Re: Narrowing the field (Re: Currently available looper music webpage)

[Greg Kucharo <telecaster@mac.com>]

   Actually I take back everything I said about being too self 
managing...It works just great. You just have to decide who the staff 
is to do the validation. I offer up myself as a candidate for that 
role. Plus the rating system will help out keeping the thing mostly 
self validating.


On Sunday, August 31, 2003, at 10:11 AM, Greg Kucharo wrote:

>   Well hell! This looks great Doug. I'd say we might have a winner 
> here. However, it too still feels a bit too self maintaining ala the 
> Wiki and current profiles. I dunno, it's probably just me. I'm sure it 
> could be modified to be less, er, self and more maintain.
>
> Next topic should be, how would Kim feel about putting this on the LD 
> website so it's official. I'll be happy to help keep the thing running 
> or otherwise wack it into shape.
>
> One small problem, the fonts looks really bad on the Safari browser.
>
>
> On Sunday, August 31, 2003, at 10:00 AM, Doug Cox wrote:
>
>> Greg & Bernhard,
>>
>> Not trying to create a competition or anything! :)  I had already 
>> done this
>> last night, and written most of this email, but was zonked so I 
>> decided to
>> send it out today.  Obviously, I'm going ahead with that plan, but I 
>> really
>> don't want to create a confusing situation.  Maybe everyone can have 
>> a look
>> and make comments, and we can decide where to go from there?
>>
>> Everyone,
>>
>> I threw together a quick demo of the idea I had re: LD artist 
>> listings.  It
>> also seems to lend itself to individual audio file links, and to CD 
>> reviews,
>> so I also integrated that idea into the demo.
>>
>> The link:  http://www.mrscox.com/sslinks/links.php  The root of this 
>> is my
>> wife's website (she's an 8th grade english teacher).  Please don't 
>> email her
>> questions about diagramming a sentence or anything. :)
>>
>> The basic idea:
>> Treat artist listings (and individual track links, and CD reviews) 
>> similar
>> to old-school Yahoo listings.  There is a primary set of 
>> characteristics
>> that define the *browsable* heirarchy, but each listing also has 
>> specific
>> fields for other characteristics, so that advanced *searching* can be 
>> done.
>> This supports the idea that a few folks have mentioned, and that Andre
>> proposed a list for - being able to build specific queries across 
>> these
>> characteristics to find the artists, audio files, or cd reviews.
>>
>> In the demo, the pre-defined categories are "media" related - i.e., 
>> Artist
>> Sites, Audio Files, CD Reviews, etc.  Artist Sites *could* be 
>> sub-divided
>> into sections for browsability.  Something concrete would be good - 
>> like
>> "home region of the world".
>>
>> Each listing/link then has a description and a set of 
>> characteristics.  For
>> demo purposes, I just kinda translated Andre's list: Desc, 
>> Genre/Style,
>> Instruments, Looper, Reference Artist, Live vs. Studio approach,
>> Compositional Approach, Year Released.  These characteristics could 
>> be an
>> endlessly debateable topic, so I'd suggest we not linger on it too 
>> long, and
>> instead provide an interface like this:
>>
>> - for each characteristic, have the user choose a certain number of
>> predefined values (3 Genre/Styles, for instance), and then also 
>> include a
>> small freeform text area for them to add their own words.  So, I could
>> choose "Ambient", "Solo Guitar", "Electronica" and then type 
>> "rhythmic, out
>> of tune, boring" in the freeform area.  Those would all be 
>> concatenated
>> together when someone does a search on "Genre/Style".
>>
>> Again, debating which list of Genre/Styles (or Live vs. Studio 
>> descriptions,
>> or - heaven forbid! - Compositional Approaches) to use doesn't sound 
>> like
>> fun.  Maybe someone could just put a reasonable proposal on the table 
>> for
>> each, and we go with that?
>>
>> You'll see that I mocked up the search page to handle all of these
>> characteristics, but the gears aren't installed behind it to make it 
>> really
>> work. :)  Just giving a feel for how that interface might look.
>>
>> Would love to hear comments!
>>
>> Added today: Greg - if this looks like a way you'd like to go as 
>> well, let
>> me know, and we could split up the work in getting it done.  I 
>> suspect that
>> with quick decisions on the various characteristics, we could get 
>> this up
>> before the end of this week.  The custom coding to be done is very 
>> simple.
>>
>> Doug
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bernhard Wagner" <loopdelightml@nosuch.biz>
>> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
>> Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2003 9:55 AM
>> Subject: RE: Narrowing the field (Re: Currently available looper music
>> webpage)
>>
>>
>>> I set up a prototype
>>>
>>> http://www.xmlizer.biz/cgi-bin/LoopersDelightReviews/kwiki.cgi
>>>
>>> Bernhard
>>>
>>
>