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You will not believe how this guy runs his online community
You will not believe how this guy runs his online community
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Posts: 3004
Joined: 30 dic 2010
The usual "You will not believe" internet post in 2026 would follow up with a bold printed statement here, giving your brain more sparking outrage, so you keep on reading.
I'll try:
"For fifteen years, it's all about Titties and Beer!" claims operator of wikiloops.com
Do I have your attention :D ?
Spoiler: I don't drink beer, and Titties and Beer is a Zappa song from 1978, in case you are too young to know. This post includes words like "boobs", "clogged pipes", "mind-fuckery", "cult leader" and similar to keep you entertained while reading, and i have boldened the spicy parts to tear up the wall of text... at least i tried.
What this post shall reveal are some thoughts on how I aim to navigate the wikiloops community in the future, and yes, some of that will sound quite unbelievable to some, at least that part wasn't overselling.
I am writing this to give you guys the chance to think along and give your feedback. That has been a part of how this platform has been built, and many cool things have come from discussing ideas with you folks in the past. Feel invited to respond with thoughts, I do read these.
"I am aware very few members of the wikiloops community have the slightest idea what it takes to operate such a platform, and how many choices there are on that way, depending on what you are optimizing for"
I have come to that conclusion, so, whenever there is any communication between me (who has to make these choices and knows all the technical stuff and implications), and you who experience wikiloops from the users perspective, there will always be that difficulty of me having to point out and explain some things first.
I oftentimes feel I am most likely loosing 90% of people reading into my communication somewhere in these explanations (it is 2026, attention spans are minimal, that's a fact - i am tempted to include a boobs-pic here to keep your curiosity level up).
"The real problem is: whatever I tell people, they still have to choose if they trust the information I am offering!"
I hope you are skeptical, this is 2026, and a lot of stuff online is AI generated and out to grab your attention, collect your data and ... some other things.
The level of professional and AI-backed mind-fuckery that is applied is beyond your imagination, promised.
If you happen to know some teenage social media addict, be sure the addictiveness is not there by accident, some smart people worked to get to that cocaine level of attractiveness.
Are these techniques in use on wikiloops? Can you tell?
If you think you can, do let me know what makes you think has been applied - I don't think you can tell, nor can I when just visiting some website.
Which brings us back to the fact:
You need to determine your level of trust into my sincerity, including trust that I am not an AI generated fictional character trying to pull off the cult leader act.
Which ever way you decide, I'll have to be okay with that. You are welcome to enjoy wikiloops regardless of interest in what I have to say.
I mentioned there are choices to make along the way, let me give you some examples:
One aspect of operations is budgeting the project. Stuff needs to be payed, money needs to be collected somehow.
Would you want interrupting audio ads?
What could you gain selling email addresses for marketing purposes?
What are the trade-offs of displaying 3rd-party banner ads?
What is a fair premium member price per month? - there are thousand decisions on budgeting, and if you are me, you have to pick.
Another aspect are things that influence community engagement, or the first impression people have of the platform, like:
Should wikiloops be presented as a professional or educational tool, or a hobbyist platform?
Do we encourage encouraging "compliments" between hobby musicians, or over-critical feedback resembling some "next superstar" TV jury?
Should we fake engagement by having some friendly bots like new members tracks, so they feel validated?
When is the best moment to send some email notification, and what should the headline be so people open it? - again, the list is endless, as it comes down to the tiniest details like "do we need another button to do X here, and what should that look like?".
So, to you, only a part of the chosen options at hand are visible - if you have never heard any audio ads on wikiloops in 15 years, then you know which way I chose, easy.
If I state that no user data or emails have been sold ever, then you cannot verify that but have to take my word for it.
There are no bots active to pretend activity on wikiloops - again, this is hard to verify from your end, the only indicators you have are tracks that get no comments or likes at all (a good bot system would absolutely try to prevent that), or an abandoned Shoutbox-Chat that sits idle for hours - humans do that, bots would not, as the first impression this creates is not a lively one, right?
Why am I suggesting to reflect on your trust regarding wikiloops?
Because I feel it is one critical ingredient to how you will perceive future decisions. Any change I make on wikiloops triggers the basic human instinct that let's us re-verify if the changed environment is still safe. I believe that is baked into our DNA, and in most cases, online platforms have changed to their own benefit instead of the users, so, again, experience has taught us to be skeptical.
I hope your curiosity on what the hell is going to change is strong enough to read on - there really is one quite large change ahead which I will mention in this post,
but the meta-level thing I am trying to stage here is this:
You, as a wikiloops user have choices: You can be one of the many that will not read this post, use wikiloops to find some cool tracks etc, you may be a critical observer, or you can be a collaborator on the project if you feel wikiloops is a little more than a place to grab mp3s, and if you trust the story of this being run by a single dude from germany who claims to be not purely driven by cash-grab motives.
The story few people will believe is basically this:
wikiloops is not following enterprise rules, making the most profit has never been the main objective. The mission has always focused on making musical collaboration happen across national and cultural borders, and establishing a worthwhile and positive environment.
And it lasts since 15 years, driven by the idea, my personal time investment and the financial support collected from the community.
This is extremely rare nowadays, after the internet evolved from the wild-west times of the early 2000s to the AI dominated bot battlefield of 2026, which presents a sophisticated surface designed to grab your attention for as long as possible.
I am still at it, pushing wikiloops forward using modern day tools, which in my opinion should not be left to the bad guys.
That's why I am using the superpowers of AI to improve wikiloops, at a pace that is mind-blowing to someone who used to spend months coding a single feature manually.
Let's connect the dots here:
If pace of development is rapidly increased, the pace of decisions to make on the way increases, too.
Releasing the wikiloops app and including an audio recording interface in it was only possible with AI, doing it was a decision I took, since handheld devices are another cultural border I feel wikiloops should not fail to cross. A lot of younger users simply do not have a desktop computer any longer, let's meet them where they live: on their phones.
Instead of making sure new members get hooked by fake bot engagement, I added the "newcomer" badge on new folks tracks, hoping that would help them to get included into the community by getting noticed. It's always these small things one can do to influence the outcome, but if you are not willing to fake it, the result will look less sexy than people might expect. The classic downside of keeping it real. I will get back to new member inclusion thoughts some other time.
Coming up next is a change in the right side panel of wikiloops (for desktop users, that is):
The "online users" panel will be replaced by a "wikiloops live" panel, which includes the online users display, but also features a live ticker of current activity on wikiloops, currently covering track likes, track comments, track uploads and new member signups.
[img]https://www.img.wikiloops.com/blog/wikiloops_live_preview.png[/img]
This widget will become the default for new members, and will sit above the shoutbox widget, adding a livelier impression of what is happening on this site then the shoutbox has for a long time now.
With more and more people browsing wikiloops on mobile, the visibility and use has simply decreased, so I've felt it's time for something else here for quite some time.
Two things to say about that upcoming change:
First off, it will not hurt. If you love the Shoutbox - no problem, it is still there and you can keep it in sight just where it used to live, all good here.
Second - I have put a lot of thought into not making the live ticker a surveillance tool. I wanted to showcase that there is activity, and I wanted to showcase that there is global activity, so the ticker shows the country flags + an activity icon + the track id, but not who gave that like or wrote that comment. The data is real, but delayed by a minute or two, and not all of your activities will surface - except for track uploads, which do state your username in the ticker message. You will have to see it in action to judge, I just felt like pointing out I see the potential issue and am open to making adjustments in case we discover something irritating I may have missed here.
That being said, my main point here today is:
wikiloops may be stranger than fiction in some ways, and I certainly am as a character.
This is our house here, and we can have it the way we want for as long as we can pay the rent. It's a big building for a single maintenance man, so help me out some if you notice a clogged pipe, a dripping sink or a nest of bugs. These things happen, and they do get fixed eventually. You can be part of this ongoing shape-change if you care to, it is as real as it gets.
Thanks to those who read all of this - looking forward to your thoughts if you care to share them! I hope my attempt to mimic the current attention-grabbing style of light news whilst offering trustworthy info worked for you, its my attempt to overcome the hopeless feeling i have knowing that so much of the internet works like that nowadays.
I'll try:
"For fifteen years, it's all about Titties and Beer!" claims operator of wikiloops.com
Do I have your attention :D ?
Spoiler: I don't drink beer, and Titties and Beer is a Zappa song from 1978, in case you are too young to know. This post includes words like "boobs", "clogged pipes", "mind-fuckery", "cult leader" and similar to keep you entertained while reading, and i have boldened the spicy parts to tear up the wall of text... at least i tried.
What this post shall reveal are some thoughts on how I aim to navigate the wikiloops community in the future, and yes, some of that will sound quite unbelievable to some, at least that part wasn't overselling.
I am writing this to give you guys the chance to think along and give your feedback. That has been a part of how this platform has been built, and many cool things have come from discussing ideas with you folks in the past. Feel invited to respond with thoughts, I do read these.
"I am aware very few members of the wikiloops community have the slightest idea what it takes to operate such a platform, and how many choices there are on that way, depending on what you are optimizing for"
I have come to that conclusion, so, whenever there is any communication between me (who has to make these choices and knows all the technical stuff and implications), and you who experience wikiloops from the users perspective, there will always be that difficulty of me having to point out and explain some things first.
I oftentimes feel I am most likely loosing 90% of people reading into my communication somewhere in these explanations (it is 2026, attention spans are minimal, that's a fact - i am tempted to include a boobs-pic here to keep your curiosity level up).
"The real problem is: whatever I tell people, they still have to choose if they trust the information I am offering!"
I hope you are skeptical, this is 2026, and a lot of stuff online is AI generated and out to grab your attention, collect your data and ... some other things.
The level of professional and AI-backed mind-fuckery that is applied is beyond your imagination, promised.
If you happen to know some teenage social media addict, be sure the addictiveness is not there by accident, some smart people worked to get to that cocaine level of attractiveness.
Are these techniques in use on wikiloops? Can you tell?
If you think you can, do let me know what makes you think has been applied - I don't think you can tell, nor can I when just visiting some website.
Which brings us back to the fact:
You need to determine your level of trust into my sincerity, including trust that I am not an AI generated fictional character trying to pull off the cult leader act.
Which ever way you decide, I'll have to be okay with that. You are welcome to enjoy wikiloops regardless of interest in what I have to say.
I mentioned there are choices to make along the way, let me give you some examples:
One aspect of operations is budgeting the project. Stuff needs to be payed, money needs to be collected somehow.
Would you want interrupting audio ads?
What could you gain selling email addresses for marketing purposes?
What are the trade-offs of displaying 3rd-party banner ads?
What is a fair premium member price per month? - there are thousand decisions on budgeting, and if you are me, you have to pick.
Another aspect are things that influence community engagement, or the first impression people have of the platform, like:
Should wikiloops be presented as a professional or educational tool, or a hobbyist platform?
Do we encourage encouraging "compliments" between hobby musicians, or over-critical feedback resembling some "next superstar" TV jury?
Should we fake engagement by having some friendly bots like new members tracks, so they feel validated?
When is the best moment to send some email notification, and what should the headline be so people open it? - again, the list is endless, as it comes down to the tiniest details like "do we need another button to do X here, and what should that look like?".
So, to you, only a part of the chosen options at hand are visible - if you have never heard any audio ads on wikiloops in 15 years, then you know which way I chose, easy.
If I state that no user data or emails have been sold ever, then you cannot verify that but have to take my word for it.
There are no bots active to pretend activity on wikiloops - again, this is hard to verify from your end, the only indicators you have are tracks that get no comments or likes at all (a good bot system would absolutely try to prevent that), or an abandoned Shoutbox-Chat that sits idle for hours - humans do that, bots would not, as the first impression this creates is not a lively one, right?
Why am I suggesting to reflect on your trust regarding wikiloops?
Because I feel it is one critical ingredient to how you will perceive future decisions. Any change I make on wikiloops triggers the basic human instinct that let's us re-verify if the changed environment is still safe. I believe that is baked into our DNA, and in most cases, online platforms have changed to their own benefit instead of the users, so, again, experience has taught us to be skeptical.
I hope your curiosity on what the hell is going to change is strong enough to read on - there really is one quite large change ahead which I will mention in this post,
but the meta-level thing I am trying to stage here is this:
You, as a wikiloops user have choices: You can be one of the many that will not read this post, use wikiloops to find some cool tracks etc, you may be a critical observer, or you can be a collaborator on the project if you feel wikiloops is a little more than a place to grab mp3s, and if you trust the story of this being run by a single dude from germany who claims to be not purely driven by cash-grab motives.
The story few people will believe is basically this:
wikiloops is not following enterprise rules, making the most profit has never been the main objective. The mission has always focused on making musical collaboration happen across national and cultural borders, and establishing a worthwhile and positive environment.
And it lasts since 15 years, driven by the idea, my personal time investment and the financial support collected from the community.
This is extremely rare nowadays, after the internet evolved from the wild-west times of the early 2000s to the AI dominated bot battlefield of 2026, which presents a sophisticated surface designed to grab your attention for as long as possible.
I am still at it, pushing wikiloops forward using modern day tools, which in my opinion should not be left to the bad guys.
That's why I am using the superpowers of AI to improve wikiloops, at a pace that is mind-blowing to someone who used to spend months coding a single feature manually.
Let's connect the dots here:
If pace of development is rapidly increased, the pace of decisions to make on the way increases, too.
Releasing the wikiloops app and including an audio recording interface in it was only possible with AI, doing it was a decision I took, since handheld devices are another cultural border I feel wikiloops should not fail to cross. A lot of younger users simply do not have a desktop computer any longer, let's meet them where they live: on their phones.
Instead of making sure new members get hooked by fake bot engagement, I added the "newcomer" badge on new folks tracks, hoping that would help them to get included into the community by getting noticed. It's always these small things one can do to influence the outcome, but if you are not willing to fake it, the result will look less sexy than people might expect. The classic downside of keeping it real. I will get back to new member inclusion thoughts some other time.
Coming up next is a change in the right side panel of wikiloops (for desktop users, that is):
The "online users" panel will be replaced by a "wikiloops live" panel, which includes the online users display, but also features a live ticker of current activity on wikiloops, currently covering track likes, track comments, track uploads and new member signups.
[img]https://www.img.wikiloops.com/blog/wikiloops_live_preview.png[/img]
This widget will become the default for new members, and will sit above the shoutbox widget, adding a livelier impression of what is happening on this site then the shoutbox has for a long time now.
With more and more people browsing wikiloops on mobile, the visibility and use has simply decreased, so I've felt it's time for something else here for quite some time.
Two things to say about that upcoming change:
First off, it will not hurt. If you love the Shoutbox - no problem, it is still there and you can keep it in sight just where it used to live, all good here.
Second - I have put a lot of thought into not making the live ticker a surveillance tool. I wanted to showcase that there is activity, and I wanted to showcase that there is global activity, so the ticker shows the country flags + an activity icon + the track id, but not who gave that like or wrote that comment. The data is real, but delayed by a minute or two, and not all of your activities will surface - except for track uploads, which do state your username in the ticker message. You will have to see it in action to judge, I just felt like pointing out I see the potential issue and am open to making adjustments in case we discover something irritating I may have missed here.
That being said, my main point here today is:
wikiloops may be stranger than fiction in some ways, and I certainly am as a character.
This is our house here, and we can have it the way we want for as long as we can pay the rent. It's a big building for a single maintenance man, so help me out some if you notice a clogged pipe, a dripping sink or a nest of bugs. These things happen, and they do get fixed eventually. You can be part of this ongoing shape-change if you care to, it is as real as it gets.
Thanks to those who read all of this - looking forward to your thoughts if you care to share them! I hope my attempt to mimic the current attention-grabbing style of light news whilst offering trustworthy info worked for you, its my attempt to overcome the hopeless feeling i have knowing that so much of the internet works like that nowadays.
+15
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Posts: 565
Joined: 4 lug 2020
i'm not gonna lie...i saw "titties and beer"...then scrolled and saw "wikiloops live"...was thinking we were getting live titties and beer up in here, like some sort of cam widget :D:@ way to hook me, well played.
that being said, i'm looking forward to the new widget :W
that being said, i'm looking forward to the new widget :W
+7
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Posts: 5
Joined: 10 ago 2024
Makes sense to me . I have a friend who is a software developer so I understand a lot of what you mean from the technical side. I have a lot of ideas but as you mentioned there are more hurdles in place than just a thought being born lol. I appreciate your hard work. This site is pretty amazing . Its Def noticed by me that you have went the extra mile to keep ads out. I feel honestly the price of membership is too cheap. I would def pay more for this experience. I hate to be like that but things arent getting cheaper and I think most of us here would pay a little more to help out
+4
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Posts: 3004
Joined: 30 dic 2010
rootshell wrote:
...was thinking we were getting live titties and beer up in here, like some sort of cam widget :D:@ way to hook me, well played.
...was thinking we were getting live titties and beer up in here, like some sort of cam widget :D:@ way to hook me, well played.
lol, this made my day and the post worth writing this way :D
How many other things could have triggered similar instant interest rushes? Those are just the obvious candidates, known long before 1978 I guess.
No, live cam action is not anywhere near happening on the loops, I have to disappoint.
Forsaken wrote:
I feel honestly the price of membership is too cheap. I would def pay more for this experience. I hate to be like that but things arent getting cheaper and I think most of us here would pay a little more to help out
I feel honestly the price of membership is too cheap. I would def pay more for this experience. I hate to be like that but things arent getting cheaper and I think most of us here would pay a little more to help out
I'll keep up the humorous tongue here if I may - the skeptics will assume I nudged you to say that, so I wouldn't have to :P
I am at risk of being the notorious "oh, look, dude posts again and I bet he'll rally for support at the end of it" - guy, and sometimes I take the freedom to surprise people by not doing that. Someone has to do it to make a project like this work, that's why I often do.
What you could do is upgrade to the "gold star" supporter status, that does cost a bit more, and has some little benefits, as hinted at on the [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/upgrade_plans.php?ref=17]plan-feature-comparison page aka "upgrade"[/url] or alternatively the [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/donate.php]donations aka Support wikiloops[/url] page if you feel that's the thing to do. And you are correct, the basic support plan with $5 per month is cheap, I have not touched these prices since 2017 and will adjust them some time, even tho I really hate to. Who knows, maybe the two plans to choose from could be merged into a single plan, too, I really have not thought this thru, but I'll need to touch it (and deal with the potential protest).
+4
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Posts: 5
Joined: 10 ago 2024
We all love this site, These tracks mean a lot to me, The friendships Ive made mean a lot to me. the growth Ive had here is just insane from track 1 till now, This community is something special. Having different options like you do is smart, not everyone has the funds to shell out but those who want to be here will pay whats needed to help support you and the future of the site, Drop one of your many streaming services per month and invest in a higher tier package or what have you, Im glad you posted the support wiki loops page. I honestly didnt know about it till now. Any changes made price wise wont bother me, there are a ton of options that can be done to be fair to all, but a lot of thought included here, its starting to hurt my small pea brain. Have a good one
+4
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Posts: 4
Joined: 15 set 2025
I think what you have built here is a marvel. I recently asked my AI bot if there are any other music-related platforms that are similar to wikiloops, and it asserted that wikiloops is unique. I just joined late last year, and planned to upgrade my monthly plan after 1 year if I found this platform useful. Well, it is more than useful to me. I find it has become my go-to creative outlet. I hope to remain on wikiloops as long as I am able to play, and I hope wikiloops retains its current approach and philosophy. This is the type of resource that the Internet was supposed to bring the world but largely failed to do. It is enriching and it is not out to take but is out to give something beautiful to the world. I say add all the new features you want, or keep it as-is. I'll be upgrading my support either way and I hope many others do as well so that it can remain ad-free and it can ease your financial concerns. Many thanks to you Dick.
+6
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Posts: 975
Joined: 14 feb 2018
Re Forsaken: "We all love this site", and/or WaldoBear: "I think what you have built here is a marvel" - what else could be said about Wikiloops? Thinking about it since I've read this original post of yours yesterday, but like everyone else here I think I'm just grateful for what you did since 15 years.
And the users' reactions, mine included, and with a bit tongue-in-cheek: that sometimes reminds me of XKCD's "Creation":
[img]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/creation.png[/img]
So whatever you'll do, please keep the dark mode :D
Thanks my friend :)
And the users' reactions, mine included, and with a bit tongue-in-cheek: that sometimes reminds me of XKCD's "Creation":
[img]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/creation.png[/img]
So whatever you'll do, please keep the dark mode :D
Thanks my friend :)
+3
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Posts: 368
Joined: 19 mar 2022
So, no beer and no titties on Wikiloops. Why am I not surprised? And my suggestion for a weekly bottle of Champagne for Gold members wasn`t even mentioned. Dick, we really need to talk about your attitude towards member satisfaction.
On a more serious note, I really appreciate that Wikiloops still continues with small improvements on the original idea instead of trying to become the flashiest site around. Every change Dick has made over the last years has been in support of "Let`s make music together" and adressing issues that have come up through how we use Wikiloops. And that`s a strategy I fully support. Plus, the only way to feed your ego here is to make music.
That`s not to say I don`t have questions and suggestions, but I won`t voice them here because even after the years I`ve been on Wikiloops I still don`t have the slightest idea of why Wikiloops actually works, why this is still a (rather large) community that sticks to written and unwritten rules and that has maintained its style in how we interact. But most importantly, I don`t have an inkling about the goals and ambitions of our members. But maybe I`ll adress that in a separate post in the blue iguana forum.
Anyway, anyone asking themselves if Wikiloops provides value for money, ask instead how much poorer your life could be you didn`t have Wikiloops. So, get an upgrade, NOW.
On a more serious note, I really appreciate that Wikiloops still continues with small improvements on the original idea instead of trying to become the flashiest site around. Every change Dick has made over the last years has been in support of "Let`s make music together" and adressing issues that have come up through how we use Wikiloops. And that`s a strategy I fully support. Plus, the only way to feed your ego here is to make music.
That`s not to say I don`t have questions and suggestions, but I won`t voice them here because even after the years I`ve been on Wikiloops I still don`t have the slightest idea of why Wikiloops actually works, why this is still a (rather large) community that sticks to written and unwritten rules and that has maintained its style in how we interact. But most importantly, I don`t have an inkling about the goals and ambitions of our members. But maybe I`ll adress that in a separate post in the blue iguana forum.
Anyway, anyone asking themselves if Wikiloops provides value for money, ask instead how much poorer your life could be you didn`t have Wikiloops. So, get an upgrade, NOW.
+5
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That's a disappointment. I thought this was going to be a post about Frank Zappas music after the first two sentences, and how listening to Zappa was a guiding principle for the creation of Wikiloops 15 years ago. And how today, 33 years after his death, his music is still running day and night in the Wikiloops boiler room. Just in case one wonders, I am a big Zappa fan...
But before I get on the wrong side of a daisy storm here, I love Wikiloops and everything it stands for. Fantastic achievement, keep doing what you do, all good!! I wish I had created something like that in my life, but I didn't. So I am happy to at least be involved in this <3
[youtube]dowl-Fl9PFo[/youtube]
But before I get on the wrong side of a daisy storm here, I love Wikiloops and everything it stands for. Fantastic achievement, keep doing what you do, all good!! I wish I had created something like that in my life, but I didn't. So I am happy to at least be involved in this <3
[youtube]dowl-Fl9PFo[/youtube]
+5
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Posts: 975
Joined: 14 feb 2018
An idea which we could discuss here (or in MySounds' Quo Vadis Wikiloops thread) would be topics like political songs etc.
Let me explain: As a moderator, and - dare I say so? - friend to the Wikiloops founder I understand quite well why we don't allow discussions about politics and/or religion here. That keeps the boards nice and respectful, right?
But when I was younger, there was some kind of thriving music scene which had "protest songs", think of those Liedermacher-Festivals at Burg Waldeck and so on. In fact, that scene is even a bit older than me.
I understand that those protest songs would nowadays mostly be considered to be in the left/liberal camp, and that there are other people (maybe here) as well - so what would "protest lyrics" do? I kind of remember some "dump the trump" (or so) song around here, but forgot what happened to it, my guess is that we contacted the author, explained why that could cause trouble, and then removed it.
Or think about religion - without searching the differences here, my thought was like: what would happen to some kind of singer like Nina Hagen in this (our) community here, with Nietzsche-inspired songs like "Gott ist tot - the Lord ist fort"?
Are we maybe too restrictive if you think in terms of art?
Just a thought...
Edit: I found this one quite wonderful...
[wl]25194[/wl]
Let me explain: As a moderator, and - dare I say so? - friend to the Wikiloops founder I understand quite well why we don't allow discussions about politics and/or religion here. That keeps the boards nice and respectful, right?
But when I was younger, there was some kind of thriving music scene which had "protest songs", think of those Liedermacher-Festivals at Burg Waldeck and so on. In fact, that scene is even a bit older than me.
I understand that those protest songs would nowadays mostly be considered to be in the left/liberal camp, and that there are other people (maybe here) as well - so what would "protest lyrics" do? I kind of remember some "dump the trump" (or so) song around here, but forgot what happened to it, my guess is that we contacted the author, explained why that could cause trouble, and then removed it.
Or think about religion - without searching the differences here, my thought was like: what would happen to some kind of singer like Nina Hagen in this (our) community here, with Nietzsche-inspired songs like "Gott ist tot - the Lord ist fort"?
Are we maybe too restrictive if you think in terms of art?
Just a thought...
Edit: I found this one quite wonderful...
[wl]25194[/wl]
+1
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@Wolfgang : Just my kneejerk reaction, but please, no. We`ve already got some very decent lyrics contributions which have yet to be used and secondly, sex, drugs, rock `n roll, demons, beer and titties tend to keep my mood lighter than topical lyrics on treehugging, world peace and the preservation of endangered species (of which I am one).
(sorry)
(sorry)
+4
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MySounds wrote:
@Wolfgang : Just my kneejerk reaction, but please, no. We`ve already got some very decent lyrics contributions which have yet to be used and secondly, sex, drugs, rock `n roll, demons, beer and titties tend to keep my mood lighter than topical lyrics on treehugging, world peace and the preservation of endangered species (of which I am one).
(sorry)
@Wolfgang : Just my kneejerk reaction, but please, no. We`ve already got some very decent lyrics contributions which have yet to be used and secondly, sex, drugs, rock `n roll, demons, beer and titties tend to keep my mood lighter than topical lyrics on treehugging, world peace and the preservation of endangered species (of which I am one).
(sorry)
No need to be sorry Thomas - you have a very good point here ;) :W
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Dick wrote:
"The real problem is: whatever I tell people, they still have to choose if they trust the information I am offering!"
I hope you are skeptical, this is 2026, and a lot of stuff online is AI generated and out to grab your attention, collect your data and ... some other things.
"The real problem is: whatever I tell people, they still have to choose if they trust the information I am offering!"
I hope you are skeptical, this is 2026, and a lot of stuff online is AI generated and out to grab your attention, collect your data and ... some other things.
I wanted to comment on this specifically. I'm not an old member, but I'm not a new member either, and this is for any new members who may stumble across this. Yes, I trust the information being offered here on this site. At no point has there been deception or general 'fuckery'. In fact, what other sites can honestly say they query or poll users for upcoming changes, or value their input. I feel this is still a very 'grass roots' run site. You think if I emailed or messaged Mark Zuckerberg from my FB account that he'd respond? Hell no, but I can message our local Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Kaiser, and most likely get a response or some acknowledgement. This is what sets this place a part. The community also does get to drive the environment a little as well. When topics come up, they are discussed like normal humans, with pros and cons on both sides...real...intelligent...conversations. (Check the AI topic with tons of discussion started by MySounds-Thomas).
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, many worth a quick reply, I'll try:
I am absolutely sure you are not alone in this. wikiloops is a huge site and you can have a lot of fun without ever noticing a lot of its parts, or information you'd later regret not having found earlier.
It may be a very weird way to look at this fact, but my reading is that there is room for improvement on the interface to make sure people find such pages and understand what they mean/do,
and secondly, that I need to keep telling the story and posting such links, over and over again, as new people join who do not know. It's a chore in some way.
In my initial post, there's that part where I say users have a choice to care & get involved or not - here we are among those who care to speak up.
This thread has a high number of reads, but only few participants (so far), again, I'm fine with that.
What I am trying to get at it this:
On a platform like this one, you will naturally have a wide range of awareness, ranging from the "oh, i googled for drum tracks and got one from that one site after a quick registration"-member who could not tell you what wikiloops really is,
to the decade-long veteran who knows the entire story.
To make all of those people happy and to get the support-need communicated to each in a good way is a maximum challenge. Whenever I do, I feel like I might be annoying the long term supporters with telling the same story.
Take this example:
If I add a newly won sponsors banner, or advertise the new wikiloops app with some banner on your newsfeed - what would your emotional reaction be?
After having read this thread, you might feel like "Yeah, there he's at it again, trying to keep the boat afloat so we can have fun here" - without reading such threads, you might feel "wait, didn't I pay for no ads? is this platform starting to spam me now or what?".
I do rarely speak about the type of negative and partially aggressive feedback I have received in the course of 15 years, and I am also quite sure a lot of people left wikiloops after misreading some of my attempts.
People expect to be ripped off, wikiloops is too good to be true in many regards, and that causes a misperception with some.
I'm just stating what I have learned, I have understanding for all the players in this game.
Sorry, that was a wide-arched thought, I hope you understand what I am trying to say by that - it boils down to "your impression of fairness depends on your awareness" - this also applies to the pricing options.
When a fairly new member like WaldoBear writes something like
This is the type of resource that the Internet was supposed to bring the world but largely failed to do. [...] I say add all the new features you want, or keep it as-is., then I am truly happy,
as it tells me some do notice how different wikiloops is operated, even to the point of "I trust you will not fuck it up all of a sudden".
That type of trust is tested most heavily whenever there are larger updates, which often come with a week of shaky bugs that need to be resolved.
Those aware of what this is here know: There's a dude sweating over in germany to get this to work, those who are unaware bitch in the shoutbox and sent complaint emails...
On the other hand, "keep as is" sounds nice, but would be the slow death of this project.
Why? Because neither google nor chatGPT would praise anything that presents itself in the technical standard of years ago. Tech shifts so quickly, if we want our music and wikiloops to be found by humans, we need to satisfy that machinery and the changing user expectations. It is what it is.
If your AI bot says wikiloops is unique - then that's great, I'm not all convinced this is all true, but I am aware our reputation in the learning data seems to be good. Other similar projects have either commercialized and died, or given up entirely as it got harder and harder to even get some traffic, whilst ad revenue has been on a steady decline for any old-school web projects.
Here's a tongue-in-cheeck response to that:
"The heat is elsewhere" says wikiloops founder - the mechanism is actually simpler than you'd expect:
Enterprise social internet works like: More outrage -> more interest -> more revenue, so it is built to stimulate and promote posting outrageous stuff that pushes emotional buttons. Since wikiloops does not follow that pattern, the outrage is not amplified here, it's even moderated when it happens and gets too bad.
If you act like a jerk on wikiloops, it is not giving you that dopamine hit of responses you would get out of being a jerk on X. wikiloops works for people who are either good in collaborating, which requires good social skills, or people who are genuinely not here to have their egos polished, but love to keep a musical diary and have some company here.
The eventual jerk testing wikiloops usually heads elsewhere without any moderation need. Almost funny how that all comes down to being commercially-driven or not.
wikiloops model is rather like: positive experience -> more interest -> more positive experience driven, at the cost of me having a day-job to pay the family bills - believe it or not.
Sorry to disappoint! If you want to talk in zappa terms, then this is more related to "I'm the slime" from 1973. If only Frank had known what was coming, 2026 has hyper-processed slime on steroids oozing out from your smartphone screen ;)
I do not think we are - but I am happy you brought this up, as that is yet another of those decision areas I mentioned in my initial post.
Let's take the newer members along here - of course all of you have carefully studied the [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/docs/code_of_conduct.php]wikiloops code of conduct[/url], right :p ? No? See...?
What I am trying to say is:
I do not believe a new member of wikiloops notices that we have these topical limitations in place - we mods can point at them when justifying removal or change requests, but that happens very, very rarely.
I am aware that we killed some members fun on wikiloops with these restrictions in the past, and it was sad to see them go, but that is in the past now.
If anyone was publishing a track reflecting on, say, "Hormuz on my mind" and presented a thoughtful lyric that invited reflection or exposed personal feelings, would we police that? No, we would not.
The Code of Conduct is our last line of defense to protect against religious or political campaigning when it happens.
My personal pain-points about these rules are these:
As Wolfgang points out, we are limiting potentially worthy political causes/views from expressing themselves. wikiloops cannot and will not apply different rules for different political colors or religious beliefs, that would never work.
To be honest, if some hardcore vegan started posting tracks raging against my beef consumption - would we flag that? I don't think we would, what we are flagging are personal attacks via tracks, calls for violence, too explicit language (boobs are obviously not on the list).
The forum is a separate story from the tracks here, I wished we had more opportunity to have a global thought exchange on political issues here, but again, once that is allowed, where do you draw the line?
The real issue that needs policing is user behavior - if everybody acted respectful and diplomatic and aware of things other people might feel offended by, we could discuss any topic in the forum. Humans fail at that when online, and I am not going back to teaching single individuals why certain communications are offensive and not diplomatic enough for a global exchange platform.
Again, I often wished it was different, but the current solution works well.
I rather have wikiloops be the platform where you are not all sure if your collaborator has a special pronoun preference, votes for the right party or prays to your deity of choice. Some cool tracks would not have happened, I'm absolutely sure.
The only viable alternative solution to this matter would be the type of algorithmic content curation that enterprise social media platforms use: Serve each individual the exact right dose of content to validate they are on the right page to be, but within that topical bubble, optimize for emotional reaction. Like having a subreddit for hardcore vegans on wikiloops that you only get to see after some interaction we track. I don't think we want that.
Thank you for that, sir, and thank you all for your feedback, it means a lot to me.
In the meantime, the new live widget work is progressing nicely :)
Forsaken wrote:
Im glad you posted the support wiki loops page. I honestly didnt know about it till now.
Im glad you posted the support wiki loops page. I honestly didnt know about it till now.
I am absolutely sure you are not alone in this. wikiloops is a huge site and you can have a lot of fun without ever noticing a lot of its parts, or information you'd later regret not having found earlier.
It may be a very weird way to look at this fact, but my reading is that there is room for improvement on the interface to make sure people find such pages and understand what they mean/do,
and secondly, that I need to keep telling the story and posting such links, over and over again, as new people join who do not know. It's a chore in some way.
In my initial post, there's that part where I say users have a choice to care & get involved or not - here we are among those who care to speak up.
This thread has a high number of reads, but only few participants (so far), again, I'm fine with that.
What I am trying to get at it this:
On a platform like this one, you will naturally have a wide range of awareness, ranging from the "oh, i googled for drum tracks and got one from that one site after a quick registration"-member who could not tell you what wikiloops really is,
to the decade-long veteran who knows the entire story.
To make all of those people happy and to get the support-need communicated to each in a good way is a maximum challenge. Whenever I do, I feel like I might be annoying the long term supporters with telling the same story.
Take this example:
If I add a newly won sponsors banner, or advertise the new wikiloops app with some banner on your newsfeed - what would your emotional reaction be?
After having read this thread, you might feel like "Yeah, there he's at it again, trying to keep the boat afloat so we can have fun here" - without reading such threads, you might feel "wait, didn't I pay for no ads? is this platform starting to spam me now or what?".
I do rarely speak about the type of negative and partially aggressive feedback I have received in the course of 15 years, and I am also quite sure a lot of people left wikiloops after misreading some of my attempts.
People expect to be ripped off, wikiloops is too good to be true in many regards, and that causes a misperception with some.
I'm just stating what I have learned, I have understanding for all the players in this game.
Sorry, that was a wide-arched thought, I hope you understand what I am trying to say by that - it boils down to "your impression of fairness depends on your awareness" - this also applies to the pricing options.
When a fairly new member like WaldoBear writes something like
This is the type of resource that the Internet was supposed to bring the world but largely failed to do. [...] I say add all the new features you want, or keep it as-is.
as it tells me some do notice how different wikiloops is operated, even to the point of "I trust you will not fuck it up all of a sudden".
That type of trust is tested most heavily whenever there are larger updates, which often come with a week of shaky bugs that need to be resolved.
Those aware of what this is here know: There's a dude sweating over in germany to get this to work, those who are unaware bitch in the shoutbox and sent complaint emails...
On the other hand, "keep as is" sounds nice, but would be the slow death of this project.
Why? Because neither google nor chatGPT would praise anything that presents itself in the technical standard of years ago. Tech shifts so quickly, if we want our music and wikiloops to be found by humans, we need to satisfy that machinery and the changing user expectations. It is what it is.
If your AI bot says wikiloops is unique - then that's great, I'm not all convinced this is all true, but I am aware our reputation in the learning data seems to be good. Other similar projects have either commercialized and died, or given up entirely as it got harder and harder to even get some traffic, whilst ad revenue has been on a steady decline for any old-school web projects.
MySounds wrote:
I still don`t have the slightest idea of why Wikiloops actually works, why this is still a (rather large) community that sticks to written and unwritten rules and that has maintained its style in how we interact.
I still don`t have the slightest idea of why Wikiloops actually works, why this is still a (rather large) community that sticks to written and unwritten rules and that has maintained its style in how we interact.
Here's a tongue-in-cheeck response to that:
"The heat is elsewhere" says wikiloops founder - the mechanism is actually simpler than you'd expect:
Enterprise social internet works like: More outrage -> more interest -> more revenue, so it is built to stimulate and promote posting outrageous stuff that pushes emotional buttons. Since wikiloops does not follow that pattern, the outrage is not amplified here, it's even moderated when it happens and gets too bad.
If you act like a jerk on wikiloops, it is not giving you that dopamine hit of responses you would get out of being a jerk on X. wikiloops works for people who are either good in collaborating, which requires good social skills, or people who are genuinely not here to have their egos polished, but love to keep a musical diary and have some company here.
The eventual jerk testing wikiloops usually heads elsewhere without any moderation need. Almost funny how that all comes down to being commercially-driven or not.
wikiloops model is rather like: positive experience -> more interest -> more positive experience driven, at the cost of me having a day-job to pay the family bills - believe it or not.
TeeGee wrote:
That's a disappointment. I thought this was going to be a post about Frank Zappas music
That's a disappointment. I thought this was going to be a post about Frank Zappas music
Sorry to disappoint! If you want to talk in zappa terms, then this is more related to "I'm the slime" from 1973. If only Frank had known what was coming, 2026 has hyper-processed slime on steroids oozing out from your smartphone screen ;)
wjl wrote:
...
Are we maybe too restrictive if you think in terms of art?
...
Are we maybe too restrictive if you think in terms of art?
I do not think we are - but I am happy you brought this up, as that is yet another of those decision areas I mentioned in my initial post.
Let's take the newer members along here - of course all of you have carefully studied the [url=https://www.wikiloops.com/docs/code_of_conduct.php]wikiloops code of conduct[/url], right :p ? No? See...?
What I am trying to say is:
I do not believe a new member of wikiloops notices that we have these topical limitations in place - we mods can point at them when justifying removal or change requests, but that happens very, very rarely.
I am aware that we killed some members fun on wikiloops with these restrictions in the past, and it was sad to see them go, but that is in the past now.
If anyone was publishing a track reflecting on, say, "Hormuz on my mind" and presented a thoughtful lyric that invited reflection or exposed personal feelings, would we police that? No, we would not.
The Code of Conduct is our last line of defense to protect against religious or political campaigning when it happens.
My personal pain-points about these rules are these:
As Wolfgang points out, we are limiting potentially worthy political causes/views from expressing themselves. wikiloops cannot and will not apply different rules for different political colors or religious beliefs, that would never work.
To be honest, if some hardcore vegan started posting tracks raging against my beef consumption - would we flag that? I don't think we would, what we are flagging are personal attacks via tracks, calls for violence, too explicit language (boobs are obviously not on the list).
The forum is a separate story from the tracks here, I wished we had more opportunity to have a global thought exchange on political issues here, but again, once that is allowed, where do you draw the line?
The real issue that needs policing is user behavior - if everybody acted respectful and diplomatic and aware of things other people might feel offended by, we could discuss any topic in the forum. Humans fail at that when online, and I am not going back to teaching single individuals why certain communications are offensive and not diplomatic enough for a global exchange platform.
Again, I often wished it was different, but the current solution works well.
I rather have wikiloops be the platform where you are not all sure if your collaborator has a special pronoun preference, votes for the right party or prays to your deity of choice. Some cool tracks would not have happened, I'm absolutely sure.
The only viable alternative solution to this matter would be the type of algorithmic content curation that enterprise social media platforms use: Serve each individual the exact right dose of content to validate they are on the right page to be, but within that topical bubble, optimize for emotional reaction. Like having a subreddit for hardcore vegans on wikiloops that you only get to see after some interaction we track. I don't think we want that.
rootshell wrote:
Yes, I trust the information being offered here on this site. At no point has there been deception or general 'fuckery'.
Yes, I trust the information being offered here on this site. At no point has there been deception or general 'fuckery'.
Thank you for that, sir, and thank you all for your feedback, it means a lot to me.
In the meantime, the new live widget work is progressing nicely :)
+2
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Dick, I think most can appreciate that keeping the engine room running and doing the occasional update is a thankless task, sometimes with results invisible to the user. If anyone complains, well, how many takes did they do before uploading something.
Way I see it, Wikiloops is not a product I consume but a 24/7 community event. If there are glitches, well, most of us will still play and practice and wait until the bugs have gone on vacation.
Anyway, I regard WL as a home to be lived in and not something that has to be shiny and fake.
Can I just express my surprise at how you went from announcing the new widget to hardcore vegans on reddit?
Way I see it, Wikiloops is not a product I consume but a 24/7 community event. If there are glitches, well, most of us will still play and practice and wait until the bugs have gone on vacation.
Anyway, I regard WL as a home to be lived in and not something that has to be shiny and fake.
Can I just express my surprise at how you went from announcing the new widget to hardcore vegans on reddit?
+3
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Posts: 2176
Joined: 27 set 2014
MySounds wrote: Can I just express my surprise at how you went from annoucing the new widget to hardcore vegans on reddit?
The only thing surprising is the surprise... obviously it went via the titties and beer Zappa bypass :D
+1
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Posts: 946
Joined: 4 feb 2012
I have read this thread with interest and naive opinions stir in my head. However, I don't feel suitably qualified to contribute. Dick is amazingly articulate with deep knowledge and understanding of the loops construction, purpose and appeal, he almost scares me (in an impressive way) :D. I just didn't want anyone to think I didn't care :)
+3
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Posts: 368
Joined: 19 mar 2022
@Shamika share your thoughts.
+2
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Shamika wrote:
I have read this thread with interest and naive opinions stir in my head. However, I don't feel suitably qualified to contribute. Dick is amazingly articulate with deep knowledge and understanding of the loops construction, purpose and appeal, he almost scares me (in an impressive way) :D. I just didn't want anyone to think I didn't care :)
I have read this thread with interest and naive opinions stir in my head. However, I don't feel suitably qualified to contribute. Dick is amazingly articulate with deep knowledge and understanding of the loops construction, purpose and appeal, he almost scares me (in an impressive way) :D. I just didn't want anyone to think I didn't care :)
@ MySounds - I am not a reliable authority because my thoughts on almost everything can turn around until they run away in every direction. That's why songwriting is a useful way to communicate with plausible deniability :)
+3
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