Thoughts on wikiloops as we grow

Hello there, friends of wikiloops :)
As those of you who who have visited this blog before will know, I do like to keep things as transparent as possible, and following this tradition I feel like sharing some "behind the scenes" news with you today.

Some time ago, it was popular to create pictures showing four images, subtitled with "what my friends think I'm doing", "what my boss thinks I'm doing", "what my wife thinks I'm doing" and "what I'm doing", to demonstrate the different perceptions people have in a funny way.

If I was to create something like that for wikiloops, the "what the users think I'm doing" picture would probably show me sitting in the top floor of some glass-and-concrete office building, with a cocktail in my hand and big bags of cash next to my desk - and guess what, the truth does look a bit different from that.
The "what I'm doing" picture would display someone who sits in a combined flat & studio room full of instruments and cables, with an espresso cup in hand and a quite usual laptop on a worn wooden desk.

I am aware few people who are using wikiloops will spend much time wondering about who is running this crazy project, and what it takes to keep it going on every day of the year.
If I was not the one dealing with this task, I guess I would not care much either, but I do hope some might be curious when offered some insight here.

So, besides sharing some recent good news with you, I am going to share some insight on the rather unpleasant tasks which are also part of what we are dealing with in the wikiloops engine room this summer.
Would you have thought someone in the background dealt with around 300 messages in the past 30 days to fend of copyright infringement cases and intolerable user behavior?
Probably not, but that is part of the job if you run an open place on the web and care for it enough not to let it turn into the so-common wild-west-internet.
Besides that we also try to ensure the project does not end in a black screen after some copyright lawsuits cost exceeded our small budget.

Those who already know a little bit about the history of wikiloops know that I started this as a hobby project some years ago, and I am open to admit I have never thought these tasks would one day take up so much time.
As wikiloops has more than 40k members today it is not that much of a surprise we have to deal with these things more frequently, somehow it still does strike me as odd when it happens.

The recent incidents ended in me having to close two quite active members accounts, the first one because the user realized way too late that having a representation agreement with a musicians union (a third party) conflicts with granting free wikiloops public licenses (where you need to confirm there is no third party who will sue wikiloops for hosting your music).
To make things worse, the user had not thought about using wikiloops under some incognito name, but had published under the same name he had registered with his union, which is like waving a flag to make sure one gets in trouble.

Once the problem became obvious I was asked to remove all content and close the account, and believe me, deleting around 450 tracks and their remixes is quite a lot of work if you realize you need to inform around 100 involved users about why their precious tracks will be removed.

The second "case" involved another quite active user of wikiloops who started to attack other users by sending offensive personal messages.
This would not be worth a mention if it was the usual case of someone registering here to promote something or to send spam messages - these cases are quickly dealt with.
To see someone with a record of over 900 tracks on wikiloops and in the status of a "supporting member" turn into a fire-starting hate-spreader does have a different taste to it, but after all friendly warnings had been ignored there seemed no other good solution than closing the account.
You do not want to know about the amount of assault landing in my inbox about this. Such decisions are rather unpopular, but I believe most of you would not like a wikiloops where no one cared, right?

[b]I would like to remind the wikiloops users today that it is in all of our hands to keep wikiloops the positive spirited place we all have been enjoying.[/b]

There are rather few rules one needs to comply with to have a good time here, but one should be aware that three things are not tolerated:
+ endangering the fun by posting copyrighted or third-party-protected music
+ verbal attacks on other users because one is lacking the skill to control ones own emotional reactions, be it due to the influence of alcohol or not.
+ lack of respect towards the moderators of wikiloops. A wikiloops account is not part of the human rights Charta, if you are not willing to accept that there are people with authority on wikiloops, please go jam somewhere else.

When not dealing with these unpleasant things I am happyly coding on the next update for wikiloops - those who are interested may find some previews in the feedback & suggestions forum, the list of improved functionality, fixed bugs and improved visual appearance is extra-long this time, and with the wikiloops member meeting (another task for you) ahead in exactly one month from today,
I can only offer a careful guess about when the update will be ready - mid October may be realistic.
Chances are we will offer a beta site where you can preview the changed interface prior to that - You know I do like getting feedback on features so I can serve your needs in the best possible way :)

I guess this is enough of a read for a day by now, so I'll keep the other current issues for another post to follow.

Have a good time on wikiloops folks, I like to think that's what it's all about :)



traditional stat collection of today:
members registered: 40.663
tracks online: 64.030
supporting members: 249
days online: 1.950