PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

since john has said that planetz is going to get a revamp sometime in the relatively near future, i thought we all (including john) might benefit by expressing our opinions on what we would like at planetz. here goes a few of my own:

1: the ability to rate members
2: the ability to rate modular patches
3: member ability to delete / replace modular patches (for example, if I had a modular patch in progress and was seeking feedback, i could upload a 'beta' get feedback, delete the beta and upload the final).
4: a page specific for the modular instead of the patches being buried in the files page.
5: no demo's in the devices area. some of the devices here are restricted but are camoflagued so as to not appear as being devices. a separate area for freeware/shareware and for demos would be nice.
6: a page on the forum entitled: "pulsar music," where we can post links to our (pulsar created) music so that others may hear what the pulsar is capable of and so that we may get feedback on our tracks.

any other suggestions? or comments on these?

yes, good suggestions, especially point 5.

And 6 !-)

On 2001-06-18 06:11, algorhythm wrote:
since john has said that planetz is going to get a revamp sometime in the relatively near future, i thought we all (including john) might benefit by expressing our opinions on what we would like at planetz.

excellent suggestions, thanks. and keep em coming! good news is that almost all of your suggestions are already taken care of in the site redesign, which is already underway.

1: the ability to rate members

that's one i hadn't thought of... will add it to the list. it's kindof an odd one tho. what are you saying when you rate a member - "I like you", "I like what you say", "I like your attitude", "I think you're funny". rating a person is such a subjective thing, it may not be a good idea. any suggestions for how to do this? rating topics/posts on the other hand is definitely a good idea.

2: the ability to rate modular patches

already done.

3: member ability to delete / replace modular patches (for example, if I had a modular patch in progress and was seeking feedback, i could upload a 'beta' get feedback, delete the beta and upload the final).
4: a page specific for the modular instead of the patches being buried in the files page.
5: no demo's in the devices area. some of the devices here are restricted but are camoflagued so as to not appear as being devices. a separate area for freeware/shareware and for demos would be nice.

yep, all taken care of. this part of the site is totally changing actually. now you'll be able to upload files, or just links to files, just like a topic in this forum. people will be able to rate the topic, dicuss it, download directly, etc. certain forums will allow additional tag-keys, like price ("Free", "$1-20", "$21-40", etc), type ("Preset list", "Modular patch", etc), device use ("effect", "synth", "utility"). then you'll be able to filter your view of the forum's topic-list based on tags. "only show me the free devices", "show me all the preset lists related to uknow", "show me all the electronic music". and since it's integrated into this forum system, the topic creator can always go back and modify their original post.

this will also totally replace the current reviews/rating page.

6: a page on the forum entitled: "pulsar music," where we can post links to our (pulsar created) music so that others may hear what the pulsar is capable of and so that we may get feedback on our tracks.

yeah, rather than a new page, that'll just be integrated into the new song uploads area now. since you can upload a link instead of an mp3, you can directly link to a song at mp3.com for example. and people can discuss it and rate it, etc, just like another forum topic.

so, like i said, the changes are already under way. i'm working on forum tags right now. next is the rating system.

one of the big hurdles is migrating all the old data into the new world. majorly difficult. for the current rating/reviews page, i don't know if i'll be able to preserve the old ratings, but i should be able to preserve the old reviews. migrating the wish list into a new forum will take a long time, cuz it's so disorganized right now
for the old devices/patches/presets/music, i'll be able to migrate them all into the new system, but i'd like to do some house cleaning at the same time. my server disk space is limited (we're already using over 600mb). i'd like file uploaders to use links to their own remote storage where possible (instead of uploading the whole file - this is especially true for song uploaders, cuz songs are typically 5+ mb).

anyway that's it for now. more coming soon...

-john

Thanks John, for taking our suggestions in stride, very pleasant...

It's been mentioned before, but, it might be cool to have some extra icon next to a user's name if they've uploaded E.G., a modular patch to the site, or contributed a file or creative work of some type. ArsTechnica (arstechnica.com) has a system sort of like this for when people donate to the site, they get an icon by their username.

I like the idea of integrating the review system with the Forums, I think it's better to have a "personality" attached to the review so you can better place the opinion. It also tends to give the reviews more value, and less anonymous flames, etc.

It would be cool (and I'm not sure how you'd do this given that you'll be using the forums) ... to have a way to "rate" the review "Did this help you? Yes/No" such that the reviews that aren't that useful get automatically sifted to the bottom (exactly like Amazon.com does it). You have to login in order to rate it "helpful" or "not helpful," again giving the system more credibility.

Linking files to usernames and reviews to usernames has already been mentioned and your method for doing this seems to be a good idea.

On 2001-06-18 10:10, subhuman wrote:
It's been mentioned before, but, it might be cool to have some extra icon next to a user's name if they've uploaded

good idea. or simply under the name, it lists "Posts: 299, Uploads: 3". i'll figure something out.

i'll also be adding "avatars" at some point -which simply means you can put a picture under your name.

It would be cool (and I'm not sure how you'd do this given that you'll be using the forums) ... to have a way to "rate" the review "Did this help you? Yes/No" such that the reviews that aren't that useful get automatically sifted to the bottom (exactly like Amazon.com does it).

ooooh, cool idea i'll have to think about how to implement it...

thanks sub,
-john

john - regarding member rating:

check out the forums at http://www.kvr-vst.com
(this is the VSTi site). they do member ratings over there and it helps to try and sift out who knows what they are talking about from who does not. not perfect but better than nothing(?) - and yes it is surely subjective

Or check out the forums at http://forums.anandtech.com - each user can enable/disable member ratings in their profile...

I am quite pleased with the forum as it is, but you can never get too much of a good thing, keep up the good work John !

I suggest that you be careful with the rating of users, some less confident users (like myself ) might be scared from participating, and some may feel insulted upon getting a poor rating.
(I haven't checked the forums mantioned in the previous mails)

Maybe it should only be possible to rate positive, so that you simply don't rate anyone you disagree with.

Maybe it could be possible to rate postings, so that the value to the community could be displayed (making a sort of self-propelled FAQ), and the individual poster could get a rating reflecting the comparison of ratings of posts and the amount of posts by this person ?

I think this could be quite a fair system, which may encourage users to produce quality-postings?

Only a thought.

Cheers
Stubbe

On the download page would it possible to see the number of times it had been downloaded ? That way you tell whether you were wasting your time and no one wanted your patch, or whether it was fantastically popular.

On 2001-06-19 01:33, Stubbe wrote:
less confident users (like myself ) might be scared from participating, and some may feel insulted upon getting a poor rating.

yes, i'm concerned about that too. when you have a forum like ours, with both newbies and pro's, how do the ratings work?

in any case, i'll make this a lower priority than the rest of the changes (which i'm busy with now...)

-john

On 2001-06-19 05:08, Spirit wrote:
On the download page would it possible to see the number of times it had been downloaded ? That way you tell whether you were wasting your time and no one wanted your patch, or whether it was fantastically popular.

good idea, tho currently i'm not sure i can implement this (due to architectural issues). since rating topics is going to be allowed, wouldn't that suffice? (you'll be able to see something like "3.2/5 (200 votes")). if either no one votes, or you get a low rating, then you know people aren't interested...

oh, that reminds me. do people want ratings to be out of 5 or out of 10 or what??

-john

hi.
I agree with the subjections, and I don't agree with the user rate.

And I want to add, about uploaded devices... please ask ALL developers to include a device_name_version_readme.txt INSIDE the zip file.
That way, it will almost always handy an e-mail address to send some feedback, to read any note, etc.

not very sophisticated... I guess if we could rate this from 0 to 10, I would get ALMOST some like a 0,5.

sorry my english!

Ratings should be out of 10, otherwise people just say 4.5 or 3.5 anyway. I'm also very sceptical of rating people.

yeah - drop the rating people idea - popular opinion seems to be against it

1 more thing regarding the reviews of 3rd party devices:

I just reviewed Zarg Music's Rotor48. see the reviews here:
http://www.planetz.com/cgi-bin/starsrev ... rgrotorseq

i spoke my mind about the device - that is, what it's strong and weak points are.
i do not think that the developer should be able to post himself/herself, but rather should contact the person privately. I have seen the develop get in and respond to things here, almost as if the reviews were a forum! Another obvious problem - John Bowen rated the device a 5 in responding to my post! talk about swaying the polls!

well, it's only natural for every person to give themself a full score but perhaps i'll make it so you can't vote on your own posts...

-john

I agree about Reviews becoming Forums, and authors rating their own devices (lame but what other option is there, to rate it a zero?), but I do kind of like the ability for the authors to comment, especially to correct mistakes in a review, and give an idea of how the new version fixes or will fix a problem.

I think it's kinda nice that each author has a reason to read the reviews, which could lead to some nice modifications in direct correlation, and also having someone around with "the facts" helps unmoderated review sections from degenerating into a bunch of childish name calling (see: SonicState )

yeah, re: being able to edit your own posts, etc. the reviews system will just be a regular forum now, so you'll be able to edit/delete your own posts, etc.

voting will be on the topic.

all this programming is taking longer than i anticipated unfortuately...

-john

cool - the editing of posts will enable me to clear up some things (John Bowen and I have spoken privately - he missed sending me the update by accident). I now have v3 of the Rotor, so some of the issues are cleared up. . .