The way you like

I believe the main objective on the users end must be:
Is it fun to use, or confusing as Joe points out.
The last draft I have been looking at had a fun aspect to it - being able to choose between some rather funny emoticons and some options that reveal I appreciated a certain aspect (like practise use) seemed somewhat nice to me, wait and see untill you see it, its really a bit hard to imagine.
So, fun first on the choices end, and both questions
-How will I know which thumb was picked and
-How will these things possibly affect future search results will remain unanswered for some time.
I'll definetly want to avoid any conflict causing things, just as we have successfully done in the past five years

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Yeah, some fun options would be cool, I am sure you'll get a good solution. I will definitely click on stuff when its available ;)

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I've finally got around to reading this thread. I think the ideas are largely excellent, Dick.

In particular, I like the idea of having a (hard-coded?) 'save to my practice playlist' which I'd prefer to be private in that instance. I run a 'to-do' playlist which serves the same purpose. Personally, I only use the playlist feature either to maintain my to-do list or as the temporary placeholder whilst building an album. This would then allow you to track playlist statistics for those who put the track into any playlist that isn't for practice (i.e. albums, etc.).

In terms of the 'thumb' dilemma, I think that's a very tough one. Personally, I feel the standard 'thumb' is more than enough but some of the suggestions, such as 'promote to wiki radio',etc., are a good idea. Perhaps, as you suggest, let the 'thumber' choose the type of thumb ('like', 'promote to wiki radio', etc.) but as far as the rest of the loops are concerned I think you just show it as a thumb giving the actual insights only to the person whose take it is and, of course, for the purpose of refining search results. That way, you do away with the 'competitive' element in terms of the wider Loops.

I think that makes sense. :)

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hey dick... how about a system like is used on ebay? :... after thumbing, a popup opens inviting the thumber to leave feedback.... 1-5 stars for listenability.. 1-5 stars for practice use.. 1-5 stars for recording quality.....etc or whatever data you need. the user clicks the star fields and this is not seen by the contributors but used as a part of the search database. this way no egos are crushed or feelings hurt but you get the data you need to drive the future viewers/listeners to finding what they want....
"just a thought"

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Nice idea kimbo

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thanks for your input folks - the idea presented by Kimbo would be most straightforward, but if I think about the psychological feeling of those ebay stars, I'm not sure I'd like to go there - if you sell on ebay, you know a low rating of you as a seller will kill your reputation quite quickly, and that doesn't really feel good does it? I believ it is important not to trigger such feelings by providing a concept that is already "branded" like the stars on ebay...
It is quite hard to predict the feeling of such a feature without actually looking at how it looks like on the WL interface, and I have had moments where looking at some draft gave the clear feeling of "this doesn't look like wikiloops".
Looking foreward to your feedback once such a draft is available, I guess it will be another week untill then tho.

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To be fair dick..the thumb system already lets me know what a failure I am.... So I really see no psychological difference if the thumb value is kept and the star value is onl used for data mining and search parameters. After submitting the "stars" we the user never see them again.

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Hey Dick, one last comment about the emoticons. Yes they should all be "positive", and they should be visible. I would like to see what people are suggesting about my tracks and vice versa.

thanks

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K.I.S.S. :) = Keep it simple silly :)

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