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Use this forum for title suggestions, bitching at moderators, whining about phpBB, and grand ideas that will solve all of Song Fight's problems.
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Billy's Little Trip
Odie
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Post by Billy's Little Trip »

I think a form, like Lunk said, would be the way to go. The form only accepts MP3s, one entry per band name, a validation code that is given to the band, or one of those random codes that seem to be on every form these days.
If for some reason a song gets sent in twice, it means their votes get split up between the two and lessen their chance to win, which will make them more likely not to do that again. But also, it is easier for the Fightmaster to delete one of the duplicated songs, than it is to go through all of the stuff that Spud described above.

It seems to work pretty good for submitting art. I know I've had to re-enter info when submitting art, because I didn't enter something on the form.
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JonPorobil
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Post by JonPorobil »

erik wrote: PS (I know you didn't ask for suggestions, and that it doesn't scale well for multiple titles)
For multiple titles, try...
Next Week's Fights:
A: A Holocaust of Finches
[band-name_hof.mp3]
B: The Importance of Glands
[band-name_tiog.mp3]

To enter this week's fight, please send an email to fightmaster@songfight.org with the title you've chosen as the subject, the name of your band as the body of the email, and an attached mp3 named as indicated in the brackets below each title (please use all lowercase).
"Warren Zevon would be proud." -Reve Mosquito

Stages, an album of about dealing with loss, anxiety, and grieving a difficult year, now available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms! https://jonporobil.bandcamp.com/album/stages
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JonPorobil
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Post by JonPorobil »

Billy's Little Trip wrote:I think a form, like Lunk said, would be the way to go. The form only accepts MP3s, one entry per band name, a validation code that is given to the band, or one of those random codes that seem to be on every form these days.
If for some reason a song gets sent in twice, it means their votes get split up between the two and lessen their chance to win, which will make them more likely not to do that again. But also, it is easier for the Fightmaster to delete one of the duplicated songs, than it is to go through all of the stuff that Spud described above.

It seems to work pretty good for submitting art. I know I've had to re-enter info when submitting art, because I didn't enter something on the form.
You know, even if the system were mostly automated, it would still probably be much easier than it already is for Fightmasters to run in and check for errors. It seems like Spud is amenable to this kind of system, notwithstanding the work it will take to implement (Spud, feel free to correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth). The trick is doing (or getting someone to do) that initial labor to get over the hump and make things easier in the long run. That'll take time and energy, which no one currently seems willing to give up.

And of course, the error message for the same song getting sent in twice (assuming they used the same band name) would read something to the effect of: "ERROR: A band of this name has already submitted a song to this fight. Please verify that you have not already entered. If you believe this message to be in error, please contact fightmaster@songfight.org." No need to delve into this vote-splitting nonsense.

Last but not least, feel free to ignore me if you think I'm a blithering idiot whose ideas are useless.
"Warren Zevon would be proud." -Reve Mosquito

Stages, an album of about dealing with loss, anxiety, and grieving a difficult year, now available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms! https://jonporobil.bandcamp.com/album/stages
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Lunkhead
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Post by Lunkhead »

I'm willing to take a whack at implementing something like this, but unfortunately my skills are in Java, which can't be deployed to the SongFight! server, as far as I know. It would have to be done in PHP, right?

As far as the specs/requirements, I think you'd want to avoid having a file upload freely available to anybody, as the potential for abuse there is really bad. What I was thinking was a form where you select a title from a menu (eliminating the potential for user error there), enter your band name exactly as you want it displayed, and enter your e-mail address. Both those fields would be required. (You could put in some logic to prevent people from using certain problematic special characters in their band names, if you wanted.)

Once you submit the form, you are sent an e-mail with a code. You'd then have to go to a page where you can enter your e-mail address, band name, and the code. At that point you could upload your file, which would be automatically renamed appropriately on the server side (eliminating or at least reducing the user error in the file name).

The fightmasters would have to provide some information to this system, specifically the titles, and what to use for the titles in the mp3 file names. There would also have to be some controls on when to start/stop accepting submissions for the fight.

(We could also, as an option, allow people to enter their e-mail, band name, and code, and see their already submitted song, and replace it with a new version, or withdraw it, etc.)

For the fightmasters there could be a page with a list of all the entries that have been received, listing title, band name, e-mail used, and file name, and there would be a Flash MP3 player embedded on the page for each song, so that the fightmasters could just listen to the songs right then. That way they could tell if a file was the wrong format or broken if it didn't play, and they could screen for copyright problems, etc. They would also be able to select which songs to publish with the fight, possibly sending some kind of custom and/or automated notice to the submitters of the rejected songs.

Anyway, I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that seemed like a good start on the requirements.
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Spud
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Post by Spud »

This would all be really cool, and I am more than willing to implement something like this, just because I am a recreational programmer. However, it must be noted that anything at all like this would be a hell of a lot of work on this end (for whoever does the implementation) in order to cut the weekly work by a little bit (renaming a few files isn't that big a deal, it is just frustrating), when everyone here could solve the problem immediately on their own by just naming their files properly. In fact, the increased work of going to the site once to enter your information, waiting for an email, and then going back again and sending the file is a whole lot more work than just naming the file properly. Either one person can whack the thing with a sledge hammer really hard, probably hitting his thumb and putting a big dent in the surrounding work at the same time, or a whole bunch of you can tap gently, and the cummulative effect will drive the same nail in.
"I only listen to good music. And Octothorpe." - Marcus Kellis
Song Fight! The Rockening
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jack
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Post by jack »

here's a small suggestion that could help and be easy to implement.

on the homepage now, it reads like this...........

A: They Control the Weather
Due: Saturday, 01/19/08 9:59am pst
mp3 with artist name sent to fightmaster@songfight.org (tips)


maybe, if it read like this.........

A: They Control the Weather
Due: Saturday, 01/19/08 9:59am pst
submission information (link to FAQ)

and put the mailto link on the faq page and not the homepage. this would force people to go to the FAQ page to submit, where the submission guidelines would be more than a mysterious "tips" link on the homepage, it would be right in front of their face above the mailto link.

just a thought.
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obscurity
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Post by obscurity »

Here are my suggestiosn:

1) Reply with a form-letter as discussed above, but do nothing else - don't fix the problem yourself. Let people learn the hard way.

2) Name and shame. People might care a bit more about not burdening you if they know they're going to look stupid when they do.
obscurity.

"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure." - Oscar Wilde.
AcidicJew
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Post by AcidicJew »

I'm one of the people who messed up their post.

Thank you for putting it in anyways.

When I posted I followed the FAQ

http://www.songfight.org/faq.html

It does not have the naming conventions listed like the "tips" page does. It might be helpful to have your naming conventions listed in the FAQ also.

Also, and this maybe taking this a little too seriously, a "tip" sounds like optional advice that many would ignore thinking they just knew better. If you called it "posting requirements" or something like that maybe you would get more compliance (and, doubtfully, less whiners when you do reject their submission)

- Matthew
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king_arthur
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Post by king_arthur »

Hey, Lunk or whomever -

If you're going to be developing something for uploading of songs, "we" would like to have a similar tool for uploading hxaro covers to the (coming soon) songfight covers page -

http://www.songfight.net/covers/

I am working on populating this with as much existing stuff as I can find, but longer term, it would be cool if there was a similar interface for uploading covers of songfight songs. I can help develop user interface specs 'n' stuff. The covers page might also be a place where you could test fly the process without the chance of messing up an in-progress fight...

I mention this because most likely a lot of the code would be similar between the two applications...

Charles (KA)
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Ashley
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Post by Ashley »

Just to pitch it out there, I've recently come into a fair bit of spare time and would love to put my skills to work. I'd be happy to do up a small system if nobody else wants to.

One thing I think would be sweet is server-side ID3 tagging based on your submission info, opt-out optional. That'd be a fun project, depending on what server-side tools we have at our disposal.

Anyways, there you've got it. Now, talk at me. :-)
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blue
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Post by blue »

Spud is being impugned on the fawm boards over this very topic. :evil:

i can see i'm going to have to kick some ass.

http://fawm.org/forum.php?id=193#comm4722
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