What's happening in here?

[hi19hi19]

Re: What's happening in here?

Good point. I am kind of here to discuss it and help lend a hand in figuring that out. I am providing what I know based on what has worked in the past but I also want input from others. I think it's important to discuss this all as openly as possible. So to answer your question: I have ideas bouncing around in my head but I want to figure this out as a group because it's important that everyone is on board.

I can tell you, right now, that this issue is what is going to make or break the site. "Hoping for the right people to volunteer" is no longer effective.

I have talked with OWA and bmah. They are leaving the site soon.

bmah said it very elegantly: "like I feel bad that there's less people to look after the site but the amount of time and energy required to pass on the torch is just not worth my time"
For what it's worth, I am in the same position. (I don't think I was the "right people" for some of the things I've wound up doing in the first place)
God bless the work ethic of people such as Dossar, Silvuh, and everyone else who has stuck it out. But the community is shrinking and chances of the right person just happening to volunteer is diminishing.

I have the past year+ of the site slowly collapsing (if you want a metric, go by concurrent users) and countless threads complaining about the site's administration to back my point of view up.

I've seen what it looks like when web communities die. This community is dying. Someone needs to be appointed to step in and forcibly MANAGE the site.

I proposed doing this with money; if you have some other way of doing it, do it fast. Good luck.

[MosaicMan3]

Re: What's happening in here?

I actually wrote a long thought out post due to frustration at a few of synth's responses. And deleted it so I wouldn't show my ass to the whole community.

I just hope EVERYONE understands that drastic changes are needed, and they're needed now. Things are going down hill every day.....

[MosaicMan3]

Re: What's happening in here?

I can tell you, right now, that this issue is what is going to make or break the site. "Hoping for the right people to volunteer" is no longer effective.

I have talked with OWA and bmah. They are leaving the site soon.

bmah said it very elegantly: "like I feel bad that there's less people to look after the site but the amount of time and energy required to pass on the torch is just not worth my time"
For what it's worth, I am in the same position.
God bless the work ethic of people such as Dossar, Silvuh, and everyone else who has stuck it out. But the community is shrinking and chances of the right person just happening to volunteer is diminishing.

I have the past year+ of the site slowly collapsing (if you want a metric, go by concurrent users) and countless threads complaining about the site's administration to back my point of view up.

I've seen what it looks like when web communities die. This community is dying. Someone needs to be appointed to step in and forcibly MANAGE the site.

I proposed doing this with money; if you have some other way of doing it, do it fast. Good luck.

This is the truth, probably the best post yet.

[Crazyjayde]

Re: What's happening in here?

I'll step up for Noname (my brother) to say he's done tremendous work handling and gathering song and in-game data information (corrections, permissions, wiki etc.) but have felt no impact for doing so since the start. I've personally dropped in to help when I could even though it's hard to keep up with him and generally felt the same. A handful (bmah, prawn, hi19, goldstinger, eze) were also keen to help push the thing forward. The wiki was built basically to showcase the changes that could be implemented. It's basically ghost-maintenance and kind of a statement to our involvement and interest with the site.

[DossarLX ODI]

Re: What's happening in here?

so did anyone figure out what the point of the batch is yet or is it one of those things that's just done because that's how it's always been done and nobody stops to think about it despite it being ridiculously stupid and inefficient

Having a batch system allows us to keep track of the file submission flow to the site. The bookkeeping is necessary to monitor what users have submitted, monitor permissions on submitted files, and look at files accordingly for issues.

There isn't anything wrong with suggestions on how to improve the batch. However, I see no direction given in this post. I've discussed with Silvuh the idea of having weekly updates on Sunday at 10 PM EST about the progress of the batch, and the new Sprint structure will allow the GMs to see what is currently assigned to the Judgment Team and the remaining tasks to do. We also have a much better idea on which judges are actually active.

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

Having a batch system allows us to keep track of the file submission flow to the site. The bookkeeping is necessary to monitor what users have submitted, monitor permissions on submitted files, and look at files accordingly for issues.

There isn't anything wrong with suggestions on how to improve the batch. However, I see no direction given in this post.

First, I thought the main purpose of the batch was to make sure the songs on the site are good enough for people to play. My understanding is, a group of people who are considered experts must play and listen to a song several times and then provide a review of how good it is, and whether it should be on the site. If enough of the members of the team consider it good enough, then it goes on the site.

Second, we can track file submission, do bookkeeping, and monitor permissions without having this whole in-depth analysis about whether a song is good or not. Similar to osu, just let the community deal with giving songs ratings and identifying issues. The most useful thing I think we get out of the batch is a difficulty rating.

Keep in mind that of course I would think the difficulty is most important because I'm a developer who's main concern is game mechanics.

[hi19hi19]

Re: What's happening in here?

The most useful thing I think we get out of the batch is a difficulty rating.

Difficulty ratings don't come from the batch.

Difficulty ratings come from OWA playing the file once while taking a dump and coming up with a ballpark number.



I wish I was joking.

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

Difficulty ratings don't come from the batch.

I wish I was joking.

I rest my case

EDIT: Let's just make an algorithm for difficulty so that OWA can poop in peace

[hi19hi19]

Re: What's happening in here?

Trumpet, man, the more I learn about this site, the less confident I am that it will be there tomorrow.

I wish I had the heart to explain how utterly laughable FFR's legal standing is. The amount of ways and number of people who could sue this site or forcibly get content removed is astronomical.

God damn.

EDIT: Let's just make an algorithm for difficulty so that OWA can poop in peace

A lot of things can and should be automated in FFR's workflow. But who is going to do it?

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

Trumpet, man, the more I learn about this site, the less confident I am that it will be there tomorrow.

[hugs] Don't worry, man, you can take the community out of FFR, but you can never take FFR out of the community.

[DossarLX ODI]

Re: What's happening in here?

First, I thought the main purpose of the batch was to make sure the songs on the site are good enough for people to play. My understanding is, a group of people who are considered experts must play and listen to a song several times and then provide a review of how good it is, and whether it should be on the site. If enough of the members of the team consider it good enough, then it goes on the site.

That falls under looking over the files for issues.

Second, we can track file submission, do bookkeeping, and monitor permissions without having this whole in-depth analysis about whether a song is good or not. Similar to osu, just let the community deal with giving songs ratings and identifying issues. The most useful thing I think we get out of the batch is a difficulty rating.

Like hi19hi19 mentioned, difficulty ratings aren't determined when judging the batch. They get determined by a difficulty consultant after a file is accepted, and the one actively doing that is OWA.

Submission tracking doesn't have anything to do with the content of the files themselves, so I don't see what the point is here. I never said the actual content of the files was related to monitoring permissions or bookkeeping. The judgment process is what determines what gets put into the queue of files to release, and conditional queue is used for fixing files that have potential to be ingame.

[_Zenith_]

Re: What's happening in here?

Difficulty ratings don't come from the batch.

Difficulty ratings come from OWA playing the file once while taking a dump and coming up with a ballpark number.



I wish I was joking.

To my knowledge this is partially true.

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

I never said the actual content of the files was related to monitoring permissions or bookkeeping. The judgment process is what determines what gets put into the queue of files to release, and conditional queue is used for fixing files that have potential to be ingame.

Okay look, who knows what you're talking about here. I don't even know what the batch is anymore. Now you're telling me that the queue is not the batch, nor is it judgement, and there's two different kinds of queues, and the batch is really just a bunch of bookkeeping, in which case, I don't understand how that can be difficult when the user submitting the file includes information like who the author of the music is. Then you just run a lookup on a spreadsheet, or better yet set up the site to do it automatically. Boom, permissions checked, submission logged and dated.

Help me out here

[DossarLX ODI]

Re: What's happening in here?

The Queue is the list of accepted files, and the Conditional Queue is a subset of the Queue which contains the files that need additional fixing before getting ingame. The Batch is both the Queue and submitted files for the bi-monthly periods.

Essentially you can think of the Queue as the accepted files, and the Batch is a way to move submitted files to the Queue or have the files be submitted to another period to be rejudged.

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

The Queue is the list of accepted files, and the Conditional Queue is a subset of the Queue which contains the files that need additional fixing before getting ingame. The Batch is both the Queue and submitted files for the bi-monthly periods.

Essentially you can think of the Queue as the accepted files, and the Batch is a way to move submitted files to the Queue or have the files be submitted to another period to be rejudged.

And when does judgement happen? Is that also part of the batch?