disappear.

Written by LeKiwi on 01.02.2025 at 19:58

Written by corrupt on 01.02.2025 at 19:36

-

Also thanks so much for adding this! Does it also save the user nominations at the end of the voting period? Usually these disappear.

They'll remain. You can look at 2023 for reference. We won't delete user votes in the future (except abuse votes).

Written by corrupt on 01.02.2025 at 20:03

They'll remain. You can look at 2023 for reference. We won't delete user votes in the future (except abuse votes).

Great to hear - 2023 was the first year I didn't participate so this is a nice surprise.

Written by LeKiwi on 01.02.2025 at 15:52

That's a great solution! Looking forward to it

And here it is.

corrupt was kind enough to implement this really quickly. So if you follow the link on the front page now, all bands are pre-sorted in descending order based on the date they were added to the database. Additionally, the "last added" filter (in gray, right next to "Band") can now be applied anywhere else on the site that accesses the band database.

Written by Starvynth on 01.02.2025 at 22:39

corrupt was kind enough to implement this really quickly. So if you follow the link on the front page now, all bands are pre-sorted in descending order based on the date they were added to the database. Additionally, the "last added" filter (in gray, right next to "Band") can now be applied anywhere else on the site that accesses the band database.

Amazing! Thanks corrupt! I also just noticed that filters remain after moving between pages (e.g. if you have a genre filter on the band page and navigate to the album page, it's there). Might be an older changed, but love the attention to detail

Very, very minor, but write-ins of albums not in the database are showing up before the ones that are, which then are sorted alphabetically. Like here: https://metalstorm.net/awards/categories.php?cat_id=46 Elemental is before Aara
EXTREMELY minor, especially that I believe there will not be many legit write-ins not in the db, but if you want to make it perfect... My proposition is either mixing them together or having the votes show *after* db albums cause I believe the latter are more 'important' from the website perspective

Written by NastyHero on 03.02.2025 at 10:53
Very, very minor, but write-ins of albums not in the database are showing up before the ones that are, which then are sorted alphabetically. Like here: https://metalstorm.net/awards/categories.php?cat_id=46 Elemental is before Aara

yup, that was a bug. Forgot to pull both possible sources for band and album names into the order statement. That's fixed now.