[albummaster]

Another site update released today. The main functional changes in this update are improvements to recent visit deltas and level up info on the home page and the introduction of dark mode (which is still rough around the edges, but will only get finished if it goes live). To access dark mode, use the logged in menu and your selection will be remembered between visits (on the same device).

On the aggregated charts, the top voted comment for each album is now displayed. Comments are selected taking into account the votes they’ve received as well as the length of the comment (some comments may be excluded if they contain excessive profanity, are too short, or are conversational between users etc). The aim is to surface the best available comment for the top 10,000 albums, so people can see at a glance what each album is about (this also helps to humanise the site a bit more).You can vote up or down the quotes directly from the chart and it will feed into the algorithm (the same mechanism is used to pick comments for album of the day and the site newsletter (extra points for those flagged top rated to further incentivise quality comments may be added down the line).

Other changes:
- Add additional types of aggregate chart movements to home page deltas (random slice shown on each page load)
- You can now view additional chart version history (beyond the first 100 revisions) for charts with long edit histories
- Invalid release date threshold raised to 4,000 (top 3,000 now completed)
- Added more help text on profile page for "Set limit for random albums" & "Show Collector's Summary"
- Fixed percent and number of album columns not sorting in collection compositions
- Fixed delete comment not working
- Fixed BEAnniversary years on profile page off by one year
- Reinstated album/chart of the day into carousel
- Adjusted weighted best comment algorithm
- Added global site totals to activity deltas (e.g. total albums etc)
- Fix if charts page filtered for recent chart updates, no message is displayed to say that this is a list of recent charts
- 'Add to Home Screen' prompt on mobile is now dismissed for one day (& not repeated on each page load)
- Added friendly error message if your device is offline (and don't show blank browser page)
- After saving a draft forum post, redirect to Drafts page (instead of forum index)
- Add border/outline to rating stars where a partial star is displayed
- Add freshness indicator to overall/year/decade chart (e.g. last updated)
- Fix insert BEA link fails if apostrophe or quotation marks in title
- Many optimisations to combat bots

A lot of time is still being spent in the background adding bot defences to ring-fence the site for human users and adding optimisations to improve the speed of the site.

In terms of overall progress against the 2026 roadmap, we're now at the end of Q1 (start of Q2). The roadmap for the rest of year will soon be revised as I've fallen a bit behind despite working full time on the site. The overrun is not only due to dealing with bots, but also because some of the changes already completed were bigger than expected & running the site at the time as doing the dev work is very time-consuming.

Enjoy the site and more soon
AM
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Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X

[bonnequestion]

Thanks again for all the effort you put in and the great work!

Just wanted to let you know that I can't access "My Charts" page since the update, I'm getting this message:

Apologies, an error has occurred loading this page (500):

The server experienced an unexpected error. Please verify the address and try again.

Thanks again for your great work!

[albummaster]

Thanks, just checking into this now (sorry) 🫢
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Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X

[bonnequestion]

It's already fixed, that was fast! Thanks again!

[Juneof44]

Mmmm...i really enjoy BEA, but really don't like the new feature of the most popular comment right below every record...

[albummaster]

[Romanelli]

Yeah...the comments don't really work for me, either. Maybe because I have gone into this without caring what other people have to say about about albums. Many of the "top" comments are annoyances, many have misspellings, so yeah...if there's an option to hide them, I'd be all for it. I just prefer my overall chart without opinions.
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I'm leaning on the threshold
Of her mystery
And crashing through the walls
Of dying history

[albummaster]

Thanks for feedback, probably will add an option to hide them for power users. Also, will look at curating the comments a bit more to ensure quality is more consistent. Agree, possibly a bit rough around the edges at the moment.There are some great comments out there and I think with Improved curation, they'll be a useful addition for casual visitors.
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Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X

[albummaster]

Just to add, in the meantime, if anyone spots any comments that probably shouldn't be surfaced, please report them via the report post buttons [ ! ], or thumb them down (as the algorithm favours upvoted comments). In the background, prior to releasing the last site update, I skim-read about 60,000 individual comments (and flagged as unusable about 3,000), but that was just a first pass and wasn't being too strict. Now comments are being displayed on site, it's a bit easier to see them in context and they'll improve in quality, especially after enough time has passed to properly review them all (even the difference between today and last week is quite big).
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Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X