Subjective MB (was: Re: [mb-devel] Collaborative Filtering: Artist - Artist Relationships)

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2007/3/22, Bogdan Butnaru <bogdanb at gmail.com>:
> > > MusicBrainz does not have any information about genres (or custom
> > > tagging), ratings, comments (or discussions about artists/releases),
> > > and only has a very basic subscription tool right now.  I am just
> > > commenting to say that I would love to be able to:
> > > * comment on artists/releases,
> > > * rate albums/songs,
> >
> > I have been dreaming of this for a long time too. I believe this would
> > give new aspect to MB, which is currently purely technical.
>
> I think that's the wrong way of doing it. MusicBrainz currently is
> trying (and succeeding reasonably well, in my opinion) to catalogue
> the objective aspects of music. It's not perfect, and it needs a lot
> more effort, but it's _focused_ on as much objectivity as is possible.
>
> I think entering the subjective area (genres, ratings, comments) would
> be detrimental, because it would dilute the focus. It is better, I
> think, that MusicBrainz retains its objective focus, and a separate
> project would handle the subjective aspect, using the MusicBrainz data
> through the web service (or a more direct link) to anchor user input.

I believe you think this because you view the users as a finite set.
True, it would distract current users, but it would certainly bring
new users which would also bring their objective contribution. Just
like a shop: if you sell only one limited category of products, true
you are a specialist, but you will have few customers.


> Actually, the ideal case would be IMO something like last.fm, but
> using the MB data. (This would get rid of same-titled bands getting
> mixed up as it happens now on last.fm.) Perhaps an open variant of
> last.fm could be created (though the for-profit version has the
> advantage of being able to actually stream music); the whole point is
> to have someone else than the already-overworked MusicBrainz
> developers care about the difficult problem of handling very complex
> subjective data (instead of having one title that all users agree on,
> after a vote or a few, it'll have to maintain a rating for each user
> that ever listened to the track). Doing all this within MB would
> complicate things enormously and muddy every decision we'll have to
> take from now on.

Physically separating the subjective part from the objective part
could be a good idea. But I don't think the subjective part would be
very complicated: comments and votes, nothing difficult here! I am not
saying it is easy, but there is nothing "enormous" here, and I know
our developers have much more urgent matters to address, nor that we
should do it tomorrow, but I think this is definitely an idea worth
exploring.

And I really don't see how it could affect the objective work: The
fact I like or don't like a track or release does not change the way I
would store objective information about it not my votes about it.

-- 
Frederic Da Vitoria