Songs Chart - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

revolver94
professional dilettante

Gender: Male
Age: 29
Location: DC suburb

At the present time, the top rated songs chart, although interesting to look at, is majorly flawed. Most of the top rated songs come from the top albums (which is not always the case). Albums like "Funeral" or "Revolver" have many of their songs in the top 100 songs of all time- an honor which virtually no album deserves. This is even more evident when looking at decade song charts. Although I realize this would be difficult and a major change, would it be possible to set up a way to rank songs? To start, you could limit users to choosing only ten songs, and perhaps limit who is able to use the new feature as well (a beta version, so to speak). This may have been suggested before, but I find myself wishing it were the case often enough that I thought I should post. Thanks!

P.S.- This is my favorite website, and has been now for quite some time. Keep it up!

alelsupreme
Awful.

Gender: Male
Age: 27

Yeah, there's a problem when amongs the best rated songs of all time you've got On The RUn by Pink Floyd, which is just an irritating instruemental.

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Yes, the top-rated songs could do with a bit of tweaking. The Bayesian average that is used on BEA favours items that have been rated more heavily over other items and because these tracks appear on the most popular albums, they've been rated more often than other tracks. I'll have a think about how this might be improved.

As far as adding 'song charts', that's maybe something for the future but it's not planned at the moment.

Facetious

Gender: Male
Age: 24
Location: Somewhere you've never been

Yes, it is majorly flawed alright, and I support the idea of a song chart.

Fergenaprido

Gender: Male
Location: GTA

revolver94 wrote:

At the present time, the top rated songs chart, although interesting to look at, is majorly flawed. Most of the top rated songs come from the top albums (which is not always the case). Albums like "Funeral" or "Revolver" have many of their songs in the top 100 songs of all time- an honor which virtually no album deserves. This is even more evident when looking at decade song charts. Although I realize this would be difficult and a major change, would it be possible to set up a way to rank songs? To start, you could limit users to choosing only ten songs, and perhaps limit who is able to use the new feature as well (a beta version, so to speak). This may have been suggested before, but I find myself wishing it were the case often enough that I thought I should post. Thanks!

I think the main problem is not enough people are voting for songs. The vast majority tend to vote on albums, and ignore songs (and artists for that matter). If more songs were voted for, I think the top rated songs chart would become (somewhat) more balanced.

Perhaps if we started some sort of internal site-wide drive, such as "January is rate a Beatles song month" or everyone rates the songs listed on their top 10/50/100 albums in a certain month, it would contribute to the overall quality of the chart. Plus, it would give people more points, which can lead to more rewards with the system (even if people are currently at the maximum level)

Another option to encourage voting could be to tweak the calculation of points. Right now, I think voting for albums, songs, and artists are more important and contribute more to the site than chart or album comments and forum posts. If other people agreed, and this was reflected in the way that points are calculated, it might see an increase in user participation when it comes to voting.

On a side note (instead of creating a new thread), the emoticon code for the Whistling Smiley doesn't display properly for me. All it shows is " javascript:emoticon(':- " when most others finish with a " ') " as well.

Jabapac

Gender: Male
Age: 36

Quote:

Yeah, there's a problem when amongs the best rated songs of all time you've got On The RUn by Pink Floyd, which is just an irritating instruemental.

I don't really see a problem in this; it's named top-rated Songs because most of the tracks are Songs, I mean it seems impossible (and bit dumb) to creat a top-rated chart for each Instrumentals, Skits, Intros, Outros and so on..

Quote:

Yes, the top-rated songs could do with a bit of tweaking. The Bayesian average that is used on BEA favours items that have been rated more heavily over other items and because these tracks appear on the most popular albums, they've been rated more often than other tracks. I'll have a think about how this might be improved.

For what I have noticed here, any Item gets nearly around 50 ratings is highly-wheighted, and gets a fair average.

Quote:

Perhaps if we started some sort of internal site-wide drive, such as "January is rate a Beatles song month" or everyone rates the songs listed on their top 10/50/100 albums in a certain month, it would contribute to the overall quality of the chart. Plus, it would give people more points, which can lead to more rewards with the system (even if people are currently at the maximum level)

Damn agree with this!

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Fergenaprido wrote:

On a side note (instead of creating a new thread), the emoticon code for the Whistling Smiley doesn't display properly for me. All it shows is " javascript:emoticon(':- " when most others finish with a " ') " as well.

Thanks for spotting that, I'll get that fixed very shortly.

Jabapac wrote:

Quote:

Yeah, there's a problem when amongs the best rated songs of all time you've got On The RUn by Pink Floyd, which is just an irritating instruemental.

I don't really see a problem in this; it's named top-rated Songs because most of the tracks are Songs, I mean it seems impossible (and bit dumb) to creat a top-rated chart for each Instrumentals, Skits, Intros, Outros and so on..

This page could also be called top-rated tracks (and it was at one point), but now it's more of a SEO-led title because people coming from search engines tend to search for top songs more than top tracks (although it would be more correct to say track.)

Jabapac wrote:

Fergenaprido wrote:

Perhaps if we started some sort of internal site-wide drive, such as "January is rate a Beatles song month" or everyone rates the songs listed on their top 10/50/100 albums in a certain month, it would contribute to the overall quality of the chart. Plus, it would give people more points, which can lead to more rewards with the system (even if people are currently at the maximum level)

Damn agree with this!

This is a bit more difficult to answer because ratings are far quicker and easier to leave than comments are, and some people are using ratings as an easy way to build up their points (and rating tracks/albums they haven't even heard!). Doubling the points would make this idea even more attractive/easier for people and would promote even more misuse of the system, so I must say I am against the idea of increasing the points value. I think having a drive to get people to rate more songs is a better idea.

On the top-rated chart, there's a mechanism that people can use to filter items that you haven't rated. Perhaps something like this needs to be added on other pages e.g. flag up on an album page more obviously if you've not yet rated it (or the tracks and artist). Not sure how this would look, or where it would go, but just an idea.

Guest

albummaster wrote:

This is a bit more difficult to answer because ratings are far quicker and easier to leave than comments are, and some people are using ratings as an easy way to build up their points (and rating tracks/albums they haven't even heard!). Doubling the points would make this idea even more attractive/easier for people and would promote even more misuse of the system, so I must say I am against the idea of increasing the points value. I think having a drive to get people to rate more songs is a better idea.

On the top-rated chart, there's a mechanism that people can use to filter items that you haven't rated. Perhaps something like this needs to be added on other pages e.g. flag up on an album page more obviously if you've not yet rated it (or the tracks and artist). Not sure how this would look, or where it would go, but just an idea.

I have definitely noticed this recently - people coming onto the site and rating absolutely everything in sight (like you say regardless of whether they have listened to the album/band/songs or not). It can be a bit frustrating particularly if it is blatantly obvious that it is just to get the points. I agree that upping the points for rating would only lead to more abuse!

Maybe one way around this is to limit people to only being able to rate the albums/songs on their own charts or in the overall top 100.

Fergenaprido

Gender: Male
Location: GTA

mancsoulsister wrote:

I have definitely noticed this recently - people coming onto the site and rating absolutely everything in sight (like you say regardless of whether they have listened to the album/band/songs or not). It can be a bit frustrating particularly if it is blatantly obvious that it is just to get the points. I agree that upping the points for rating would only lead to more abuse!

Maybe one way around this is to limit people to only being able to rate the albums/songs on their own charts or in the overall top 100.

While I agree it can be a problem if people just rate songs without listening to them, I don't think a lot of people do it. I know when I joined, I rated a lot of songs to get the points, but I only rated songs I had actually listened to (basically the ones in my iTunes), which was more than enough to put me at my current level when levels got introduced. With ratings being only worth half points, you would have to rate a lot for it to be worth it, while comments and forum posts are worth double, which arguably leads to more people posting useless drivel on the forums and charts just to get points.

I don't think limiting what people can vote for will help the situation. Generally, the more people that vote, the more that the result is viable. Also, if you only vote for the stuff on your chart, you only vote for the stuff you like, and then everything will have a high rating and all ratings will be meaningless. While I personally think that voting should be more important than comments or forum posts, perhaps the current system is a better balance, because it encourages people to vote, but doesn't over-reward them for doing so.

I don't think there is any perfect system to prevent people from voting falsely, but the more people that actually vote, the less those fake votes are going to affect the overall ratings and quality.

Anyway, I created a post in the Music forum to follow up with my idea earlier in this thread: February Song Rating Extravaganza
We'll see if it works.

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

mancsoulsister wrote:

Maybe one way around this is to limit people to only being able to rate the albums/songs on their own charts or in the overall top 100.

Not sure that would work (although a good idea in theory), because then if you don't like an album, and it's not in your chart, you won't be able to rate it.

Fergenaprido wrote:

while comments and forum posts are worth double, which arguably leads to more people posting useless drivel on the forums and charts just to get points.

Anyway, I created a post in the Music forum to follow up with my idea earlier in this thread: February Song Rating Extravaganza
We'll see if it works.

It might be the case that the quality of posts may have been affected, but it's also the case the forums are now far more active, which was one of the motives behind adding the new system. I think the points balance is about right.

Thanks for creating that other post, hopefully it'll help generate some more activity.