From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.
electrogear ·
Just an idea, maybe the examples area of SM Forum could have a rating for each thread. Each user rates the example (if he or she wishes) and then a 'sort by rating' option is available. The reason I think this would be a good idea - I've been away from the forum for a good few months and I've come back wanting to find some cool creations on the forum but I'm finding I have to sift through the chaff first (no offence!)
I guess you could have the same for all topics/forums and then when beginners start they can have instant access to the best rated posts. I guess to take it a step further you could even have rated best by beginners/intermediate/advanced. I always think it's a good idea to get the SM community involved with things like this - it can only improve the service, just like beta testing and bug reporting do...
Not sure if that'd be hard to implement though I imagine it probably isn't part of the standard phbb code that I am assuming SM uses?
Cheers,
Mike
Tom7777 ·
Well won't that just cause groups of people voting for their forum friends and vote for my examples posts? Just look at KVR, half of what i read people saying is amazing turns out to be standard and boring stuff im not interested in. Also it gives the impression new examples are bad because they don't have a high rating right away. 🙂
Im not exactly against the idea but if it happens i would like to request the option to turn it off also. 😈
electrogear ·
Tom7777 wrote: Well won't that just cause groups of people voting for their forum friends and vote for my examples posts?
I don't think it would. That could be moderated and 'vote for my' posts removed by mods, although I can't see it happening anyway I think people have a fair amount of respect for the forum and that sort of behaviour is pretty childish I think people would know better.
Tom7777 wrote: Im not exactly against the idea but if it happens i would like to request the option to turn it off also. 😈
I'm not sure if you've used eBuyer? I'm sure there's lots of other sites like it. The standard view is 'sort by price' (In SM's case this would be sort by date). The rating (stars) are shown underneath the title of each item, and if nobody votes for it no rating is shown. That way when you put 'order by stars' then the new things are sent to the bottom and the highest ratings are sent to the bottom, so if you like you can select to view ratings (lowest first) and see the new or unrated posts.
Obviously the standard 'sort by date' would be the default setting but I think it would be handy to be able to switch to rating mode occasionally.
Nu Audio Science ·
I'm not in favour of this myself to be honest
Lately i have found the search engine here to much better than usual and i happy enough with that
I tried doing the example module index and i might update that soon but it is a hell of a lot of work especially when modules keep dissappearing hehehehehe
Even a bunch of stuff posted by the SM team has dissapeared too LOL
Personally i kind of like the idea you had in another thread of doing something like MAXs module database or whatever it was
For me that would be much more superior to be honest, Then again it's not like that much is being posted anymore anyway in the way of examples, I don't hardly ever post anything cause i spend a week making something to find somebody posted an example of it two years ago hahahahahaha
NAS
Tom7777 ·
Well im sure it could work but in most cases with these voting things you have 5 stars on loads of stuff thats just ok or everything their fav developer made. Usually you have the friends thing going on so say someone helps a newbie out with a problem no doubt they then go and give everything he makes a 5 star rating etc. It's stupid of course but it happens a lot on the internet. I usually just try things for myself rather than with the site ratings because most of the time i find they don't work.
As NAS says though the search is good and it also gets what you want at the time. Theres also the new posts feature so you can see whats new since the last login. As i said before im not against the idea but i don't think the devs should go out of there way to change the forum as it works fine already. If i had just downloaded things that had 4 or 5 stars on the sites i use that have them though i would have missed out on a lot of great stuff. 🙂
electrogear ·
I don't know Tom - you get stuff like that happening on sites like Youtube, because any halfwit can log on there, give everybody a load of gip and then dish out hundreds of low ratings and negative reputations, or sign up just to give their friends' videos more views or better ratings, but the SM forum isn't that sort of site - this is a pretty specialist subject and people involved with it are likely to be of reasonable intelligence. You know what happens here anyway - some idiot joins up and starts being a prat or spamming they get banned fairly soon. The ability to give out ratings could be disabled for the first 10 posts or something. I have made friends on the forum but just because they are friends I'm not likely to go giving them brilliant ratings unless I actually think they are - I think most people would fall into that category.
I'm not saying it should be the focus of the search engine, just more of a feature you'd have to look for than a feature that stands out as the be-all-and-end-all of finding good posts - sure there are the good old-fashioned methods you mention (trawling through posts) which can bring up some fruitful posts.
NAS I'm totally with you on the Module Database but I was thinking of something that's more feasible for the SM team to implement because they don't seem to be putting a lot of manpower into the software right now so I assumed the same would go for the site. Even with a module database I still would like some sort of ratings feature like the Max Database has.
Tom7777 ·
The ability to give out ratings could be disabled for the first 10 posts or something.
Add to that the restriction of being a registered user and it might just work well 😀
But yeah i don't mind if it happens but from experience of basically every site i use which has star ratings they are usually biased. I know what you mean though about the SM forum not being like that but then again i can only think it would still happen at some point or cause lots of dissapointment and vote for me appeal threads.
If it did happen though it would need to not re-order anything and be optional, i wouldn't want to use it really though unless i found it to be spot on every time as i like to decide myself.
Acrobat ·
Sorry, I am against rating at all, seems unfair to me.
Who can say what I really need? Just me.
Rating works for records, books, movies, maybe...
but even in those cases there might be some artists who
I really enjoy buried under tons of points for the worst commercial band!
I mean, this is not a SynthMaker Academy... at least I hope so!
electrogear ·
I wasn't really thinking like that Acrobat. Take for example a year or so back, there was one guy joined the forum to advertise his 'new VSTs' and website (I think he was Japanese). All he had done was taken the example synth and put this awful background on it. That's a pretty extreme example but often there's a post where somebody has done an example which isn't innovative nor instructive.
Of course like I said it wouldn't be the focus of the forum you'd have to look for it and switch it on! General feeling seems to be against this idea though so I guess it's just me! 🙂
philter5 ·
hard to decide, there are some good reasons for it but on the other side some reasons
against it,it wouldn´t also make sense to bundle the example ratings with the users posts,
(which was my first thought)
means : the more posts a user has the better rated examples he can download.
but i think this will end up in a lot of posts with unimportant content only to get the "good ones".
but commonly i like the idea of ratings so you´re not alone ,mike 😉
perhaps it would make sense to split up between a rating for the example post and the *.osm
(if available)itself?
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