As it is right now, downloading cdlc is a complete shot in the dark. We have no idea if the customs we download will be accurate, have a good tone, well synced, etc. I havent downloaded any cdlc for this reason. I tried about 5 and were all pretty bad. I believe a way to distinguish good dlc is imperative. 

 

Idea:

 

1.- Assign a "tester" status to several trust worthy members. 

2.- Any member can report or signal cdlc, promting a tester to see if it is indeed a good custom

3.- Have 3 sections:

    a ) Submitted cdlc

    b )Awaiting testing section

    c )Approved section

 

The flow would go like this

User A submits a song

User B thinks the song is ready, so he signals the testers and the song gets moved to awaiting testing section

User C(a tester) sees if the song is official dlc worthy material

Song gets moved to approved, or the tester provides feedback

 

Testers can enter the awaiting testing section at any time and try any song on the list.

 

Thoughts?

I don't see this as a big problem. I mean, sure, it's disappointing when you go to try out a CDLC and it's not quite... complete. But where's the real harm?

 

How about if each CDLC had its own changelog (well, a lot of them do already) and the files are labeled "beta"? When you go to download a song, you can read the changelog -- at a certain point, when everyone involved is satisfied with the state of the file, it gets taken out of beta. And maybe this status can be added to the database. This way, people who only want to play a truly finalized cDLC can filter for this status.

 

The idea behind all of this is NOT to chase people off from creating CDLCs, but to get people more involved. Myself, for example. I'm planning to start my first CDLC over the next few days (got a break in my workload sooner than I expected). And part of what's encouraging me to do this is the idea that I can set it up as an "open" project for others to join in on. I know I'm not ready to try designing tones, for example.

Some interesting ideas here.  Please let me toss out another thought.  

 

The creation of CDLCs seems to me to be very much like software development itself. Lots of versions, revisions from different people, needing one 'owner' to verify changes are better not worse.

 

This suggest to me that CDLCs might be a candidate for version source control as the mechanism to keep it all in one spot and collaborative.  I'll go one step further and suggest that source control via Git seems like a fairly natural way to handle this process.

 

Please don't glaze over, Git can be complicated, but it can be easy too.  Setting up would need to be simpler.

 

But once it's in use, it's easy to post changes, branch new versions that may not pan out, see what changed and why. Easy for other people to drop in and tweak just a couple of things and post as improvements.

 

Not sure, just seems like a natural fit for the distributed nature of Git development.

Just please don't bring back the 5 star rating system, it was complete bullshit and encouraged downrating because people didn't like the song. Most ratings were completely asinine and not understandable. 

 

It also creates a hostile atmosphere and might put people off from creating CDLC. I know I wouldn't want to post something I made for myself when it gets immediately put on trial to get judged and then rated by people who leave no comment and give it a shitty score because they don't like the song.

 

The submitted and approved section was best I think.

Agree with bo3bber, seems like a software dev approach could work.  GitHub is just one tool but a popular one.  I do think that it's important to give credit to those that have actually contributed work to make these because it is work.  I'm working on my first one now and it's take quite a bit of tedious work to get even a workable version that's still not fully sync'ed, etc.  I think the changelog is important and provides that credit while also providing some sense of 'quality' in that a custom that has had a number of changes posted may be more polished.  That will be misleading though.  There will alot of CDLC from established authors that will be great on first release.  

I love all this, and Damage, what I would suggest is having two kinds of submissions, "open" submissions for people that want their custom being worked on, and "normal" ones, for stablished contributors that pump out good dlc constantly. I dont really know how to set up a platform for all this to work though...

Trying to find the balance between encouraging new people, and keep the rabble from destroying the community is tricky.

 

Experience shows (:-) that allowing just anyone to vote on songs just leads to the usual internet anarchy and low signal-to-noise ratio.

 

 

With that in mind, I have two suggestions worth considering.  

 

1) Allow only upvotes, not downvotes.  

 

Like FaceBook "Like".  Only people motivated to upvote will take the time to do so, and you'll get a natural sifting of the ones that people actually think are worthwhile.

 

You would still get some over-attention to popular songs, but it seems like within a specific genre you'd get a reasonable assessment.  

 

This would not encourage or reward people who contribute, but would be simple to implement and still be helpful.

 

2) Only allow ratings by people with "cred".  

 

If you've posted a custom song, you suddenly have infinite cred.  You've already done all the work, you understand how hard it is, and you have made a solid contribution to the community. You can vote on any song because you are the community.  If someone like Robotmom, or Fabianosan say a song is good, that's all I need to know.

 

If you don't have that kind of skill, maybe you help the community in other ways, like making posts.  Posting suggestions or feedback, or anything helps build community.  Maybe you get one vote for every five posts or something.

 

If you get "thanks" you get 3 votes.  Something like that, because you helped someone enough to get thanks.

 

If you don't contribute anything to community, you don't get to vote.  You can download and lurk because you are not a problem, but you don't have enough "cred" to be allowed to vote.

 

Trying to find the balance between encouraging new people, and keep the rabble from destroying the community is tricky.

 

Experience shows ( :smile: that allowing just anyone to vote on songs just leads to the usual internet anarchy and low signal-to-noise ratio.

 

 

With that in mind, I have two suggestions worth considering.  

 

1) Allow only upvotes, not downvotes.  

 

Like FaceBook "Like".  Only people motivated to upvote will take the time to do so, and you'll get a natural sifting of the ones that people actually think are worthwhile.

 

You would still get some over-attention to popular songs, but it seems like within a specific genre you'd get a reasonable assessment.  

 

This would not encourage or reward people who contribute, but would be simple to implement and still be helpful.

 

2) Only allow ratings by people with "cred".  

 

If you've posted a custom song, you suddenly have infinite cred.  You've already done all the work, you understand how hard it is, and you have made a solid contribution to the community. You can vote on any song because you are the community.  If someone like Robotmom, or Fabianosan say a song is good, that's all I need to know.

 

If you don't have that kind of skill, maybe you help the community in other ways, like making posts.  Posting suggestions or feedback, or anything helps build community.  Maybe you get one vote for every five posts or something.

 

If you get "thanks" you get 3 votes.  Something like that, because you helped someone enough to get thanks.

 

If you don't contribute anything to community, you don't get to vote.  You can download and lurk because you are not a problem, but you don't have enough "cred" to be allowed to vote.

 

THIS

That's a nice idea, but I think the original charter should still have the last word. If someone wants to modify something on the chart, there should be a way to ask before doing so, to be sure everything's fine with the original charter.

 

I would defenetly like getting help for tones, and possibly help from someone who has a good ear for those obscure songs where you never find a 100% accurate tab.

 

Personally though if we're going to make a team (or teams), people should mention their strong point (aka either tabbing, syncing, tones, etc). Mine for example is using GP5 and syncing/making phrases/sections, and such. Not really good with tones :s

THIS

Yeah, perfect suggestion IMO. I think I like the first option most

 

THIS

 

 

Yeah, perfect suggestion IMO. I think I like the first option most

 

Totally, i agree with this opinion of that opinion 8-).

That's a nice idea, but I think the original charter should still have the last word. If someone wants to modify something on the chart, there should be a way to ask before doing so, to be sure everything's fine with the original charter.I would defenetly like getting help for tones, and possibly help from someone who has a good ear for those obscure songs where you never find a 100% accurate tab.Personally though if we're going to make a team (or teams), people should mention their strong point (aka either tabbing, syncing, tones, etc). Mine for example is using GP5 and syncing/making phrases/sections, and such. Not really good with tones :s

 

 

Thus:

 

 

Altho now that i think about it, some charters might get upset if we upload a "tweaked" or "corrected" version of their work, so for those of us interesting in making this an open source project we should SPECIFY in the comments section of the uploads that we are ok with other people doing that but please if you do, dont forget to credit everyone involved (in the charting process i mean) by the time you got your hands...

 

buuuut so far thats just my suggestion... ;)

I think it would be enough if there was a way to "append" a revision of a CDLC to the existing entry in the database.

 

There could be a button "Add Revision" which would let you add a download link, and write a description of your revision, which would be added as a post in the CDLC's thread. You can do this right now just by posting into the thread, but the difference would be that a link to the revision would appear in or below the top post, where people downloading the CDLC are more likely to see it. The users visiting the CDLC thread would see something like: "Download link: ..." and under it "Revision by soandso: ...." with a link to the actual post further down in the thread.

I agree that any kind of rating system will inspire bad will. That's not the point -- the whole point of this is developing a library of highly playable songs.

 

There are lots of great ideas in this thread, very encouraging. I like the idea of having a software interface to deal with the revisions  -- makes perfect sense. And maybe that means development should be cloud-based?

 

One thought I had would be a system for marking a CDLC as final -- something like, if enough people (with 'cred') sign off on the CDLC, it gets marked as 'Finalized' column. This way the CDLC is always available for anyone who wants to play it as is.

 

Signing off would mean taking into account a small checklist for each part:  Tab accuracy, Sync, Sections, DD (if included) accuracy, Tone.

 

As for the cred idea:  yes, I think if certain "Master Custom Creators" -- people who've already contributed a lot of customs -- sign off on a CDLC, then it can receive a more or less automatic "Finalized" rating.

 

This is similar to the way it originally worked at Smithy's, except there's no need for separate databases for submitted and approved CDLCs.

I like all this discussion.  Lots of cool ideas.

 

But motivation is the key.  Find some way to keep it simple, and reward people for their work.  That means everyone.  Reward charters for their work.  Reward testers for their work, etc.  Maybe it's just community recognition, but that is how you get people to stay motivated to do the kinds of things being discussed here.

 

And keep it simple.  I like the Github idea, but I'm not sure the files we are working on lend themselves to collaborative efforts.  I say if people want to be collaborative, they should work it out individually with the charters/testers/etc.  As far as recognizing good CDLC, we need to keep it simple.  Over complicate it, and people won't want to use it.

 

Just my .02.

This is all way more involved than what I was imagining.  I was thinking of something more along the lines of a classifieds section where you can hook up with collaborators.

 

"Lonely charter ISO like-minded tonesmith for fun and customs.  I like 50's rock, 60's pop, 70's punk and long walks on the beach."

You can create a restriction to only 5-10 random songs on each day which everyone can test and vote.

Something like the song of the day.

I agree that any kind of rating system will inspire bad will. That's not the point -- the whole point of this is developing a library of highly playable songs.

 

There are lots of great ideas in this thread, very encouraging. I like the idea of having a software interface to deal with the revisions  -- makes perfect sense. And maybe that means development should be cloud-based?

 

One thought I had would be a system for marking a CDLC as final -- something like, if enough people (with 'cred') sign off on the CDLC, it gets marked as 'Finalized' column. This way the CDLC is always available for anyone who wants to play it as is.

 

Signing off would mean taking into account a small checklist for each part:  Tab accuracy, Sync, Sections, DD (if included) accuracy, Tone.

 

As for the cred idea:  yes, I think if certain "Master Custom Creators" -- people who've already contributed a lot of customs -- sign off on a CDLC, then it can receive a more or less automatic "Finalized" rating.

 

This is similar to the way it originally worked at Smithy's, except there's no need for separate databases for submitted and approved CDLCs.

 

I like all this but i think its a bit overcomplicated, just ask for any charter that uploads a CDLC to specify if they are ok with their stuff being corrected, if so it just gets a tag that says so, if someone adds a revised CDLC version it could be in the same CDLC DB entry just specified as an revised version made by someone else, that way anyone can see the original charter did a lot of the work and that it was just tweaked/corrected by someone else both of them getting credit about it... both files up there in case someone wants to compare with the option of the original charter to leave or take down its original CDLC version... no need for voting or anything else i think...

I not really like the idea of "cred" only because someone make a CDLC he is allowed to jugde the other CDLC?

 

I don't know why but it has for me bitter aftertaste, because it sounds to me we have a community in the community.

 

But that was exactly the same thing on Smithy. We had a lot of CDLC, a Bunch of Charter and some persons who test and wrote some constructive feedback.

 

And then a lot of person who only say thx and i want that.

 

So what we talking about? We Talking about some kind of a Rating system. But make a rating system a good CDLC? Not really, because a good CDLC is the result of a good work on the CDLC and the feedback of the Community.

 

SO what do we need a Feedback system and not a Rating system.

I not really like the idea of "cred" only because someone make a CDLC he is allowed to jugde the other CDLC?

 

I don't know why but it has for me bitter aftertaste, because it sounds to me we have a community in the community.

 

But that was exactly the same thing on Smithy. We had a lot of CDLC, a Bunch of Charter and some persons who test and wrote some constructive feedback.

 

And then a lot of person who only say thx and i want that.

 

So what we talking about? We Talking about some kind of a Rating system. But make a rating system a good CDLC? Not really, because a good CDLC is the result of a good work on the CDLC and the feedback of the Community.

 

SO what do we need a Feedback system and not a Rating system.

 

I agree, while i like the idea of trying to make this happen in the most organized and helpful way, with all due respect to those who vouch for a rating system (i really want to agree with you guys and i think it would be great if it worked in the intended way..IF...) but we have to make this thing a... sort of, selfsustainable thing (i dunno if thats a thing haha), and the most simple it is the higher the chances of it working...

The simples way to make this happen is, that we work together.

 

The first step is allready make by CrazyEddie. He creat a Thread for some Tester were they can work together, to test some CDLC and put them in the List.

 

That is only 1 small step, but it's a step in the right direction , to give people constructive feedback for there CDLC.

If we give them some Feedback they can edit their CDLC, if necessary, to make a better CDLC.

 

Thats how a community work, giving and taking.

 

But Guys don't get me wrong. All the idea's about a Rating System, maybe not fit with my own opinion, but i respect them, simpley because u think about how we can form a good working Community.

Well, it's probably just a little too soon to be talking about any form of ratings, given that the pain is still fresh.  Probably best to wait for the dust to settle, let CustomsForge get stable and out of heavy development.

 

 

I will suggest though that the important thing is to be flexible.  The rating system on Smithy's didn't work, but there was no way to know in advance that it would turn south.  You have to remember that it was a valid experiment trying to solve one of the big Smithy pain-points.

 

But...  You have to be flexible, and when the experiment is clearly failing or worse, damaging everything, you pull the plug on the experiment and try something else. But hopefully not the entire site.  :ugeek:

 

 

The important part is to keep trying things and keep evolving, and not be afraid to try things because it might anger people. 

 

I'm just happy to be here, and see it all live on.  Please take my suggestions and ideas as just food for thought.

Well collaborative relations won't go far without charters... Well, track and manage all this co-op stuff are pain in ass for most of our mods so all this work charters can solve in private conversation, but I think I can try to ask devs of this site to show ppls after they push submit button if cdlc db already contains same song, I guess its wrong when a lot of people working on same thing but separate :) 

I skimmed over this topic and have some words to say:

 

1. It's hard to say if the tab is right or if you just can't play it. For me the best way to see if the tab is right is looking at it (synchronized) in Go PlayAlong, that's how I know it's worth to play it. With DLCs from other people I can only try to slow it down in riff repeater and try to inspect but it's not the same and also some techniques are not supported in GP import (yet).

 

2. I just think collaboration is not very feasible with all the different processes people use. I wouldn't accept any fixes from people that would unpack DLC and change something. But I have an approach that would allow collaboration because I totally eliminate any manual, error-prone and frustrating work (in EOF) and I took it as far as I could - master GP tab, GPA sync, toolkit template - can easily fix anything and rebuild. Even if EOF can't import everything from the tab completely or the tab isn't perfect, it's always good enough to play because I already seen how it is synced and can hear if GP tab sounds ok.

 

3. I don't care about thanks, ratings, approval or whatever, I wouldn't participate in anything that requires more work on my part, I do songs I like and want to try. In my case I'm pretty strict with considering tabs worth to make a DLC, but it is what it is, I fix what I can and can't do anything else. If anybody good at musical stuff spots an error, there is master tab directly available and I can provide GPA sync upon request. Also I know that tones can be really inaccurate (fortunately you can switch tone manually, right?) but I'm always accepting improvements, especially if they send it in a format that can be imported into toolkit template.

I was wondering if we could encourage creators to post only playable and ok things, not perfect... but at least playable.In fact creators should double check their creations before posting, then we could help them to improve...And It would be great if we could have a kind of élite class of CDLC, something a little like the "approved section" in smithy.When a CDLC is great and well finished and known for that, moderators will put it in this section.It could motivate creators and a be relief for beginners like me that aren't able to find out easily if a CDLC is ok or not.

 

P.S: Thanks again to all CDLC creators (good, and not so good ones)

At this moment in my cdlc creation career ( I have only managed to create 2 customs) I feel that it is important to have

 

a very simple form of acknowledgement of the standard of the cdlc:

 

1. Is it playable (does it work in RS, synced, doesn't crash, etc.)

 

2. Is it relatively accurate to the original (when you play it, does it feel like you are actually either playing the song or you are part of the band).

 

I realise that this leaves a lot of grey areas, but at least it may lead to a worthwhile download.

 

It is difficult as a new creator as stated by steroma above, to know whether your custom has any value at all.

 

Both of my creations have had absolutely nil feedback regarding whether the custom even works.

 

I have had a few thank yous, but no actual feedback as to the playability of the custom at all.

 

So if there was some simple checkboxes, eg, Is it playable? Yes or No.  Is it close to the original? Yes or No.

 

This may give some decent feedback and actually result in the responder giving a bit more information to assist the creator to improve their customs.

 

No idea if this makes sense, but it's late, I'm tired and just want someone to say something about my customs.

 

Sorry for the ranting.