The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hmm, I mean one idea would be making like a "default" victory message that you could then update to something more specific once you got to it.

I hadn't thought about submission screening though. How difficult is that? I have no idea how hard it is to detect previously made, copyright infringing, or spam content (though admittedly I'm fairly positive I submitted some extremely low effort garbage as a teenager...check "The Boiler Room".)

Anyway I'm fairly decent with at least the basics of database design if you ever need any help. It's been a nice part of my musical development over the years, I love this place.

The three of us are all quite versed in database design. Another cook in the kitchen isn't going to help matters.

(Also, designing the database isn't the hard part.)

The screening-for-bullshit thing is less about there being an active process and more about the psychology in how it affects submitters. People are less likely to send in something problematic if it's associated with their email address, and it's a lot more effort to set up a fake email address to send something from than is worth most people's time. Plus, people who try to break things generally are attacking systems, not people, and submitting by email feels more like you're sending a thing to a person.

I don't have any metrics to back this up, just gut feelings which might also just be justifying a lack of bothering to implement a submission form.

We have the greatest deterrents to shenanigans that is possible:

1. Submitting takes some effort
2. You don’t get shit if you win

fluffy wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:26 pm

The three of us are all quite versed in database design. Another cook in the kitchen isn't going to help matters.

That's fair. I tend to get overexcited when it comes to programming projects -- I hope i didn't come across as intrusive. If so, apologies.

fluffy wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:26 pm

The screening-for-bullshit thing is less about there being an active process and more about the psychology in how it affects submitters. People are less likely to send in something problematic if it's associated with their email address, and it's a lot more effort to set up a fake email address to send something from than is worth most people's time. Plus, people who try to break things generally are attacking systems, not people, and submitting by email feels more like you're sending a thing to a person.

Makes sense. Personally I enjoy that "got it! email cause I know that it's a person on the other end. It's so much less impersonal that just an automated message.

jb wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:36 pm

We have the greatest deterrents to shenanigans that is possible:

1. Submitting takes some effort
2. You don’t get shit if you win

I cannot think of any greater.

Æpplês&vØdkã wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:55 pm

fluffy wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:26 pm

The three of us are all quite versed in database design. Another cook in the kitchen isn't going to help matters.

That's fair. I tend to get overexcited when it comes to programming projects -- I hope i didn't come across as intrusive. If so, apologies.

Don't worry, I get it. I used to be Really Into trying to solve everyone's problems even if I didn't have sufficient context. I also now realize it's an ADHD thing.

I already made the database, it's the one powering the Song Fight Jukebox.

For what it's worth, I've got a Google Doc with the complete set of instructions for how to update everything. I've also built tools to automate a bunch of the work. If we ever decide to enlist the aid of another fightmaster or two I hope they'll be able to hit the ground running.

Some parts of the process already involved Web forms before I got involved so those were already simple and easy.

The email submission part caused me the most manual labor so I use a script now to download all the emails and their attachments and do some automatic formatting of the file names to make them conform as much as possible. I don't want to encourage people to submit updated versions of their songs as being forced to be done and stop your work is part of the whole exercise. That being said, it does happen, so the script does some things to make that cause me less (but not zero) additional work.

There are a bunch of little steps around doing some setup on the FTP server and handling the art files, and I've got a script for all that now too. I just pick the art I want to use, copy a portion of its filename into a config file, and run that.

There are also a couple of magic text files with very specific formats which have to be created every time. I set up admin pages on the Jukebox which have forms that I fill out that (with things like date pickers for dates, autocomplete when entering band names to populate names of returning bands, automate selection of the fights for the five/ten/fifteen years ago sections, etc.) that generate the properly formatted text for me to copy/paste into the files.

I could probably go farther with some of that stuff and do some more programmatic interaction with the FTP server. Honestly though it's been a while since I've had the right mix of free time and motivation to continue on with that.

Personally I dream of a songfight.org where folks can listen to the current fight while also writing reviews on the same scree, navigate around the archive and look at artist profiles while the music keeps playing uninterrupted, bookmark songs/artists/fights they like, make playlists, etc. You know, something written in 2012 instead of something written in 2002.