New DiS Site Coming Soon: Your Feedback is Very Much Welcomed

It'd be cool if you could embed youtube or soundcloud players in the boards, i know, just... crazy.

I was thinking of possibly making this a function for regulars/premium users or perhaps just in one-off threads. As obviously there is a chance some folks will sign-up to leak things or for the lolz post public NSFW breakfast-bothering filth, etc, which is always a slight concern. There are ways we could do it tho, perhaps in terms of following users you like, and getting their vids and soundclouds in a 'dashboard' feed.
One concern I have, which I know is a priority for many of our regulars, is ensuring we retain the simplicity of the boards and not needlessly over-complicating them, as people love the speed and uncluttered lack of functionality.
Certainly food for thought, so thank you.

yes, yes, yes, we are looking at ways we can effectively 'archive' the old posts, sort of like Yahoo answers do when they close questions after a period of time. Hopefully this will speed things up a bit and solve some of the issues that have seen the site splutter over the past year or so in the absence of a full-time web developer (although we have only had about 20hours of downtime in total over the past 4 years, it's moreso the little bugs and occasionally slowness as 3million+ messageboard posts grind things into the ground).

My main problem with DiS is the plethora of 8/10 reviews — this would seem to indicate to me that it is a 'very good if not excellent' album. But, frankly, there are very few 'very good if not excellent' albums released every year so the ratio is very unbalanced to my eyes.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't take an 8/10 from DiS as seriously as a 7.5+ from Pitchfork (sorry, but you are both indie music sites with very similar content streams so the comparison is unavoidable).

So, get tougher on albums. Make me think, Christ this got an 8/10, I have to at least check it out, rather than seeing 8/10 as your default score for something that is 'quite good'. Perhaps you have to retain a more central editorial line on this (coming from my limited mueso journalism experience) or just ask reviewers to really consider their scores more highly and when in doubt go lower with their ratings than higher?

My wishlist would be less clutter, improved IA, UX, updated typography (@font-face, typekit, fontdeck etc), HTML5 and a responsive / adaptive / "mobile first" layout (using media queries) to optimise the site for smartphones and tablets (Pitchfork missed a trick here with their latest redesign – although this may cause headaches for adverts).

More personalisation of the site for individual users would be great. Check out http://atlanticrecords.com/ – when you sign in with Facebook, they scrape your Facebook profile for music 'Likes'. They then pull out the Atlantic and non-Atlantic artists and use Last.fm data to reference musical tags and genres of the non-Atlantic artists. With this data they create a personalised homepage stream for each unique user. I'd also build Twitter and Facebook into the comments system.

I'd like to be a tester.

I really love that Atlantic site and was something I'd been discussing with our designers. Also, the guys from Tastebuds.fm gave me some great ideas about using last.fm to put content to the fore for people.

HTML5 is something I'm keen to do (I love how the TED.com frontpage works, and some of the bigs Polaroid and BlackBerry have on their sites) but we're also looking at mobile very seriously, and also people in colleges and work places still trapped on IE6, which seems to account for a lot of the regulars on our social board, so we're looking at what sites like Youtube do for those kinds of users.

Thank you, this is terrific feedback. Really appreciate it.

You're not the first person to mention this. It is something that comes up quite a bit on the boards, and also something I've discussed with our reviews editor again lately. However, I'm probably the worst person to speak to as my reviews this year have either been massively low scores for Jessie J and Anna Calvi, an average score for Gaga and a super high score for How to Dress Well.

Today is perhaps a bad reflection. Have a look at http://www.albumoftheyear.org/publication/3-drowned-in-sound/ who present our scores much better than we currently do.

In terms of why things get higher scores, is perhaps down to how we farm out records. We tend to send them to someone that we know is a fan of the band (or at least very aware of their catalogue to date) and people usually put their hands up for things they'd like to hear. We don't pay our reviewers and we don't tell them what they should thing, but we do often mark down or up, based on the tone of their review, how well they've argued their case, etc. I think we were much harsher when we had a small team of paid staff writers, but sadly economics won't allow for that at present.

It's certainly something we should be looking into, and perhaps paying more attention to in future. I'm sure Andrzej and some of our writers will chip in with some thoughts on this too.

just did a quick little look through my bookmarked pages and remembered this little beauty. http://www.risermedia.com/

I think one of the big issues with reviews and scoring is what you've already mentioned: we writers are able to select what we’d like to review (which, I have to be honest, isn’t an issue exclusive to DiS). There’s clearly pros and cons to this. The scribe may be able to write knowledgably about the record, but he/she may not be able to write objectively about it (objectivity vs subjectivity in reviewing is a different argument altogether), hence the score of 8/10s.

Finding a balance isn’t easy - people won’t be so up for writing about something they hate - which might end up with Andrzej having a heap of records left unclaimed (although you could potentially have a monthly round-up of records, a la Wendy’s singles review). Possibly sending writers records based on their favoured music genres might work, but given Andrzej doesn’t get paid all that much (I’m assuming) for working DiS’s reviews (a job he does very will), I guess it would probably add a little too much to his workload to spend hours figuring out what record is doomgaze or whatever.

In terms of content, I think more proactive investigative features would add an extra element of clout to the site. Again, that depends more on writers pitching ideas, which can be harder than it sounds if there’s no money available. And how about live sessions, videocasts, podcasts (last one was very good), more audiovisual stuff (soundslides - interviews and pictures?) - these all add something and don’t cost too much to produce to a fairly decent standard these days. I’m sure PR people would be salivating over the prospect of getting their bands involved in some of this action.

I think that the fact that a fair few 8/10s don't get the 'recommended' tag can distinguish between what the site as a whole deems excellent and what that particular reviewers opinions are (that said &'s and 6's arnt BAD scores so more of them would be fine). There could be a feature maybe, some sort of retrospective of albums that got really high/low scores say five years ago and there was loads of discussion at the time about whether it was right/fair. I think that could be pretty interesting.

Mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmmmm

I know that's your plan anyways but reading, talking about & listening to music is the reason people come to the site.

There's a lot of stuff that could be clipped away that I bet very few people use (various tabs, widgets, links & navigation elements on every page)

http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/music/4273763#r5744010 - but having http://drownedinsound.com/lists/ lead to a 'list of lists' section (or equivalent) somewhere amongst your main navigation would make so much of the great content that DiS has accumulated properly browsable.
Any integration of fb/twitter/social stuff should be cautiously introduced/managed in order that the site isn't a nightmare for those who don't use them. Or are using mobile browsers where widgets etc don't get rendered by the browser. And that the site doesn't degrade awfully if (when!) one or all of those sites dies a death.

But please consider getting someone to check copy for spelling mistakes and the like. This post could have done with a read through for a start.

Re PF's British Cousin. It's a compliment, obv. If you're not compared with the best site on the internet then you've got real problems.

In a lot of ways, especially with regards to the music board, DiS is better than PF because you can interact with other cool kids (never mind no one thinks of me as a kid anymore!) and post a thought, and get some feedback and vice-versa. DiS has by far the best music forum on the Interweb!

Now. The review scores one more time. DiS is at a slight disadvantage to PF because we don't score in tenth's of points. So, being the nice people we are, we tend to round up. (Yes, I speak for all the writers here!) But if you look at the average Metacritic thing, you'd see that DiS falls somewhere in the middle.

Conceivably, the albums editor, Mr Lukowski, could try to temper reviews outside the normal scope. Sometimes, young writers are tempted to post an "emotional" score. But, honest to god-- the writers on DiS do a fantastic job. Sure, on the whole, we're a little below PF's standards...but c'mon, they're the best on the planet. I'd rather read a DiS review than some goofy shit from the NY Times. Seriously. Let's not be too hard on ourselves!

Finally. The layout of the site. I don't think it's all that bad. I mean, I quite like it. It's perhaps a bit cluttered, and if the new look streamlines things a bit, I think that'd be good.

And also: Good call on the new St. Vincent record Sean. It's really good!

just make sure the forums don't get blocked by work filters and you're golden

oh and a bit of a cleaner look

The second point is an important issue of user privacy. When many started posting on this board features were not the same & after short lifespan threads sunk only accessible to those willing to trawl. Since then DiS has introduced search functions, allowed people to access every users post simply through their profiles, had these functions been established earlier users may have reconsidered certain posts. Although other forums have similar functions they often restrict it to their users only and at-least users always have the ability to edit or delete their own posts. It can have consequences if potential employers via google find a user and then do some digging, or more sinister stalking all it takes is for a user to have linked to their facebook/lastfm/email to be found here via google.

It is not necessary to keep every thread, by their nature threads are temporary discussions, comical bumping of ancient threads is often annoying. Certainly consider archiving classic threads, maybe via a voting system but the default should be that threads expire after a time.

Hi svenrokk, totally agree. I hate pagination and want rid of it not just from DiS but the entire internet! Looking to do something more like this: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/09/burning_man_at_25_years.html - seen anything else good that you like? Possibly considering thumbnail menu with tags, fixed to the top of the screen to make browsing easier too.

This is something I'd like to do. I quite like how Yahoo Answers closes things after a certain period of time. The main reason this may be useful is that it would speed up the database a bit, and also sort of encourage people to link back to previous discussions, starting them afresh, with the hindsight of a previous discussion - rather than bumping a lengthy old thread.

I also think filtering and browsability of the boards could be really improved and would be interested in any ideas for that.

In terms of the 'world of work' worries, I think this is a greatly exaggerated fear but I understand why folks have it. If you don't want to be personally connected, you can just change your name on your account to your username, firstname or a fake name, as you don't really NEED your real-name on there. Also, it's worth noting that Google now bumps the priority of sites you visit regularly, so the results you see are unlikely to be the same as what an employers sees - unless they're a regular on DiS.

I guess one thing we could do, is make your post archive only viewable by signed-in users - as it's very rare that someone's realname will be mentioned in a thread. And to be honest, as someone who has googled people before job interviews, I doubt anyone would spend time trawling through 5,000 messageboard posts from 3+ years ago if they did manage to find you. I'd be REALLY curious if there are genuine concerns around this as an issue and will endeavour to investigate it if so.

Hi Stuzza,
Some important issues raised here, so thought I'd get back to them one-by-one:

(a) I am old and am less understanding of technology than I used to be

- well, you managed to post on this thread so give yourself some credit :)

(b) I am not on FB or Twitter or any other social networking sites for reasons of point (a), job and stubborness and if the site becomes too reliant on these without being standalone I will suffer. And maybe others will too.

- We won't be centring the site around this too much and if you don't want personalization, you won't have to use it. Deal? But if you did want to try it, we'd try to make it as simple as possible and would be keen for you to help test it, perhaps with a laptop and a pint (on DiS), to see what does and doesn't make sense.

(c) (most importantly) the point of DiS is to discover stuff I don't know about and might be outside my immediate sphere of knowledge. From DiS I have discovered loads of bands who I truly love, inc Parts and Labor, Iliketrains, Twilight Sad, Okkervil River, TTT, etc etc. I don't want to tell you I like Mogwai and get directed to EITS and TWDY content and all that because I know about them already.

- Agreed. In my opinion, this is the biggest challenge for us and all music websites, to get away from dragging people either further down their own niche or telling them what they already know. I know this is something Last.fm and Echonest, who do a lot of data-driven recommendation are keen to avoid - in fact, I've had a few conversations with top-level coders about 'The Radiohead problem' when it comes to recommendations, which may sound quite dull but I found it utterly fascinating what they all do to combat it. What I'd like to do is to make the things we love stand out more, and to make it easier for people to browse, because I think creating an arena that is logical and simple is the key to aiding discovery, rather than sophisticated algorithms or anything fancy. Hopefully you will like the ways I'm approaching solving this problem when you see the new design.

- I think the site is absolutely fantastic as it is and is my one-stop music resource (apart from Songkick). Esp considering the number of people who work on it. happy to help on testing etc.

Interesting that you're against personalization but you like Songkick. I really like how Songkick 'just works' and this is something, in terms of any personalization we do with DiS, that 'just works' concept would be at the top of our list of criteria before it goes live.

Thanks for sharing your feedback, it's kind of reassuring for me that your worst fears are what I was hoping people would fear.

In the age of google websites need to be alert of potential privacy issues of their users. It is sensible to not put real names on profiles, however it is too easy to not think and post names/msn/email/links to social network profiles in a thread. Once done it is in google forever, this is true of most forums but DiS differs in users are unable to edit objectionable posts. Once googled someone would have access to every post a user has written via their profile. I'd bet most users have made posts they have regretted, perhaps drunk, too personal or complaining about work. For long time users, the search and view via profile functions were not originally there, and they made posts with less care than they may have done otherwise. It is not just prospective employers, people google each other all the time and some people may not be comfortable with everything they posted being so easily accessible.

Does allowing people to view other users postings serve a purpose? I can understand someone wanting to find one of their own posts and that should remain, if someone wants to find an old thread they can search for that, I can only see negative uses of being able to see all of another users posts.

Editing/deleting posts may be too complicated for DiS unique message-board system. Perhaps a simple solution would be to give users the option: display my past posts on profile: Yes or No

and thanks for replying so comprehensively!! Yeah, so good spot that my Songkick reference wasn't internally consistent... I suppose with that, that's personlisation that I control (as in me adding my tracked artists myself - again for technophobe reasons I wouldn't use Pandora, etc etc to do it) and the right hand side bar "of you might also like" stuff would only ever trigger me to add a band I know already but have missed, it wouldn't make me think I must start tracking a band I don't know so I could see them. (Although I suppose at a push it might prompt me check them out some other way)

Anyways, I could go on and on so I'll leave it there for now...

Cheers

My one caveat would be: don't change things too much! In terms of content (i.e news, features, reviews) DiS actually functions very well. Imo what the site really needs is a CSS/visual overhaul by a group of talented designers.

I've seen some talk about changing to a multimedia style tumblelog, and yes while some sites do that format very well, they lack the original journalism which makes DiS such a quality resource.

So, imo, here are some things I'd like to see change (ideally) at DiS:

i) a CSS/design ovehaul to bring the site into the new decade, while retaining its overall visual stye and vibe. (This is the most important part!)

ii) removal of some of the site's extraneous features (and presumably sluggish code). Does the directory really offer any usefulness? Gigs section?

iii) some additional new features would be grand, such as an improved photo gallery slider (all the really great photography you have is kind of wasted here), a mobile friendly site format (look at the avclub.com's mobile site on an iPhone for great/simple functionality!), etc.

Those are my thoughts for now :) good luck with the rejig.

like you need to break the 100 barrier to post to prevent spamming

I see it as a contrast in website personalities. I see Pitchfork as primarily a tastemaker, whether this is a good thing is regularly debated on, but the basis of all their content is objectivity. DiS seems to be to be much more subjective, but knowingly so, and is rooted more in the community aspect. This style appeals to me much more, focus of discussion is more on what to listen to, as opposed to what to avoid.

Wonton,

I never said anything about a 'greater emphasis on blog-style recommendations'. In fact the very opposite. I want reviews to be tougher and when reviewers are in doubt to mark down instead of up.

I was the head reviewer of a blog site for like 2 years (had to stop because of my final year at uni), so I know the curse of the over enthusiastic review only too well. Also, the issues that Sean raised — the 'hands up' approach to content editing which leads to less objective reviews.

But, and I hold to this, you want to be a tough as you possibly can to maintain the exclusivity of the site's editorial line. You want an 8- or 9/10 to be a real coup for any band.

Sean, you referred to the idea of a "regular/premium user" in one of your responses. Just been thinking on this.

Perhaps DiS could have a group of "Super Users" who could contribute to the content of the site on a number of ways:

1. Sub-review albums and contribute to an amalgamated rating.
2. Post "recommended" YouTube/soundcloud links to the message board or dedicated areas of the site.
3. Listening data could Be used to compile a weekly DiS singles and album chart. I think there is a gap in the for a chart based on the opinions and listening habits of those with "left field" tastes and inquiring minds. DiS could fill this gap, and it might even become an industry standard and a way for many people to find their way to the site.

I guess the arguments against the creation of "super users" is that it could be seen as a tad elitist. Maybe you could get over this by it being a fairly open and inclusive club, but a club with clear ground rules. You break them and you're out! Or, you could ensure that there is a regular churn of super users, where those that are not contributing can be easily replaced.

I'm imagining that the core group of superusers would me made up of DiS staff and writers, independent bloggers, regular contributors to the message boards and others in the music industry who you might invite including musicians.

Just an idea.

and i haven't read the whole post yet because i'm on lunch but please, PLEASE whatever you do, do not change the format of the forums. DiS is the only forum i've ever got along with, i hate all the other ones with their million pages, so hard to follow.

the "greater emphasis" I mentioned was in fact brought up in the boards a few months ago, I wasn't referring to your post, sorry for the confusion. So it boiled down to us having contrasting opinions. I actually see some worth in blog style writing, often ithe downfall is quality of writing, not bias, not a problem you'd likely find on DiS. The problem with objectivity is that it is to some extent imagined, and what constitutes "good music" is rarely agreed upon.

Is a good idea. I like how metacritic does it; In fact, if you could have it so an album has DiS score, aggregated from other sites score, and user score, that'd be pretty good.

The problem is I want to discover new bands from the album reviews, but I don't want to read them all; I skip, look for key words, and run as soon as I eventually figure out what genre/style it is if it's something I don't like.

On the page that lists all album reviews, displaying a couple of tags to indicate genre and "Similar To" would make life so much better