[mb-users] Google Summer of Code ideas

[Kuno Woudt]

Hi,

As promised on irc, my response :)

Short version:

1.  ok.
2.  not interested.
3.  ok.
4.  please don't.
5.  don't see the need.

Long version:

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:56:19PM +0000, Oliver Charles wrote:
> 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.

Definitely needed, though i'm not sure if this is really appropriate for
a GSoC project -- then again, that's not up to me to decide, so I'm not
complaining :)


> 2. Community Features:
> ----------------------

As a user, I have no interest in these features.  As long as they don't
get in my way I don't mind their existence -- but I would prefer the
effort to be spent elsewhere.


> 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.

Sounds like an interesting project.  Though if you're going to improve
the search, I would prefer a google/discogs/etc.. like search instead of
our current split editboxes of artist/track/album/label, if we have
that... then you can look at take using interest into account when
sorting search results.  just my opinion :)


> 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.

I'm definitely against implementing a feature like this.  We have enough
trouble as it is getting people to vote on the open edit queue.  Until
we implement some things to improve the edit/vote ratio, I think we
should NOT make editting any easier than it already is.

> 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.

I don't see any huge problems with the current situation, but I never
had a problem with not being an auto-editor when I wasn't.  Perhaps
others see this differently.

-- kuno / warp.