[mb-users] More thoughts on voting

Hi all,
   First, let me say congrats to the new autmoderators.  Thanks for
all the dedication and hard work.
   Second, let me say "great job" Robert and Dave; I'm really
impressed with how well the system held up under the onslaught of
new users this year.
   Third, as I said in an earlier message, I think that we're getting
a dedicated group of people who care about the quality of product,
which means that we can generate more ideas and catch potential
problems than without everyone involved.
   Fourth, let me stir the pot a little more by added more thoughts
on future directions (very rambling, it's hard for me to be very 
organized in the evening....)

On voting: I agree that "forcing" people to vote is doomed from 
the start since it would greatly amplify the effect of people
voting either yes/no (if no abstain were available) blindly,
or greatly increasing the amount of abstains which wouldn't net
the project anything anyway.  Rob, if we were to redo the system
in favor of a wiki-style system, how much of a rewrite would
that require?  How much more storage would be required to host
the database if we keep all the changes ever made to the data?

Assuming we decided to stay with the present voting system, 
rather than trying to "force" more voting, we should look for
ways to decrease the mountain of open mods (7000+ when I looked
at work today.  True, they don't *need* to be voted on right away,
but a lot of the FreeDB mods I voted earlier in the week were
already expired, which means that they ultimately hinged on *one
vote* anyway.)  Here are some of my ideas:

    -Allow a "filter by artist" view of open moderations so people
could quickly view their favorite artists and check those mods 
out.  This could be extended in the future when we have a genre
field in place by allowing a "filter by genre" list of mods, so
that people could concentrate on what they know best.  (For 
example, I prefer music from the 60s/70s/80s, so I know a *whole*
lot less about current artists.....)

    -Allow a MAC on a pending add to affirm the addition.  If
someone spends the time to do the conversion, it has a greater
chance of being right.

    -Figure out a way to present a MAC where the tracks get
moved at the same time on a single screen, so that you have to only
vote once rather than for the MAC and then for each track/artist
change.  (Maybe disallow moving the tracks later?  Although I have
had my PC crash on me in the middle of one.)  And on a realted note,
what about allowing an automoderator to affirm/deny the whole 
thing.  If they're trusted to automod a MAC then this could also
fall under their purview.  Maybe make available a field for the 
reason that a MAC was denied?  This could help provide guidance 
to new moderators where needed.

The well seems to be drying up, though it seemed like I had
lots of ideas reviewing all the message this week.  (Did we have
a record couple of weeks on the list just now?)  I'll continue
to post ideas as I can.....

    Later,
      Frank

PS.  By the way, I didn't mean to cause this big a dust up, 
but it does seem to have been productive.....


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