what do you think about this? would be like, when voted, the ones are voting would have to explain why voted that way, and perhaps providing clues, information and references that could be helpful for improvement (for example), specially when blunt and constructive

i will be blunt

1. enjoyment of art doesn't need rational justification

2. voting on 200 entries is enough work already

3. not everyone wants constructive criticism, nor is everyone comfortable giving it

4. functionally this especially hurts people who struggle with social anxiety, or even just people who understandably don't want to expose their personal inclinations to public scrutiny

there used to be a lot of comments per entry in the early days, tbh i do miss this! the incentive could be a little less strict, though. (maybe the “playa point per like” system cld be brought back)

i already try to give feedback on entries as best as i can, but since i vote on 10 or more entries every day (even more in big majors) i literally dont have the time to do it on every entry, and telling the same person that i just dont like their musical style (even if it is perfect for what it is) a 100th time isnt really what i wanna do.

low votes not necessarily are equal to bad music. sometimes, its just my personal preference that leads to a low vote.
on the other hand, i sometimes still vote high on something even if theres a lot of room for improvment.

so instead, perhaps, would be a better idea if commenting on submissions would give some extra (bonus) criticism points, so people would get motivated on enriching the whole creative/discussion process, whatever it is based on subjectivity, technical skills, cultural background, "risk-taking/experimentalisms", etc.? what do you all think?

I do like the idea of bonus criticism points being given for a comment.

From my own personal experience, I think botbrs are mature enough to not manipulate the system, in order to gain points off of 2 word comments. It would be a good way to encourage conversations on the art in question.

Edit: maybe a word counter for bonus points would work. I'm sure some people won't be thinking of gaining points, and will just have the intent of saying "good job" because they like the track.

Maybe 30 words+ per bonus point, something along those lines.

botb had "posts"-points over a decade ago, old accounts like storbe and poke7 still have them.
i think the reason why they were removed was because puke tried to keep the database small and didnt want to encourage posting a lot of comments? or to avoid comment spam? hm.

i dont think its necessary but you know..., more points?? sure why not :D :D :D

You can share your entry at the wips_feedback topic on discord for critique. I don't think critiquing is trivial in nature and depending on the content may be very hard to give and receive creative criticism. Sometimes you can offer a critique and the other person is not receptive or downright apprehensive to your offerings, That is emotionally darning. It could come down to a lot of bloody honest and pains taking back and forth for it to be worth any thing to you as an artist.

I think this makes a lot of sense. We have talked about incentivizing "criticists" recently, but "criticists" have no value. "Critics" have value, and that value lies in their ability to explain their criticism. Even if the axes by which they criticize the music aren't the same ones I use, if a critic is consistent enough in their reasoning, I can still learn from them.

Saying "enjoyment of art doesn't need rational justification" is true but it doesn't apply in this context. Art itself doesn't need rational justification, but entries with scores below 20 do not earn badge progress as a way to discourage lazy participation with the site.

Currently, there is no way to discourage lazy voting, random voting, troll voting etc, and this is literally the first time I have seen a solution offered. It does sound very cumbersome, but none of the problems brought up so far annoy me as much as people who vote without listening to entries, admit to doing so, and do not get punished.

Obviously nitrofurano is proposing this for an entirely different reason -- he is pretending not to understand why his troll entries receive low scores -- but still, I find this much more worthwhile than the previous thread about giving more points for voting.

"i think the reason why they were removed was because puke tried to keep the database small and didnt want to encourage posting a lot of comments?"

I have been wondering about this ever since I noticed that you have to use boons to post a second comment in a thread. I assumed it from wanting to keep things on IRC and not some sort of anti-user sentiment, but it's tough to say since you need boons to change your avatar too.

you bring up some valid points and i agree that it would at least solve the issue with troll/low effort voting.

but if everyone has to write a comment for every vote they give, the chats to talk about the entries would be empty (or at least not used that much anymore). you'll probably say, they will still get used to talk about entries, but i think a lot more time will go into writing feedback instead of just sharing thoughts in chat, and this might effect the overall chat feeling.

i remember the arena page that was used for sexmoditmania had a comment box next to the vote box, and even if not everyone used it, it still motivated people to share their thoughts.
what if (and i think this was requested before, but im too lazy to look up the link) you had a "comment on this entry" box where you can already comment on the entry while voting (in xhbs). the comment is saved anonymously and wont show up in the forum until the battle is public obviously.

that might help already? maybe with a caption like "share your thoughts about this entry"

not sure how much work that would be

the website is "battleofthebits" not "justbits"

"Obviously nitrofurano is proposing this for an entirely different reason -- he is pretending not to understand why his troll entries receive low scores" - that wasn't the point, what made me suggest that was after seeing some "troll" entries getting most of the times better scored than what i tried to put a bit more effort on, so i just got curious - and i'm seeing i'm not alone, one of the very best entries i found here was from @goto80 , and it got very underrated when compared with others in the same battle, no wonder that he only submitted one song here - "Critics" have value, and that value lies in their ability to explain their criticism. Even if the axes by which they criticize the music aren't the same ones I use, if a critic is consistent enough in their reasoning, I can still learn from them" this is indeed the point i was talking about

"points per post/word" was kinda already a thing with pedagogy points.

This is the result of that

[edit: read more]
Troll entries getting higher points happens when a majority of the audience likes the joke. Assuming the troll entry had a joke. Sometimes the troll entry is itself a joke on the listener i.e. 20minutes of loud white noise.

I'm pretty conflicted on this.

On one side, I agree with it because there's no major difference between feedback on the site and a ping on Discord/IRC with the feedback. And I do actually think constructive criticism is a good thing. It will also make the community side more important over gamification, which I think would also be a good thing. It would also pretty much make vote trolls immediately visible/disinsentivise troll voting. (also it doesn't need to be rational, just nice words of support is cool)

In the middle, I don't really think the added effort is worth mentioning. Like, if you don't have time for community stuff, then you don't have time for community stuff. It's just kind of a moot point. No one has to do, listen or see everything at any given time to be part of the community.

On the other side, I disagree because I feel like it won't really stop lazy or aura voting, unless there are rules as for the content of the comment (AKA against only ever saying single/few words like "good" or "meh"), and that's a hell of a rabbit hole. Though I guess it could just be the same kind of ruling as for tagging, which is already familiar.
Plus point 3 and 4 of Jangler's comment.


Personally, I think incentivization for insightful or detailed comments would be a net positive, but I don't know about requiring comments.

If I can give a suggestion, I'd say there could be the choice of making a public vote with comment, and having a "recognition" system for them. The authors of tracks can click on a "Recognize" button on good vote-comments to basically give 1 extra criticist point to the commenter.

Maybe with a limit of recognitions per post, based on the amount of comments? Or maybe a limited account-side ressource to account for certain posts getting overwhelming amounts of insightful, detailed comments?

Of course it would need to show it that the comment got recognized (so we can tell when people are not being fair/taking advantage of the system)

I also like the whole idea of keeping vote-comments for when vote resluts are revealed. Though I don't see why we should keep it anonymous. (but even then, the choice could be there)

nah, it is too much work. and, i think, everything already work out the way it is currently.

My 2c as both a battle entrant and a major criticist:

- It definitely would be nice to be able to receive vote-comments, separate from the current entry comments, to see what people think of my entry. Something like how voting in Famicompo or s3xmoditmania arena worked, where you can type in your comment with your vote and then comments get revealed once resluts are out.
- Maybe this can be an opt-in feature if you don't want/care about voter feedback?
- Tangent: "guess the author" would be kinda neat for XHBs like there was in Famicompo Pico!
- This definitely should be optional if anything. As said before, properly voting on 200+ entries takes enough time as it is already, and there's no way I'd actually write meaningful comments on every entry if this were required.
- Slight preference towards vote comment anonymity. Anonymous comments would probably result in more honest/critical feedback, but I can also see arguments for knowing who's behind the comment (e.g. prevents trolling, can provide context behind comment). Also, entry comments are already non-anonymous so there's that.
- No opinion on vote comments being publicly visible vs. entry author only. Vote log is public in XHBs but not for majors so there's actually precedent for both.
- Personally I'd write vote comments regardless of whether there's an incentive attached to it or not. Obviously an opportunity for more points is nice and that might make me tend to write more, but if not then whatever :D
- I do occasionally post entry comments to give feedback, but pretty much only for positive feedback, and I only provide critique when accompanied with positive feedback (and it tends to be relatively minor anyway). Like others have already mentioned, I don't feel comfortable just criticizing someone's work, but I wouldn't mind writing a more critical vote comment if that were possible, especially if it were delivered anonymously.

Either way I'll still be here for batol :D/

If you wanna avoid vote-comment abuse for points then mebe have a similar thing to what Reviews websites have, a button which the oriignal song writer can press that says "This comment is helpful/constructive" and only then does the commenter get points, also prevents vote comments like "this is bad" which is neither

Edit I should clarify im pretty neutral on this, I wouldnt really personally want to give criticism because I dont consider myself qualifyed to do it, mostly I feel like music isnt a race to get better its just a personal joruney but mebe thats in conflict with the nature of the webbed site IDK

I'm kinda digging kleeder's idea of having a comment box next to where you give your vote, so it's quick and easy for folks to give some feedback if they wanna, though I'm a lil' worried this still might lead to an influx of nonconstructive postings, especially if there's some sort of points incentive at play.

The awesome thing about being able to vote without comments is that if you just plain don't like a thing 'cause it's not your thing, you can vote from the heart and move on and all's well. It's not always possible to leave constructive criticism for a track, and being forced/incentivized to write words anyway will lead to people writing stuff like "Sorry, not my thing, 1/7", which just isn't helpful to the author even if it's written with love.

I dunno if the downside really outweighs the benefit of adding a "leave comment with review" box (it still sounds cool IMO), but it's something to keep an eye on at least.