Closing Cover Submissions

Yo editors,

As I said 9 months ago, Verification of originals

"Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with the number of open submissions in here. The goal of SHS is to have an accurate and comprehensive list of cover songs. Even though they are submissions, at least the songs are represented in the system. My problem is the way they are being closed. It seems to me that Ginger, Tunesmith and myself are the only member's covers that are constantly being closed. Why, because we are here everyday, they are easy and we have thousands of them. Newer members submissions are being ignored, which means they don't feel valued. Time should be taken to show them that are also an important part of SHS. If you don't show interest in them, they are not going to submit more or even visit the site any more."

How do you expect the website to grow? Still nothing has changed!!

Did you know that there are about 2,000 members that are at 100% open submisssions?

https://secondhandsongs.com/statistics/stats_user_submissions?page=0&sort=percen…

That is 2,000 members that you ignored. How do you think that makes them feel? If you closed out a few of them, you might encourage them to add more and you might find a few new editors out of the bunch.

But if you don't care, well, that's on you.

This matter has been discussed a number of times.... Perhaps upon a member's first submission a popup message that welcomes their contribution and sets some expectations. A similar reminder message could popup if it's been over a year since the last submission.

Last edit: 2024-07-07 16:35:04 UTC by Tar Heel

I looked at quite a few of those 2,000 member's submissions. I would say half of them came in one time, added 1 submission and never came back again. While others added a submission, left, then came back a few months to a year later, saw nothing was done to their submission, and decided never to come back again to the website. I'm guessing they got discouraged and figured why bother adding more.

Also if you look at the dates, most of the submissions being closed now are from 2023 and 2024. There are submissions all the way back to 2007. Yet nobody cares. Really sad. But of course I'm the bad guy here for mentioning it. I'm just typing to the screen. 🤷

I claim no standing to say what editors should be required to do, but I have suggested themed monthly weeks, weekends, or days. During those monthly timeframes, the editors would voluntarily target the applicable matters:

The oldest submissions

The oldest error reports

Unprocessed works, originals and the one applicable cover

Submissions by "new" members

That is 2,000 members that you ignored. How do you think that makes them feel? If you closed out a few of them, you might encourage them to add more and you might find a few new editors out of the bunch.

We all agree with this. The question is how to solve this structurally, given that every editor is doing this work voluntarily and for the fun of it.

Imagine that we say : Submissions with high priority are submissions younger than 1 month posted by users with less than 20 submissions, for the reasons described by yourself.

Sure, but how do we go from here ? There are two ways:

1. IMPOSE

For example, for every 50 entries created an editor must add one of the batch described.

However, we already have a couple of those obligations, and adding even more is tricky since this is possibly in conflict with the voluntary/fun aspect.

2. INCENTIVE

An editor who adds a submission from the batch above gets/earns/... I don't know? What would be good incentive?

Quote from Tar Heel

themed monthly weeks, weekends, or days. During those monthly timeframes, the editors would voluntarily target the applicable matters:

We're looking for structural measures instead.

Quote from Bastien

2. INCENTIVE

An editor who adds a submission from the batch above gets/earns/... I don't know? What would be good incentive?

Would editors find "flair" added to their profiles or discussion board posts to be an incentive? For example, you get the "Mentor" tag for every month in which you close 3 "new user" submissions. You get the "Clean up crew" tag for every month in which you close 30 submissions not your own. Et cetera.

No idea how hard this would be to program; I'm assuming you don't want to have to review reports and add them manually. And where you set the rules is a topic for further discussion, to dial in what's actually motivating. Just saying "badging" systems like that seem to work for some folks on other sites.

Quote from Bastien

Quote from Tar Heel

themed monthly weeks, weekends, or days. During those monthly timeframes, the editors would voluntarily target the applicable matters:

We're looking for structural measures instead.

Again, as I wrote earlier, it isn't my place to suggest anything that requires editor activity and you agreed that would be "tricky" in another comment.

If voluntary themed periods won't work, why would meaningless flair?

I'll risk offering a "closing time" strategy: You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. You don't have to process this type of submissions, but you can only otherwise work on error reports?

As you can see nothing has changed in the last couple of days. Most cover submissions closed out have been submitted by the same 3 people. Not one editor has even responded to this thread. If shaming editors hasn't worked, why would anything else? I guess they have forgotten what it was like to be new members.

ATTENTION SECONDHANDSONG SHOPPERS

Here is an artist Tom Salvatori who is also a member. Instead of closing out 4 of my cover submissions today, please show some respect and kindness to an artist/member and close out his 4 cover submissions that have been sitting here since 2017.

https://secondhandsongs.com/participate/search?submitter=Tom%20Salvatori&type=co…

Would it help if I highlight a submission a day from any artist/members? I know of at least 5 cases like this. Maybe there is a way to make a list of such submissions and they should be given top priority to close.

It's kind of shocking and disgraceful that 3 noneditors care more about this subject than editors.

This just upsets me to no end.

Quote from DashBoardDJ856

As you can see nothing has changed in the last couple of days. Most cover submissions closed out have been submitted by the same 3 people. Not one editor has even responded to this thread.

To be fair, in my experience Bastien rarely participates and when he does it's rather late, so B's comments and the timing of same are unexpected in my view. Many editors seem to go quiet and let the top management deal with a question when they start to chime in.

Also, attracting and keeping quality editors seems to also be a concern. Mandates and restrictions understandably need to considered with care. I suspect that there's pressure to get the manpower to process what gets done already. Again from my experience, a lot of new contributors seem to be elevated prematurely. For instance josephmurphy (who I assume does a great job and picked since commented under this vid) is already CC2 after 343 submissions (as of this post).

No offense taken, but I'm going to quibble with the word "prematurely". I'd actually argue that we should promote early and often; many of the problems we're discussing have, as one of their causes, a lack of labor with enough privileges in the system. If someone is doing good work, promotion isn't premature, by definition.

(But I will say that I don't really know how I got promoted. From the community management standpoint, which is my actual interest in this discussion, it seems like a problem that there isn't a clear guideline about "be active on the site for about X long" or "have about Y submissions and Z error reports" or "be a positive participant in the discussion boards." If we want to recruit people for promotion, that kind of clarity - even if they're guidelines and not rules - would let people know the process and where they stand.)

---

Bastien did say we're looking for structural measures, so let me offer the most radical one:

Ditch the language of "verified" and "unverified" entirely.

Move instead to something like Wikipedia's rating system, where all entries have the same visual identity but carry ratings like "Start-class" or A, B, or C. (I don't actually care about the language; it's just an example.)

These ratings would only appear on performance pages and in searches; indexes on work and performer pages treat all performances as visually equal. No more bold and italic songs; no more "Unverified" appearing where a date should be. (Or maybe the ratings appear on index pages for logged-in users with the capacity to change them?)

It seems to me that, right now, we've got a system which is designed to privilege highly detailed records over baseline-acceptable crowdsourcing. This probably made sense when the site was young, and from some of the conversations on these boards, it's still highly rewarding work for some contributors. But as the ratio of editors to members has gotten lower, the impact of treating new submissions as lesser by default has become both visually ugly and bad for community growth. Maybe the solution isn't to convince/coerce volunteers to spend their energy in places that aren't their primary interests, or to recruit more editors, but to reexamine the way we track the fact that some submissions are better than others.

A lot to cover here....

Quote from josephmurphy

No offense taken, but I'm going to quibble with the word "prematurely". I'd actually argue that we should promote early and often; many of the problems we're discussing have, as one of their causes, a lack of labor with enough privileges in the system. If someone is doing good work, promotion isn't premature, by definition.

From my experience, it takes a significant amount of activity to run across the different though not uncommon situations, know all of the regularly used protocols, etc. It's normal for people to have expectations based on a title or capacity. For example, I've experienced CCs that still didn't know the difference between a "work" and "performance" as defined by SHS. I draw conclusions accordingly.

Ditch the language of "verified" and "unverified" entirely.

Move instead to something like Wikipedia's rating system, where all entries have the same visual identity but carry ratings like "Start-class" or A, B, or C. (I don't actually care about the language; it's just an example.)

I have no issues with the binary structure. There is value in SHS confirmed entries (even if there are errors) vs, the "wild west" open submissions.

It seems to me that, right now, we've got a system which is designed to privilege highly detailed records over baseline-acceptable crowdsourcing. This probably made sense when the site was young, and from some of the conversations on these boards, it's still highly rewarding work for some contributors. But as the ratio of editors to members has gotten lower, the impact of treating new submissions as lesser by default has become both visually ugly and bad for community growth. Maybe the solution isn't to convince/coerce volunteers to spend their energy in places that aren't their primary interests, or to recruit more editors, but to reexamine the way we track the fact that some submissions are better than others.

You are preaching to the choir here. I and others have stated that SHS has gotten too release rather than performance focused. Requesting if not demanding info of increasingly marginal value (if any) to most users of the site. This slows down the editors for little return. SHS isn't a discography. One of the reasons I never agreed to be an editor was that I was unwilling to invest time in researching info of no personal interest.

I was the one who recommended creating the CC status; however, my concept was a capacity for trusted contributors that didn't want to be an editor. People who could correct spelling and relatively minor errors on their own to reduce error reports and relieve the editors. As far as I know. it still is just another step to editor status.

Quote from DashBoardDJ856

Also if you look at the dates, most of the submissions being closed now are from 2023 and 2024. There are submissions all the way back to 2007. Yet nobody cares. Really sad. But of course I'm the bad guy here for mentioning it. I'm just typing to the screen. 🤷

You could be the good guy, Wayne: join back the team! Stop submitting covers by the thousands yourself and focus on everyone who you think is ignored all these years. Welcome back!

Quote from josephmurphy

Ditch the language of "verified" and "unverified" entirely.

Pure horror scenario. In my ideal world, the "unverified" would move to the bottom, so we would have cleaner song pages. On the other hand, I can live with the current set-up which of course has some benefits.

Quote from Tar Heel

I have no issues with the binary structure. There is value in SHS confirmed entries (even if there are errors) vs, the "wild west" open submissions.

Thanks for that validation and thanks for mentioning the "wild west" open submissions. I think there's a lot of room for (structural) improvement here, in another thread perhaps?

Quote from walt

Pure horror scenario. In my ideal world, the "unverified" would move to the bottom, so we would have cleaner song pages. On the other hand, I can live with the current set-up which of course has some benefits.

Doubled edged sword perhaps. Though sometimes rarely missing, I do look for previous submissions prior to offering my own. Currently I check around the date of release per my research and at the undated at the bottom. Only having to check the bottom for unverifieds would be a convenience, but newer contributors may only look around that date.

Just thinking out loud.

Oliver One So today you closed out 2 of Tar Heel, 8 of Tunesmjth, and 91 of my cover submissions No other members submissions. Bastien claimed that we all agree that we should be closing out newer members cover submissions. Not sure if he meant he had some sort of discussion with Managing Editors or if that was just a general statement. Bastien's states that every editor is doing this work voluntarily and for the fun of it. I understand that Since your title is Managing Editor and close between 50 to a 100 submissions a day, I'm asking you what will encourage you to close out newer members submissions? I think it is a fair question and I can't fathom why other editors haven't responded to Bastien's question. Except walt, thank you.

walt I have been labeled TOXIC.

One of my solutions is that I am willing to check out newer members submissions and add more info to them so that you can close them out, but I need some volunteers that are willing to close them.

Any takers?

Quote from DashBoardDJ856

One of my solutions is that I am willing to check out newer members submissions and add more info to them so that you can close them out, but I need some volunteers that are willing to close them.

Any takers?

As a reminder, when I was a CC, I volunteered to dig into the oldest legacy submissions and convert any still pending to separate submissions. An example:

Case #51590

While I did get some editors to help with that project, I got no support from the higher ups, including sebcat (who has been one of the loudest complainers about "backlog"). Anyway, the project quickly died likely for a number of reasons, including lack of support and my evolving efforts to create some guidelines to make the project work.

I've also suggested in the past some alerts when a work reaches some percentage or number threshold of unverified submissions that would trigger efforts by editors and CCs to help clear some to clean up the page. I don't recall much response, obviously went nowhere.

Quote from DashBoardDJ856

One of my solutions is that I am willing to check out newer members submissions and add more info to them so that you can close them out, but I need some volunteers that are willing to close them.

Any takers?

I'm certainly not volunteering, this is way out of my comfort zone. But if management allows, Wayne could get his old job back! How can the man be toxic, if he comes up for the small submitters in such way.