SONG RANKING updates for MALM!!
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@burrsettles Mar 2022
Hi fawmily!
To help facilitate MALM (March Album Listening Month), I just made some post-FAWM changes to the songs page:
https://fawm.org/songs/
Now, instead of displaying the most recent songs, all views will display a loosely "prioritized" list of songs. I won't divulge the exact formula so as to discourage people gaming it, but roughly speaking:
1. Songs marked as "favorites" plus various other features increase the score
2. Number of comments received, plus its age and other "popularity" or "virality" sorts of features decrease the score
The idea is to help you find songs where comments are the most needed. Not zongs necessarily (although you can hit the "zongs" tab to filter down to just those, also prioritized as above), but songs with only 1 or 2 comments will tend to bubble up to the top, as will collabs, favorites, etc.
I hope this helps people in their feedback-giving journey!
EDIT: after using this new feature for a few hours now... it definitely is going to need some iteration, so expect it to change a little in the coming days. :) for example, about 1/2 the songs i've gotten have been the "orphan" posts to 3+ way collabs (because most of the commenting happens on the "main" collab post, since the site only allows 2-way collabs now). work in progress! -
@burrsettles Mar 2022
....this also means that if you comment a song, or the author un-favorites it, etc., these rankings will change dynamically in real-time instead of being a static list of just the most recent FAWM songs (which is kinda pointless now that FAWM is over!)
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@nadine Mar 2022
This is soooooooo cool, thank you @burrsettles !
I always wanted to see an algorithm picking the stuff that is NOT listened a thousand times :D -
@burrsettles Mar 2022
Thanks @nadine !
This is of the flavor I was alluding to in the "old school vibe of this forum" thread: https://fawm.org/forums/topic/12747/#c272700
This change is a simple hack, but there's also a lot of opportunity for more sophisticated algorithms to optimize for fawmers reaching their personal goals, and pro-social behavior, rather than optimizing for virality and sucking your attention (which is what most sites aim to do). -
@sheilerk Mar 2022
This will make it much easier to spread the love! Thank you, @burrsettles
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@rayboneor Mar 2022
This made me happy. I've already listened to a handful of songs I wouldn't have found otherwise
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@johnstaples Mar 2022
@burrsettles I hope somewhere in that secret formula you have included engagement as a criterion for ranking. In other words, even though I have marked my song as a fave and it has zero or 1 comment, I shouldn't get page 1 positioning if I am not commenting on other songs!
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@stephenwordsmith Mar 2022
From a cursory look through the list, it appears that 'various features of how much effort went into it' is filing the titles-only songs at the bottom of the list, which is understandable, but also putting lyrics after songs with demos.
Which I suppose is the right choice if you're here to enjoy music, and few people outside of @frogspawn are putting lyrics to music in March, but it does mean our lyrics-only FAWMers are deprioritised - and they slip through the cracks comment -wise enough as it is -
@dzdandcunfsd Mar 2022
@burrsettles How dare you try to use algorithms for good! I hope you weren't planning on being invited to the evil corporatist overlords convention this summer :D
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@beacon Mar 2022
@burrsettles To address @stephenwordsmith's comments, could this also be done to the Lyrics Only section? I don't know if the algorithm for this.
Also, we're in the middle of the first #listeningskirmish, and I'm thinking of doing one that is lyrics focused. Interested? -
@midwayfair Mar 2022
What does “how much effort went into it” mean? I don’t know if this can answered without revealing methods though.
I really don’t know how an algorithm could decide how much effort went into my songs when even I wouldn’t be able to tell even on my own songs sometimes. -
@burrsettles Mar 2022
@johnstaples actually, no. i tried these and there's such a huge range in commenting activity that the folks who have given the most comments bubble up to the front page no matter how hard i try to temper the signal down (logarithms, fractional weights, etc.). while there's a good argument for that, i decided to forego that signal for this year's "good enough for now" hack, there are smarter ways to incorporate this in the future.
@stephenwordsmith lyrics-only songs are NOT deprioritized by design, and i currently see non-zong lyrics-only songs as early as page 3. what you observe may happen in practice, and i'll look to see if there are ways to mitigate this more...
@beacon the same algorithm applies to the lyrics-only (and all) sections. so you should see more favorites and more zongs on that lyrics-only tab, etc.
@midwayfair ok, "how much effort" isn't a great way to put it. -
@siebass Mar 2022
I just think it's cool that we're trying to be better. Thanks for updating the algorithm, @burrsettles
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@max Mar 2022
Remember you can still search by tags.
In case you like to have a listening session full of banjo songs you use the songspage URL, but add /tags/banjo/
That will bring you to this page https://fawm.org/songs/tags/banjo/
And if you like to have an evening full of acoustic songs you search for
https://fawm.org/songs/tags/acoustic/
etc
https://fawm.org/songs/tags/lyrics-only/ -
@johnstaples Mar 2022
Thanks @burrsettles !
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@frogspawn Mar 2022
re tags as per @max above: the use of tags to search doesnt' seem intuitive enough, at least not to me. Something that might be doable in future setups, O overworked and overdemanded @burrsettles ? [#willinghorse/#flogging]
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@burrsettles Mar 2022
@frogspawn i'm not quite sure i understand your suggestion (if there is one?). i.e., what would make "tags to search" more intuitive?
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@guatecoop Mar 2022
I really like this. What a great time to experiment, too! I will definitely be using this for some of the next week’s comments, as I am always trying different ways to expand my reach. Thanks @burrsettles !
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@andygetch Mar 2022
Thank you @burrsettles ! One of the past (and no longer) features about 5090 that I most enjoyed was the ability to sort by song count and find not just zongs, also to find songs with low comment counts. I love that the first five pages of the song list, as it stands now, are all songs with 3 comments or fewer.
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@timfatchen Mar 2022
@burrsettles, mea culpa. I keep forgetting that tags entered in the "search" field will actually search and bring songs up. And forget to put the lid back on @frogspawn 's dubious pond.
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@majormajormajormajor Mar 2022
Absolutely love the changes... and the continued activity. Hopefully this will continue to grow, both now and something we can continue to build on. I love the fact that FAWM is a 'season'- honestly for me it's like second Christmas- but keeping it going in March is still in line with that.
And yeah, I first discovered how the search is contextual by experimentation. It feels very intuitive to me- as a frontend dev I'm always looking for solutions that function exactly like that -
@ajna1960 Mar 2022
@johnstaples I totally agree with you :)
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@ajna1960 Mar 2022
Love this as I always try to search out low comments songs and esp on FAWMlings :)
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@ajna1960 Mar 2022
@burrsettles Thank you so much !!
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@wrenarcher Mar 2022
Yep!… this is working. And really well. Just found an awesome gem of a song I came across because of the algorithm. Thank you!
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@burrsettles Mar 2022
i just made an update to the songs page ranking algorithm, based on some additional number-crunching this morning.
the result is more zongs and lyrics-only tracks at higher positions... although fewer faves. not sure it's "better," but iterating. feedback welcome... -
@gm7 Mar 2022
@burrsettles ..great stuff Thx.
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@pianoonthepatio Mar 2022
(a little late to MALM,.. but) thank you @burssettles !what a great update. I definitely need feedback on some of my low comments songs
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@berni1954 Mar 2022
Great idea. But can it factor in whether the author of the song is still around. I have tended to only listen to songs from people who I know from Forums and Comments are still here. I like to leave hefty comments and so worry that I may be wasting my time with people long gone.
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@dreamscuba Mar 2022
@burrsettles what a great idea!! Thank you for your dedication and service.
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