[PaulAds]

I've posted this here in an attempt to get more forum input.

Can I interest anyone in hosting Song of The Month for March?

We had an absolutely desperate response to the February one, to be honest...especially bearing in mind how many members there are posting songs... and the whole thing seems to be on its last legs...so do we collectively want to use it or lose it?

Thoughts welcome...

[pompeyjazz]

I'm up for keeping it going but as you say Paul not many folks seem to vote. Be interesting to see what others think !

[adamfarr]

I like it - but having to struggle around for not even 20 votes for five songs seems crazy.

I think it could do with some fresh ideas...

Automation - how would this look it it were easy? Can we easily generate a list of all eligible songs into a form/poll?

Voting - why is it only the same people that vote each time? What's stopping new people? What if the poll came up on the log in screen, for more exposure?

Benchmarking - I'm not on other forums but perhaps those that are could see if there's anything we could learn from?

Or are we just flogging a deadhorse?

[shadowfax]

Is there really any point in keeping something going that the vast majority of members are not interested in?

[Jamie]

I've hosted the SOTM comp a couple of times over the years and was always disappointed at the response.Having said that, if you're not on it all the time its easy to have a competition and the songs pass you by.I know I've done it lots of times over the years. So for the casual listener/poster its a big ask to participate regularly. Sorry I have no words of wisdom, just some thoughts.In a way it would be a shame to let it die, but..........

Cheers
Jamie

[CaliaMoko]

1. I'm in favor of keeping it for those few who do take the time to participate. I think I've missed once or twice, but I always try to vote.

2. I've noticed, in general and for several years now, people do not participate in most things the way they used to do. The community theater group (where I lived before the stroke) is basically on hiatus because they can't get any interested organizers or even enough board directors. The local (where I live now) songwriter group has poor attendance at the quarterly gatherings plus very little response to posts on the Facebook page asking for input. I think maybe life has too much overstimulation/distraction going on. I don't mean the coronavirus...I mean--there are so many activities, so many special-interest groups--it's too easy to get far too busy. Plus there are all the electronic devices gobbling up mindless time.

[MonnoDB]

Well....I really like SOTM... Hosting it I found to be challenging but worthwhile.. And I will do it again - I was thinking of volunteering for March but I'm mad busy in work (well working from home) and I've been a little disengaged but actually maybe that would help me get back in the game... So here I am volunteering if you're ok with me taking a couple of weeks to come up with a list that will likely be longer than 5 songs, I'll do it...
 
I have one BIG request though.. let me make it a prerequisite actually because I KNOW it has to be possible...

I think it's a little mad that that we can't pull up a list of songs posted in a particular month so that the host of the SOTM doesn't have to plough through all the threads - it's SUCH a pain!! - and we've seen a few months where it went wrong and I suspect it's easy to miss eligible posts.. This is a BB forum sitting on a DB - I think it has to be possible to run a query to pull up all songs posted in the Songs for Review subforum within a date range..

@tone @Boydie sorry - I know I may appear like a broken record but I'm sure there's a coder on here who could help with a simple query - what's your DB? SQL - I could probably dig deep and figure out the query from my basic and very rusty knowledge of SQL queries but I'm sure there are others on here be able to knock up a query in minutes!!

And.... let's try polls again. When I next host (if the consensus is that we keep it), I'll look into that...

So long story short:

Please sort out the eligible songs list
Please keep SOTM

Karen

[pompeyjazz]

I'm up on SQL if you need a hand

[MonnoDB]

Cool @pompeyjazz  - that question has to be to @tone and @Boydie.... And I'm making an assumption re SQL - I don't know what the forum software is sitting on...

K

[Boydie]

@tone would be best to comment on the tech side of things

Unfortunately my time is taken up 100% with the Covid-19 emergency response so can't look at anything at the moment 

[Jambrains]

Cool @pompeyjazz  - that question has to be to @tone
@Boydie.... And I'm making an assumption re SQL - I don't know what the forum software is sitting on...

K

Docs say SMF 2.0 and up can use MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite. SQL in any case, if you JOIN forces with @pompeyjazz you'll be done in no time.   

[PaulyX]

Yo.  We have this discussion at least once a year I think.  Yay to @MonnoDB for volunteering for March.
I also think the forum would be a poorer place without SOTM.   Everyone is so polite, I think it is nice to have some kind of mechanism on top of that where the real gems each month get an extra spotlight... coz they usually are real gems, right?
I have wondered from time to time if there wouldn't be an easier way to run it 'automatically' rather than someone having to shortlist and host at the end of each month.  For example, what if whenever you listened to and commented on a track you had the option to also give it a secret score from 1-10 depending on how much you liked it.  Then at the end of the month we could just reveal the 'top ten' for that month... average score for any song that got 5 or more people scoring it... something like that.  We'd only publish the top 10 scores so no one would get disheartened by getting a rock bottom score, but it would be kudos to make it into the top 10.  Then maybe more people would participate because you could just be part of the process every time you reviewed a track during the month, rather than having to re-listen to songs at the end of the month.  It would be more like the 'charts' for the forum I guess.  Bit of tech development needed probably... but not too hard?

[tone]

Hello folks!
Yes, the forum runs on MySQL, but unfortunately it's not as simple as: just run an sql query. I mean, if someone wanted to log into phpmyadmin and run it manually, then maybe, but it's not exactly secure, and one small slip of the keyboard could lead to total disaster.
Which means someone would have to write a script to achieve the desired result, and somehow embed it into the forum software. In other words write a SMF plugin.
If any of you knows how to do that, I'm more than happy to install it.
Open to all and any suggestions, but this one is waaaaay above my paygrade when it comes to tech knowledge. I'm far from an expert in these matters.

[pompeyjazz]

Thats totally f***d my IT knowledge then @tone 

[cowparsleyman]

This is so interesting, this may well reveal all sorts of implicit algorithmic rules that some here might not know they do, from  sociological aspects  such feelings of encouragement to songwriters who are starting out,  disencouraging freeloaders that don’t contribute, to not voting for a winner of the previous month, this coupled with the age of the voters, those voters who don’t write songs but want to learn , the voters who are lyricists, then there’s the facinating area of popularity of genre...as someone that likes to hop about with these im always keen to see the reaction to say edm vs deep purple vs folk...i never know how a different one will be received.

When i hosted sotm last i picked my 3 favourite songs... i did not consider anything else, i didn’t think it needed to be any more than that... but i had the feeling afterwards that i didn’t follow the established protocol.

Anyway hope the techie whizzos get a solution, best of luck

Do we get to vote on the solution proposals?