Recommendations forum - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

sp4cetiger

There is a detailed discussion going on in the music forum about dividing the recommendations thread into individual genres and perhaps even subgenres:

Genre extravaganza

This would likely lead to the creation of a lot of threads and thus a lot of traffic in the Music forum, which already sees a lot of activity from "____ of the day" threads. I suggest we create a separate forum for "Music Recommendations". Music recs are one of the best reasons for coming to BEA, so I do think it's interesting enough for its own forum, even putting clutter issues aside.

What do others think?

Happymeal

I'd also like to add that the recommendations portion of the forums would possibly add quite a bit more ideas for threads, topics, discussion, etc. It could also prove to be huge in assisting people in finding whaqt they want to find.

Romanelli
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I think that genre threads will mostly end up being very short and dying quickly. The music forum right now has threads on it that haven't been responded to on page one in 21 hours. I'd say that if there are going to be a multitude of genre threads (in addition to the albums listened to thread, the overall recommendation thread, the listening logs, chart of the day, chart chat, user pick of the day, plus every chart on the site), we'll only have too many recommendation threads. I don't think we need more than what we already have....and we certainly don't need another forum to separate music talk from music talk.
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sp4cetiger

Romanelli wrote:

I think that genre threads will mostly end up being very short and dying quickly.

If they die quickly they will be quickly buried in the Music forum and will have minimal usefulness. The current recs thread, while useful for on-demand recs, is a pain to navigate and more or less useless for archival purposes.

It really depends on how much use the threads/forum would get, though, so anybody who thinks this will be useful to them should speak up here. It shouldn't be done if it's only for a handful of users.

Last edited by sp4cetiger on 05/29/2014 20:12; edited 2 times in total

BrandonMiaow

Romanelli wrote:

I think that genre threads will mostly end up being very short and dying quickly. The music forum right now has threads on it that haven't been responded to on page one in 21 hours. I'd say that if there are going to be a multitude of genre threads (in addition to the albums listened to thread, the overall recommendation thread, the listening logs, chart of the day, chart chat, user pick of the day, plus every chart on the site), we'll only have too many recommendation threads. I don't think we need more than what we already have....and we certainly don't need another forum to separate music talk from music talk.

But more is always better! And besides, the more things we have going on, the more likely it is that new users will pop in and put their two cents in. If they see a genre thread for a genre they particularly like then they'll want to participate! Smile

I don't know, but I spend a lot of time digging into specific genres for a bit before moving onto another thanks to RYM's genre charts, it'd be cool to bring that experience to BEA and make it more collaborative.
Though I'm not entirely certain about splitting the music subforum into two...doesn't really seem like a good idea to split something like that further down, because with the way discussion works the two would probably morph right into each other, becoming identical, though I understand it can get cluttered, but there has to be another way of doing it. Happymeal said it would be weekly, that doesn't seem like it would add too much clutter, honestly.

sp4cetiger

BrandonMiaow wrote:

Though I'm not entirely certain about splitting the music subforum into two...doesn't really seem like a good idea to split something like that further down, because with the way discussion works the two would probably morph right into each other, becoming identical.

I don't understand this point... why would they become identical? A recommendations forum would be for recommendations and the music forum would be for all other threads relating to music.

BrandonMiaow

sp4cetiger wrote:

I don't understand this point... why would they become identical? A recommendations forum would be for recommendations and the music forum would be for all other threads relating to music.

Yeah but would they stay that way? The two kinda flow into each other, there isn't enough to differentiate them. Like, chances are people are going to end up recommending albums in the non-recommendation one, and discussing albums in the recommendation one. Maybe this is a silly point? Just seems like two of (almost) the same type of forums is silly...

Well, actually, I'm thinking about it and I think I've changed my mind. O_O I'm just imaging a bunch of individual threads asking for specific recs. cooool O_O Idk, let's see what others think, I'm undecided.

sp4cetiger

BrandonMiaow wrote:

Well, actually, I'm thinking about it and I think I've changed my mind. O_O I'm just imaging a bunch of individual threads asking for specific recs. cooool O_O Idk, let's see what others think, I'm undecided.

Yeah, this would mostly be for the threads that Happymeal is talking about. Of course, people will always be throwing around recommendations in the music forum and that's fine, but the genre-specific threads would be separated for people to browse when they're looking for genre-specific recs.

But again, if that's really a niche thing, then Romanelli is right, there's no need to separate them. Mecca has said he would find it useful and I know I would, but that alone is not enough to justify it, so others should chime in.

BrandonMiaow

sp4cetiger wrote:

Yeah, this would mostly be for the threads that Happymeal is talking about. Of course, people will always be throwing around recommendations in the music forum and that's fine, but the genre-specific threads would be separated for people to browse when they're looking for genre-specific recs.

But again, if that's really a niche thing, then Romanelli is right, there's no need to separate them. Mecca has said he would find it useful and I know I would, but that alone is not enough to justify it, so others should chime in.

So it would be a big archive of genres and some of their key albums? Now that would be really neat.
Why not just call it the genre subforum? Less misleading.

RepoMan

sp4cetiger wrote:

It really depends on how much use the threads/forum would get, though, so anybody who thinks this will be useful should speak up here. It shouldn't be done if it's only for a handful of users.

A quick scroll through the Genre Extravaganza thread already shows that there is genuine excitement for this idea and a broad group of members interested in this. (I know you already know this Sp4cetiger. This is directed at people who haven't scanned through that thread yet.)

I'll be back with a more detailed post later about why this is useful (especially from a newbie's perspective) and a potential solution (e.g. mimicking the current setup of the ULL).