Tutor Of The Week + Site Reformation

[PinkieGuy]

I'll need to finish this post later as I only have 2 minutes or so to get the ball rolling. Here goes:

There's been a lot of talk lately (both Community and Mod intiated[size=50] <not that mods aren't part of the community{lots of love makkon}>)[/size] about trying to improve the functionality of the site.

The goals of this improvement, as much as I can summarize them are:
- To increase the utilization of this site as a resource for improvement.
- To foster the growth of artists through the pooling of resources
- To improve the linearity of the site so that users know where information can be found

To bring about these improvements, I'd like to suggest 2 plans of action:
1) A change of the forum layout.
This has been suggested by a few people, and frankly, i think it's nescessary. Even trying to work out where I should be posting this caused me a headache. Whilst I haven't fully thought this one out, a suggestion would be to redivide the site into 4 Categories:

Compositions - All music related works go in here. This can be split into 2 secitions: Pony + Non Pony.
Education - This is where discussions of technique are conducted. It could be split into "Questions/Qualms" where people ask for help, "Resources" where people add stuff they want to share with others and "Tutor Of The Week", which I will discuss below.
Community - This is where we discuss ourselves and our community. This includes both pony and non-pony material, and the "Introductions thread" can take centre stage to help our community grow.
Oatmeal - All the random junk that takes up so much of our musical time. Spam threads, random/inappropriate questions et al go in this section. We consider this the NSFW section of the board, and try and impliment a SFW policy elsewhere.

Importantly, I think if possible the site needs something on the home page that EXPLAINS where things are, so that people don't have to do the searching on their own. Don't know if this is possible or not.

2) Tutor of the week
This has been discussed elsewhere, and sadly i'm out of time, so i'll expand my proposal in a reply, probably about 6 hours into the future.




Oh, and as far too little music is being posted lately, have a teaser from my new EP.

http://soundcloud.com/robertanderson-2/a-teaser-of-things-to-come-d

[Makkon]

Stickied. Thank you so much for posting this up, Pinkieguy. This should be a good discussion.

Also, not a fan of the oatmeal idea. People have skype and IRC, so I find that a little redundant. Not to mention I have no interest in paying for a site that fosters anything that is NSFW. Sorry. If we have to fill that 4th slot, maybe a thread archive of helpful resources. Heck, we could even have a Wiki.

[Stars In Autumn]

I agree with Makkon in terms of no NSFW material. I think we want to keep in line with other pony sites like EqD.

I think overall the structure works. There should probably be an Events section for everyone.

And pretty cool teaser. Not a huge fan of heavy metal but it sounds good.

[Darktrot]

I agree with Makkon in terms of no NSFW material. I think we want to keep in line with other pony sites like EqD.

Honestly i agree 100 percent on the No NSFW and i like the idea of a Wiki.

[Versilaryan]

I'm in favor of keeping "education" named "technique", because 'education' might have too many connotations of going to school, that some of us are the teachers or students, etc.
I'd also like to suggest a news/forum info board, where only the mods/admins can make new topics (dunno about posts in those topics -- that's up to you guys). Remix War stuff can go there along with general announcements, rules, and other such topics. It'd be an easy way to make sure announcements get out there, as well as a directory of the most important topics that people should read.

I agree with Makkon. The Community board would work well enough, and we have the IRC/Skype chats for random stuff.
I'd even go as far as deleting the spam thread just so it's not there setting an example. No one really posts in it anyways.

[Dr_Dissonance]

Oatmeal = no, there are plenty of other places to get your fix of nekkid ponies!
Everything else = yes, but I like Vafrous' idea of not using the word 'education,' I imagine a lot of people have school and such and don't want to be reminded of it...

[PinkieGuy]

Still don't have time to expand my first post, but I should clarify my use of nsfw.

I think there a plethora of things on this site that already come under the realm of not technically work safe. Pictures of Makkons chest are frankly more than I need to see on my work computer.

For that reason, I was suggesting tightening the randomness on the site overall, and having the current quality stuff fall into oatmeal.

That being said, I'm at your discretion here Makkon.

[bartekko]

I think there a plethora of things on this site that already come under the realm of not technically work safe. Pictures of Makkons chest are frankly more than I need to see on my work computer.

hell. some people might consider the sole colors of the site nsfw, or at least "not safe for school"

of other things, we need more coordinated challenges, kinda like a two-week remix war when there's no need to participate. the "events" are fully automated, as i hear, so why not make them a more official and better coordinated toastbeard?

[Stars In Autumn]

I think there a plethora of things on this site that already come under the realm of not technically work safe. Pictures of Makkons chest are frankly more than I need to see on my work computer.

hell. some people might consider the sole colors of the site nsfw, or at least "not safe for school"

of other things, we need more coordinated challenges, kinda like a two-week remix war when there's no need to participate. the "events" are fully automated, as i hear, so why not make them a more official and better coordinated toastbeard?

The only think that I don't like about toastbeard is it is only a week long. A lot of entries get rushed or just become troll entries because of it. I know I was rushed in one of my songs and it was pretty bad, lol. I want our contests to really help produce quality stuff. Two weeks should be the minimum.

[Interrobang Pie]

I think we want to keep in line with other pony sites like EqD.

Equestria Daily?

Pictures of Makkons chest are frankly more than I need to see on my work computer.

Spoiler tags. (Although really WHY AREN'T YOU DOING YOUR WORK?!?!?!?!!?!?!?)

I want our contests to really help produce quality stuff.

The irony.

[Stars In Autumn]

I think we want to keep in line with other pony sites like EqD.

Equestria Daily?

Pictures of Makkons chest are frankly more than I need to see on my work computer.

Spoiler tags. (Although really WHY AREN'T YOU DOING YOUR WORK?!?!?!?!!?!?!?)

I want our contests to really help produce quality stuff.

The irony.

Oh wow, didn't know they did link to Cupcakes. Well, my bad.

And I'm not saying all works posted to toastbeard are bad, nor even most of them. But I know that a lot of people like to post troll entries, or post pieces not fully finished (Celestial Origins for example). I mean, really, a week to write a full song? I've spent longer than that just mixing songs.

[Dr_Dissonance]

I'm agreeing with Jeff here, if a little thing like Toastbeard starts occurring, it needs to be equal to or longer than 2 weeks...
Back when Jeff did the Octavia Battle Theme, Toastbeard was in its infancy and everyone was all riled up to do it...but as time went on, more and more troll based things kept showing up and that's, unfortunately, what it is mainly associated with now...
And I think one of the reasons the troll entries are there is because of time constraints on the participants, because I know you can all write good music when you put your minds to it!

So, in conclusion, longer times for things like that!

[Andy Feelin]

I am agree about the two weeks. (Personally I'd prefer more, but okay.jpg). I never participated in Toastbeard for the two reasons mentioned.
About the site structure, won't you forget about the Discographies section? I think it is really useful when you want to listen to a particular person's music with no regard to whether it is pony-related or not.

[Makkon]

Jackle and I have been talking, and he's mentioned that it might be wise to let toastbeard do it's thing, maybe even be separate from the site (because it is already, pretty much). If/when we do something along those lines, it would be a longer period and it would be automated like the RMW and fully endorsed/publicized by MLR.

[Senator Myth]

Jackle and I have been talking

Why not talk to sci, it's his thing... It kind of bothers me that everyone seems to be thinking of Toastbeard as thought they've completely forgotten that it's something that sci did on his own before MLR even existed, and he made the decision to try to integrate it into the community without necessarily making it a part of MLR.

Whatevs. I like the idea of making as many events as possible, on every level of formality and length of completion, to give this community things to do and music to make.

[Makkon]

Sci is just as welcome to this conversation as anyone else. We'd love to hear his thoughts on this. (:

[Rainbowdutch]

I don't know if this is the right place to propose this but we could just have the normal toastbeards running every week and add one that runs every 4 weeks or so. This way we have the normall "fooling around on a drunk saturday night toastbeard" where troll entries get posted (and I do wanna remind everyone that some really good stuff gets posted there too, hell even something broke and she is a pony were toastbeards), And we have a more "remix war styled" toastbeard where everyone can post songs they have been working on for a longer period of time leading to a lot more finished songs.

[Makkon]

Rainbowdutch: I'm liking the sound of that a lot. Maybe 4 weeks is a little long, though.

[Rainbowdutch]

Rainbowdutch: I'm liking the sound of that a lot. Maybe 4 weeks is a little long, though.

okey than make it less

still we need sci in here cause it is his thing

[zorg]

i agree that the forums should be more compact, and i'd really like to write all the things i already mentioned to several people on skype and other places, but alas; time is something i am not having at the moment, and by the time i'll have it, i'm guessing the restructuring will have already commenced.

so, very tersely and imprecisely:

music could be like how pinkieguy said; and wips and completed tracks should _not_ have separate places, since wips will, in time, be complete... hopefully; better move is to tag the wip tracks' posts as [WIP] or smth, and then remove that tag after it's finished. agree about pony and non-pony separation.

but, i'd like to preserver the discographies subforum, because that thing can be helpful, if people had the time to properly edit their threads in there... (and maybe link to the posts of their tracks in the above 2 subforums too, if they have threads for them) - comments in the discography subforum's threads are a tad unnecessary imho, but there could be some instances where they could be helpful (sending a pm to the guy about an error in his discography is not really helpful if he does not read his inbox... only the comments he receives)

now, the two most interesting threads i know (at the moment, shitty memory yay) are the contact infos thread and the "battlestations" one. the first one is a community thread, no question there, but; would the latter be in the community subforum as well, or in the education one? just a question/thought.

i agree that oatmeal is unnecessary, because even the spam thread can go into the community subforum, and that we really shouldn't post NSFW stuff here... (but in my view, it should be allowed to have links to nsfw-esque tracks of a certain kind in the discographies threads and even in the other 2 subforums of the compositions subforum. (tagged as [NSFW], still, one can wonder how a track can be that without certain blatant sound effects...) OH YEAH, remixes go in there too, since that line is as thin as a strand of... air molecules.

i hope i have been helpful despite how inaccurately i reproduced what i had on/in my mind about this topic.

and sci knows about this guys, he'll reply as soon as he gets on his thinking cap :3

Edit:

Importantly, I think if possible the site needs something on the home page that EXPLAINS where things are, so that people don't have to do the searching on their own. Don't know if this is possible or not.

i can think of a flowchart; or a faq. sadly i can't make the former now, because my tablet died on me; as for the latter, i think I-pie could be persuaded to do so; he likes these things.

[sci]

hi I'm here.

ok my thoughts are a bit scattered here, but I'll try and toss a few out:

one week isn't enough

really I'd like to set it at one hour on every saturday, but that somewhat limits who can / would be willing to enter and what they can do.
One week gets around this. Two weeks is a bit much, I think.

If I do bump up the time limit, it will be via something more like what rainbowdutch mentioned:
one weekly compo and one 3 week compo, running in parallel.

that slowly brings us to this:

It kind of bothers me that everyone seems to be thinking of Toastbeard as thought they've completely forgotten that it's something that sci did on his own before MLR even existed, and he made the decision to try to integrate it into the community without necessarily making it a part of MLR.

Precisely this, in better words than I can manage here. :)

I started Toast Beard with the following goal: to get several brony musicians together every weekend to make a song, listen to said songs together, and basically have fun.

I didn't necessarily want to group it with MLR or /media/ on ponychan, but because all three places are occupied by brony musicians, there is a lot of overlap.

About incorporating TB into MLR: the biggest reason I don't want to do this is because I've wanted to avoid registration / logins on TB from the start. That's why I modeled it after imageboard software.

and...I can't think of what else to mention here. What other thoughts would you like to hear from me? <_<

[Stars In Autumn]

Hi again Sci!

really I'd like to set it at one hour on every saturday, but that somewhat limits who can / would be willing to enter and what they can do.
One week gets around this. Two weeks is a bit much, I think.

I think a lot of us have trouble with this, and is the reason I've entered so few. I kind of have to already have a good idea in the first place, not be doing any other songs at the time, and overall not get hung up too much. I don't have a terribly large amount of time to work on music during the week, so it makes it hard to participate.

I think the scope of the goals you accomplish lie not completely in parallel with what the admins at MLR want (Sorry if I'm putting words in people's mouths here! This is just what I seem to be picking up!). I think the largest difference is the audience for your competitions are the composers themselves, while the audience for the Remix Wars is the Brony community as a whole. And this kind of limits what can be used in the Remix War compared to Toastbeard. Toastbeard can have entries that are not completely serious, very short, use a lot of in-jokes, etc. And the composers can appreciate it, but others cannot. While the RMW kind of needs to kept to the standard of being something any brony can enjoy, even if they're perhaps never heard another brony song before.

So I guess we don't really have an issue here with TB then I think, if Sci also wants to keep it separate from MLR.

[PinkieGuy]

So, in essence, it seems that most people like the idea of a longer (2-3 week) competition for serious stuff, but also enjoy the ability to write drunken/trollish/clique-ish songs as well.
Why don't we have MLR sanctioned bi/tri-weekly competitions (Winter Warmers? held in the interim between remix wars) which are serious entry only competitions using MLR's automation system. This could be limited to one song per participant to ensure quality and prevent RW burnout.

At the same time, sci continues the toastbeard system at a weekly rate, and we keep both serious work + shenanigans in there.

This way, we have more opportunities for people to get involved in composition, and we have something that is for the brony community and something for the MLR community.

[Interrobang Pie]

Toastbeard is fabulous as it is. Don't touch it.

Uh, I guess I'm indifferent about it a three-weekly Remix War thing.

[sci]

ok, I'm now even more scatterbrained than my last post AND I'm tired, so you get really rough, chunky thoughts:

ToastBeard's audience is composers

yes

This could be limited to one song per participant to ensure quality and prevent RW burnout.

No. (and that coming from a guy who's still burnt out from a tune he wrote a week ago.)
I don't like limiting the flow of ideas. If you have the time to make 2 entries and you have 2 ideas, why not make 2 entries?

tri-weekly competitions
At the same time, sci continues the toastbeard system at a weekly rate, and we keep both serious work + shenanigans in there.

1. when would we host the sync for the tri-weekly? Making 2-week long TB compos that often sounds less than appealing.
2. where does the tutor of the week fit in here? (because there had seriously better be some hands-on learning in there. or rather, I'd be surprised if there were none) (this point may be moot)