[mb-users] Google Summer of Code ideas

[Aaron Cooper]

Just throwing my 2c out there to echo some comments you've already  
received...


On 18-Mar-08, at 10:56 AM, Oliver Charles wrote:
> '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.

Sounds neat, but I'm not really sure what this will entail.  Would you  
be making changes to the artist pages or just general stuff to make  
MusicBrainz look nicer and more usable?

> 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).

Sorta neat.  I don't keep track of what I own/want on discogs though  
and I don't know if I would.  Maybe once MB has worklists I'd like to  
know which works I own from each artist so I can track down missing  
recordings, etc :)

> 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.

I really, really, really wish we had a Google/Discogs/Amazon-like  
single search field.  I don't know if changing the results ranking  
based on subscriptions is a great idea, but I don't know if it's a bad  
one either.  What would be best if the results could be optimized to  
match what users are expecting to see when they search.

One idea might be to group an artist and their collaborations in a  
list like this:

Metallica
	Metallica vs. Kid Rock
	Metallica & Swiss Beats
	Metallica & etc.

...so that when we search for "Metallica" it's easier to see the main  
group.  Just an idea.

> 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 personally have no use for this.

> 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 thought this was pretty cool and shot out some ideas back when we  
were discussing this on the mailing list.  I think it'd be good to  
help pass things through the queue if we could use WeightedVoting (I  
think there's a wiki page on this).  As I think others have expressed,  
this doesn't appear to be a high priority though.


-Aaron