[mb-users] Google Summer of Code ideas

[Oliver Charles]

'Noon everyone,

With the good news that MusicBrainz has been accepted into GSoC, it seems
now would be a sensible time to get some feedback on my ideas :) So, I have
a few options for MusicBrainz projects, outlined below:

1. Redesign
-----------
Seems the big one at the moment. This project will be 2 stage - 1 part
templating HTML for the new MusicBrainz mb-server, and other part
implementing CSS and the rest of the design. Will also be bringing
JavaScript up to date, and increasing usage to add more asynchronous
operations where MusicBrainz is needing it.

2. Community Features:
----------------------
MusicBrainz took a leap into community aspects when it introduced Folksonomy
with the last release. This project will attempt to further develop this
ideas with support for entity comments/reviews (all entity types, not just
releases). Alongside this, list tracking will be added - so users can create
their own lists of music (possibly to emulate want/have lists, or to create
lists of "to-work-on" releases for power editors).

3. Adaptive Search Results
-------------------------
A lot of editors here work on specific sets of music (I myself, work with
drum & bass) and often for editors we have to move through extra "noise" in
the system to find data that is useful to us. Adaptive search results would
attempt to filter, or prioritize search results in some way to make them
more useful to specific groups of people. One way to make this work, for
example, would be to move any results in an editors subscribed artist list
to the top, or emphasis the results. Other changes might be to prioritize
artists the editor often works with, or has "visited" more of.

4. Extend XML webservice (submission/edits)
-------------------------------------------
The current XML webservice provides a robust way to retrieve data, but no
way to push new data. Some people have requested this support, this project
would implement it.

5. Reward system/rankings
-------------------------
Motivated by past discussions, and this recent discussion on the
auto-editors list, this project would set out to research possibilities of a
ranking/reward system for regular contributors. Auto-editor is a hard goal,
and sometimes too far away for editors who need that little motivating
credit now and then. After a sensible system is decided upon, the rest of
the project would be implementing and testing.

Look forward to which you think I should focus on!
- Ollie
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-users/attachments/20080318/32623e32/attachment.htm