KVR Audio

dazarz · Post by **dazarz** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:53 am

Another idea: This is hard to value such number of works... I don't know how did/do it the others but I created four categories (A,B,C,D - where A is the best one). After first listening I have assigned every piece a category. Next I have taken a works from a particular category (i.e. A) and again assigned another note (A-D) and so on... so the best of the bests has a note: AAA and the worst DDD. I have no idea what do you think about my review system but it works for me. Maybe it is worth of considering to implement such (or similar) mechanism in the voting website?

bzur · Post by **bzur** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 11:29 am

dazarz wrote:Another idea: This is hard to value such number of works... I don't know how did/do it the others but I created four categories (A,B,C,D - where A is the best one). After first listening I have assigned every piece a category. Next I have taken a works from a particular category (i.e. A) and again assigned another note (A-D) and so on... so the best of the bests has a note: AAA and the worst DDD. I have no idea what do you think about my review system but it works for me. Maybe it is worth of considering to implement such (or similar) mechanism in the voting website?

Not a bad idea, indeed, very useful when you have such an amount of tracks to evaluate (A = Very good, B = good, C = so so, D = ouch!); it shouldn't be too difficult to implement an advanced drag and drop among 5 frames instead of two.

idfpower · Post by **idfpower** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 11:49 am

Ok, am I the only one who thinks OSC has taken a bizzare turn? All these tedious back and forth arguments about votes and systems and criteria...are we artists, or critics? We should be able to say "this song is good/bad" the second we hear it, but anythig beyond that...too complicated and too much hassle for a friendly competition, don't you think?

I simply can't understand what was wrong with the previous voting system...

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:00 pm

idfpower wrote:Ok, am I the only one who thinks OSC has taken a bizzare turn? All these tedious back and forth arguments about votes and systems and criteria...are we artists, or critics? We should be able to say "this song is good/bad" the second we hear it, but anythig beyond that...too complicated and too much hassle for a friendly competition, don't you think?

I simply can't understand what was wrong with the previous voting system...

In the measure that everyone is happy with the way things were, I don't have a problem with it either. I did say I was a newbie to the OSC..

But for me, voting out of vague likes and dislikes is not really fair to everyone: if 90% of people participating love one particular style, what's the likelihood that another style will be fairly evaluated? BTW, I'm polarizing this to demonstrate the point; I would like to think that most people here are evaluating based on more than just personal like and dislike.

Based on what I've been reading here, I felt there's some preoccupation with making the OSC fairer and easier to vote in, which I agree with and why I brought up my ideas. Objective criteria will never be perfectly objective but they can offer guidelines to make voting easier, fairer, and more efficient.

photonic · Post by **photonic** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:06 pm

Voted!

I have to say that I voted for the stacking system in the last poll. And I have to say that Bjporter did a great job!

But, maybe I did not imagine the consequences. It is really hard to define each track better or worse than another track. After I placed all tracks to the left side, put every track roughly in its rated position, I listened two more times through the list. I rearranged always about 50% of the tracks one or two places up or down. And I think I will never come to an arrangement, where I could say "that's it forever". I always have the feeling that I am unfair to many tracks. To give 1-5 points is a lot easier and maybe more fair!

e@rs · Post by **e@rs** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:14 pm

idfpower wrote:Ok, am I the only one who thinks OSC has taken a bizzare turn? All these tedious back and forth arguments about votes and systems and criteria...are we artists, or critics? We should be able to say "this song is good/bad" the second we hear it, but anythig beyond that...too complicated and too much hassle for a friendly competition, don't you think?

I simply can't understand what was wrong with the previous voting system...

Totally agree. And this new system wasn't even available when the voting for it happened. I'd say at this moment the best way is to gather ideas and suggestions from OSCers, implement them and then introduce it in the near future.

e@rs · Post by **e@rs** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:18 pm

photonic wrote:And I think I will never come to an arrangement, where I could say "that's it forever". I always have the feeling that I am unfair to many tracks.

+1

RichardSemper · Post by **RichardSemper** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:40 pm

idfpower wrote:Ok, am I the only one who thinks OSC has taken a bizzare turn? All these tedious back and forth arguments about votes and systems and criteria...are we artists, or critics? We should be able to say "this song is good/bad" the second we hear it, but anythig beyond that...too complicated and too much hassle for a friendly competition, don't you think?

Agreed! I was happy enough with the previous system, but voted for the new one as it pretty much matches the way I do voting anyway, I download all tracks and listen on home stereo, and rank them in order. This takes about three playings. I also agree with photonic that this order changes with each time played.
I worry that it could get too tedious and also prescriptive to have to vote on set criteria, and that could put people off.
TBH looking back over previous OSC's I am happy that the top positions have been well deserved, therefore find little fault in either the system or any bias of the voters.
The thing is, music is very subjective, and everyone will always respond differently to it. However this balances out with a nice number of contestants/judges IMHO

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:55 pm

RichardSemper wrote:The thing is, music is very subjective, and everyone will always respond differently to it. However this balances out with a nice number of contestants/judges IMHO

This does make sense. Criteria is much more relevant for impartiality when a small number of judges evaluate a much larger number of contestants.

ThePresent · Post by **ThePresent** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:16 pm

I agree with most posters here, but one thing: bj and v'ger have been doing a great job, so no offense to their efforts. (I think we all agree about that

) It's just that only now we get to see what the implications are. To some, the implications are cool, to others (like me) a little less cool.

ontrackp · Post by **ontrackp** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:39 pm

While I totally appreciate the time and energy bj and v'ger have put into implementing the new system, I am finding that stacking a list of 60+ entries is almost impossible. At least with the point system you could have equality between different songs -- i.e. many songs could be a 3 or a 4, and then it becomes the collective grading that pushes tracks up or down in the overall competition. Here, we're grading between 1 and 68 which is hard to wrap by brain around -- and it gets harder with more entries. So for me (and I apologize for this and mean no disrespect to anyone) anything listed after the top 10 or 15 are all just kind of grouped together in my mind as runner ups.

I am in favor of going back to numbering, but would welcome a system where tracks are graded on two main criteria -- creative (composition) and production. Whatever the system is, I think it should be as simple as possible.

bjporter · Post by **bjporter** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 5:46 pm

Thanks everyone for this awesome discussion

As I said this system, some notes on why we switched (Hopefully I got them all):

1) Saves your progress so the form doesn't delete

2) This is not a permanent system. It's an evolution of design by everyone involved. 95% of the work I did had nothing to do with the voting system itself - that was the easy part.

3) Our side: The form was very annoying to set up first of all. Now it's almost automatic. That makes it easier for us. That's something that's been in the talks for SEVERAL months, and we talked about it last year making the voting system without the restrictions of Google sites. So this was planned, just we were never sure when the switch was. Z.prime - bless his soul - created a nice script to make it easier to use.

4) My research from the past year indicates that very few people listen through all the tracks. Now I'm not saying you have to. I admit right now, sometimes I have skipped through quite a few tracks, listening to 15 seconds only. This is compounded by the fact that each person has a distinct taste built up throughout their life. As Theodore Adorno says, people tend to listen to what they find familiar. Popular music for example: It is really just the familiar. All these guys producing 'top hits' are making tunes in a very similar style, with similar structure, harmony - and hence the masses find that style appealing to their tastes - especially when conditioned early on for the first 16-18 years of their life. This of course reaches the executive department and the bottom line - and of course becomes the heart of that music 'business'.

5) People complained that people were not voting subjectively. Hopefully this system helps a bit. Richard Semper is right that people will always vote subjectively, or harshly even, so it was decided to put more equality in the vote.

6) Ability to innovate. There was almost ZERO ability to innovate with the old system.

Dazarz - It looks like a lot of people are bringing up the idea to have the stacking system categorized somehow. That is supposed to break it up and make it easier to partition and vote tracks it seems.

Idfpower - Hopefully the above paragraphs explain why this has been planned, and not bizarre? Making a change like this of course comes with problems. Let me know if I didn't answer correctly.

Ontrackp / E@rs / Idfpower / Richard Semper - We can always change back to a system like before, nothing stopping us - it's just a matter of want (a vote on it for example). It will be even better because we have more control of the site too!

Thanks again for great responses / critique

psmacmur · Post by **psmacmur** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 6:48 pm

Voted.

Regarding the discussion, regardless of voting strategy, we're never going back to the google form, right? RIGHT?

Also, I'm in favour of subjective voting since, as pointed out, the best tracks do seem to rise to the top. It's already a peer review system, so rather quite fair without objective criteria. Additionally, I believe a subjective system offers some immunity to gaming.

jasinski · Post by **jasinski** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 6:54 pm

I mocked up a quick wire frame of a half baked solution I thought of after voting on the current revision. I think other people may have been suggesting something like this too. Helps me to visualize things.

Way it would work is everything starts in the 1 point column. As you vote, you drag tracks to a different column as desired.

There could be quota limits for the number of slots available in each column based on the total # of entries.

Another thought is that instead of points, they are just tiers and stacking them in each tier determines the ranking.

ontrackp · Post by **ontrackp** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 8:07 pm

Something like this would help a lot -- part of the issue is just organizing so many tracks.

One-Synth-Challenge 60: Any One Synth - Submissions, Voting & Results