Another request

So...There's been some times where I hear a cool template, but before I'd like to ad my remix, I'd prefer to hear maybe a couple extra instruments join beforehand...for example bass, drums, keys, etc..How about something like a "Follow Template" option? Is that feasible, or is my morning coffee making me too analytical?

There's always Post It pads :)

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Like that idea I also would like to hear other instruments before I jump in and add. Good one Mark.

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I think that's a great idea, Fish. Certainly in my experience there are great templates which are quiet until someone puts drums on! I think people like to have the rhythm base to guide them!

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[url=http://www.wikiloops.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=913]I like that idea. [/url] ;)

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I usually search for versions that are stripped down to one or two instruments so I go the other way around.. none the less I think your idea will be liked by many... so I vote for it!! :)

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Good idea Mark.

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I read Dicks response on DannyK's thread..Yeah..maybe a 2 week option would be cool

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It's as beautiful a request as any. :) As a bassist (ahem) I prefer to lay down a track after the drums have moved in. I hate to keep tracking the remixes manually.

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Good morning folks :)
I've been quite busy on some other issues, so please excuse me if I took some time before commenting here.
I do like the idea, as you obviously do, and I believe such an option will be added at some point. I have a few more things in mind that might turn out to be worth having, my greatest concern besides finding the time to code that is to crowd the WL interface with a lot of functionalities which only the long term users will ever use or understand what this is good for... I still have to come up with a decent way to organize that (this also applies to any suggestions concerning the improvement of the search interface).
It would be easy to keep adding options, buttons and filters, but new users would probably feel like "this looks very complicated", so I'm carefull about that.
That being said, let me ask you guys:
1. If I "watch" a track, and lets assume that state remains active for lets say two weeks.
Do you want to get notified on direct remixes of the watched track only, or about ANY remix ever posted to this track or one of its remixes?
2. shall the "watch"-timeframe be expanded by another two weeks if there has been a remix uploaded? Some tracks may not leave the watch state...
3. one could auto-end the watch state as soon as you upload a track to that stem (you'll probably get remix notifications from that moment on) - does that make sense?
4. Do you believe the "watchlist" items should be mixed with the rest of the newsfeed, or does it make sense to switch between newsfeed and a second layout displaying the watchlist? (like the "my recent activity"-list one can switch to)

I'd appreciate any thoughts on above issues, nothing feels worse than investing a lot of effort into a feature that remains unused in the end, so I'd like to do it as simple & good as possible.

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the "watchlist" should be a switch on the newsfeed...

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I think all the work and effort is not necessary! I store the track/remix of my choice in the playlist and look back often, if there is something new and interesting for me. Here I get with many remixes that I would miss otherwise.

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As a new user I've been doing what @aduennwald does - I've started creating various playlists to use to bookmark tracks I'm interested in for various reasons.

The downside is you don't get any type of automation in regards to if there's new remixes added which is really what the OP is interested in. Computers are supposed to save you time and effort, and the playlists don't necessarily do that in regards to automated notifications.

To answer Dick's questions:
1. If I "watch" a track, and lets assume that state remains active for lets say two weeks. Do you want to get notified on direct remixes of the watched track only, or about ANY remix ever posted to this track or one of its remixes?
A: Only direct remixes of the watched track. If I also want to watch other parent/sibling remixes I can add those, too. Or I suppose you could add some sort of option at the time of creating the initial follow to help me out with the logical choices.

2. shall the "watch"-timeframe be expanded by another two weeks if there has been a remix uploaded? Some tracks may not leave the watch state...
A: Unless your site is incurring an expense at having them remain, why not have the follow remain until the user specifically removes it. Eventually if there was no activity (remixes) the follow would fall out of view on its own anyway.

3. one could auto-end the watch state as soon as you upload a track to that stem (you'll probably get remix notifications from that moment on) - does that make sense?
A: I don't think you should automatically remove the follow. While it is true the user posting a remix would theoretically get notifications against their new remix, but then they'd lose notifications against other people's remixes against the track that was originally followed. I don't want to lose anything, only gain.

4. Do you believe the "watchlist" items should be mixed with the rest of the newsfeed, or does it make sense to switch between newsfeed and a second layout displaying the watchlist? (like the "my recent activity"-list one can switch to)
A: I'd vote to just stick them in the newsfeed. It's a great feature, I'd like all of my follows/notifications/etc. to go to that single spot.

Thanks for all of the hard work on this site. So much fun. :)

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I have been thinking about this for some time now, and theres another quite interesting discussion started about "[url=http://www.wikiloops.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=1060]the way you like[/url]" in which I confirmed the "watch" button will appear sometime this year.
Let me go over a few thoughts and aspects to explain what I have in mind at this point, especially thinking of possible effects of having the "watch" button.

Right now, you are already watching things with your newsfeed: The people you follow, and your own tracks (if you have remix notifications enabled).

As some people have correctly pointed out, using these features leads to less attention on new members contributions, since you are being "fed" enough tracks on your newsfeeds.

Now the "watch" button on tracks comes into play. By clicking it, you are asking to get notified whenever there are additions to this track, regardless of the user who ads - so chances are you'll get some unknown players appear on your newsfeed. That is great!

Secondly, the watch button ads a new way to enter the collaboration game:
Right now, a new collaborator will have a relatively small audience: Those who are currently online and are checking the "latest jams", and a few users who may receive a remix notification (which only applies if new users don't start by sharing templates, and which may also be compromised if the remixed users are not frequently online).

Now, if one encouraged the new users to remix tracks which are watched by many, and which are not too old, one could increase the number of attention towards the new participants this way.
The "watched by X users" statistic could actually become very relevant in classifying promising collaboration tracks.
I can imagine some will say "but any track on wikiloops is a potential collaboration track!", but seriously, that is not true.
Some tracks are either complete, or too crowded for further collab, too experimental for the average visitor, or the sound does not leave much hope this will turn into a fantastic collab... and I believe few people will click the "watch" button if any of this is the case.

The only aspect I'm not quite sure about is the "unwatch" option...
Let's play it thru:
- you get a newsfeed message:
"Track XYZ from your watchlist has been remixed:", followed by the standard newsfeed player display.
- you open the player and check the new addition, then I can foresee three possible desires:
1. you decide to do nothing - and keep watching for remixes of your watched track
2. you decide its time to stop watching the track because this is the 43th bass add you are presented, so we'll need a button to "un-watch parent track"
3. you may feel like "wow, this is the addition I had been waiting for, now lets see what comes next" - then you would basicly like to watch this track instead of its parent, right?

I'm really a bit concerned people might be flooded with "watchlist alerts" at some point,
but I'm not sure this can be solved programmaticly - if you choose to follow 500 users or watch all tracks, don't complain about your newsfeed getting too crowded - it remains in the users hand.
I have to add that this is something the brothers at facebook would disagree about... but that is another story.

Let me end with a special thanks & credit to DannyK for being the first to bring up the idea of watching, and to Gastric for the explicit and good think-along, keep it coming ;)

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Hey Dick,


I love the idea of a watch button! I think this could be a great thing for the drummers on the site, if it is true that everyone is waiting for us before they join a jam... :)

One more thing to think about. You mentioned a few times that people who are searching for jams would be better off adding to newer jams, to be more relevant.

A simple fix to this could be on the search page the default should be "most recent tracks" as opposed to "most liked tracks". The user could always switch to see the most popular tracks, but many of those are very old and played many times. This could especially help the new member who is finding there way....

Cheers,

Raymond

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Thanks for the encouraging words :)
The "simple fix" would only work if all people using the search engine were after collaborating - the majority uses the search to find tracks for other purposes like practising, I'm quite sure they wouldn't be all happy about the "fix".
"Order by date" is a very strict way of ordering,
the "ordered by user ratings" leaves me with a lot more room for optimizing, because it is not really said which ratings are used here (people will assume its the thumb-count, it is not).
What needs to stay seperated in the search is "Blues tracks without drums FOR PRACTISE" from "Fresh blues COLLABs without Drums" - that's basicly what our current two options represent. I'll try to come up with something to get the difference & importance communicated to people starting to collaborate...

Let's try to keep this thread on-topic of the "watch"-button if we can... I'm already working on the interface change here... fiddly fiddly

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I agree. How to incorporate all functions without overcomplicating the interface? That's a tough question. The only solution I can imagine would require redesigning the site. What about having site styles? An option to view a basic/advanced layout? Just thinking out loud.

I didn't get to your questions before. Let me try and address them now.

[i]1. If I "watch" a track, and lets assume that state remains active for lets say two weeks.
Do you want to get notified on direct remixes of the watched track only, or about ANY remix ever posted to this track or one of its remixes?[/i]

Not any remix. I would say notifications related to remixes of the track I'm watching. So, it's really watching only one sub-tree. Unless there are no other remixes, then I suppose notifications for the entire tree. (Maybe that's a bit more complicated than I thought!)

[i]2. shall the "watch"-timeframe be expanded by another two weeks if there has been a remix uploaded? Some tracks may not leave the watch state...[/i]

No, I don't think so. Each time a remix is added the watch flag should be reset. That would help declutter user notifications.

[i]3. one could auto-end the watch state as soon as you upload a track to that stem (you'll probably get remix notifications from that moment on) - does that make sense?[/i]

It makes absolute sense.

[i]4. Do you believe the "watchlist" items should be mixed with the rest of the newsfeed, or does it make sense to switch between newsfeed and a second layout displaying the watchlist? (like the "my recent activity"-list one can switch to)
[/i]

Hmm. Good question. Why not just a system message through the message center?

"A track you're following has been updated! Click here to see the latest remix. If you wish to follow the latest remix, please use the watch feature. Thanks!"

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My 2 cents, add a tab on the Profile page that just handles all the Watched Songs, that way your Newsfeed stays clean and lean while you can still go through the ones you watch easier.

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Many thanks to Dick for thinking this through...Perhaps I should have titled the thread "How do YOU follow a track".. I like the idea of keeping things simple..
aduennwald mentioned how he does it...I wonder what other methods (if any) others here are doing without opening up a can of worms and making things too complex :)

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+1 for keeping things simple :)

Let's roll back a step - I believe we have heard quite different ideas on how the watch thing should work from gastric, DannyK + my suggestions, and it does seem to get a bit complicated.
The good news: computers are good at doing complicated things :)

I've been thinking this thru, and I believe the most intuitive way for the function would look like this:

- I click the watch button of Track A, because I like what I hear, and I'm curious where this will go.

- I receive a watchlist-alert on my newsfeed as Track B is uploaded as a remix of A.
I open the player, and instead of the normal "watch" button, the button below track B offers to "keep watching".
If track B is great, I'll gladly click that. If its not, I don't.

- Lets assume A gets a second direct remix C - do I want to hear that? sure I do, I liked A.
- Assume B gets a Remix - I didnt click "keep watching" on B, so I won't get notified.

This way, the watchlist will not get crowded if you do not actively decide to "keep watching", the opposite is to be expected: If you don't add some new tracks to your watchlist every now and then, it might throw alerts less often than you'd think - All thought of "timing out" or "auto-un-watch" might turn out to be less important.

I believe it is rather unlikely you will ever feel the need to "stop watching" what you once chose to watch - if any track should receive ten direct remixes right away, that may be annoying at some point, but it happens rather rarely, right?

As Danny mentioned, all of this will need some re-arrangement on the interface - which is what I have been working on all day.
By now I am starting to believe the changes can be made in a less intrusive way than what I had expected myself.
Of course we will have a handfull of additional options on tracks and (at some point) the search interface, but it looks as if that will work without an entire redesign.
It will get tough on the mobile interface, tho... but I'll get there :)

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i think that will be a very cool feature ! the manually un-watch functionality seems like a cool one too : imagine i accidentally hit the watch button on a Dafunkydrummer template ?? ôÔ
great work and thinking here ;)

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