Topic: Suggestions for the site

Hey Mike, I think it would be beneficial to have the autotagger bots not show up on the recent timeline, since they dominate the current timeline. I think it's more useful to see what the users here tag, instaed of the bot you programmed to crawl tags on other sites :)

Yes, I agree. The bots are meant to work in the background, but occasionally they do something interesting. I'll ban them from the timelines shortly, and re-introduce them later when it makes more sense. Their purpose is not merely to scrape tags from other websites, but also to discover new albums and add them automatically.

Done! Both bots (PA and RYM) are gone from the general timelines.

They're still observable on their own timelines though:

• https://progfreak.com/users/AutoTaggerPA
• https://progfreak.com/users/AutoTaggerRYM

Flooded with tags ... :P

• https://tagyourmusic.org/releases/63716

"Extreme Highly Progressive Art Extreme Metal" :O

Not exactly flooded, but yes, I need to address some situations where redundant tags are assigned. In this case I will probably retire the “Extreme Metal” sub genre and replace it with “Extreme” + “Metal”. Much simpler and more flexible.

And I will soon remove the “highly” as well, it doesn’t fit well in the tags badge.

In your case, it should probably say “progressive extreme art metal”.

A recommendation platform - so we may recommend bands to other users either personally or site-wide

eg, there's an album I'd like to share with the site, it shows up under "recommendations" or I want to personally recommend an album to you, I can send you a notification or something.

Mike, I want to send you a recommendation.

I also think that "true metal" should be replaced with "heavy metal." What exactly is true metal supposed to be, other than a term Manowar invented to differentiate themselves from the glam metal scene in the 1980s? As per the discussion the progarchives, classic heavy metal isn't even "true" metal, and the starting point for the genre is debatable.

Also, I've never heard the term "party metal" before... what exactly is it used for?

Party Metal is a bit like Hair Metal, a thing of the 80s. I'll probably scrap both tags, since they are not very descriptive. True Metal needs to go as well, since it's basically just a synonym for Manowar.

Regarding the whole metal discussion, I'd like to do something innovative: Let's introduce "Heavy Metal" as a subgenre of Rock, and also move NWOBHM to Rock, and keep the main genre "Metal" for all the modern Thrash-influenced styles of metal.

I don't think putting them under rock is a good idea. Manowar often played heavy metal (as well as power metal), for example, but I wouldn't exactly call them a rock band. Same with Avenged Sevenfold's older work.

Also, Doom Metal developed alongside Heavy Metal via Black Sabbath - the earliest doom metal releases are also rock, but it also shouldn't be listed under rock.

But if you want to try this then I guess go for it. I'd it were my site, I'd add "Heavy Metal" under both Rock and Metal, but have them be coded as the same tag, so users can decide whether to have the heavy mesh tag under rock, for early Black Sabbath, or metal, for later Metallica.

I'll keep rock and metal separated, it was a bad idea. On this website the parent/sub relation between genre tags should mean stylistic similarity, not that the sub genre has its roots in the parent genre. So even if heavy metal has its origins in rock, it must be under metal because it sounds distinctly different.

a matter of improvement imho, it concerns the Release page of an album 'Edit' Tab, the buttons 'Style - Inst - Vocals - Mood - Topic - Regional'

it would be nice if one is able to notice when something is set up under those buttons which are not selected for example by assigning a shaded background or so in this case ...

^ Yes, I agree. I want to change the UI there, to make it even clearer what is already assigned. But I might do just what you asked in the meantime. :-)

Not sure if this would be easy to implement or whether anyone would be interested in using it but would it be possible to add a random "What should I listen to feature?" I'm thinking maybe one that would randomly select from the user's collection and maybe one that would randomly select from the entire database. Maybe less useful, but then again for people with Spotify or Bandcamp or YouTube, etc. many albums can be accessed online. Possible other features could be to narrow the randomness down to a genre or tag or year of release (in case someone wants to randomly check out a current year release).

Yes, why not? A year ago I implemented the daily picks ... I could reuse that code to implement these "picks on demand". Will think about it ...

That would appeal to my method of choosing "new" things to listen to for sure...

Where do I find the daily picks?

Daily picks are currently disabled, they used to be on the index page. I’ll see if I can bring them back tomorrow. They’re still being generated in the backend …

This is probably a petty complaint, but I don't like the timing of the ribbon of albums that is on the top of the screen. Both on my phone and on my computer. It loads fairly quickly, but it seems that every time I come on to the site, the first thing that I do is click on the search bar (or the three lines on the phone). The top ribbon of albums pops in just as I go to click on the search bar and I end up calling up an album that I don't want to look at. It is fairly annoying. I tell myself every time that I need to remember to wait, but I always forget and do the same thing again the next time. Thanks. Scott