Site Suggestions

Advertising and marketing are not my strengths I'm afraid, Daniel. In fact I see them as one of the many contributors to modern society's ills. I don't use social media either - I have never been on Twitter, Facebook or any of the other social media sites and neither do I want to. I guess The Fallen playlist will have to stand or fall on it's own merits, then.

That's something we already have. I just had God in the Schizoid Mind as the alternate name for that band. I just changed it to GISM and you can now search for that name on the Bands page.

Isn't that like a joke name they have? IIRC, each album has a new standing for what the name is supposed to stand for. Isn't it like putting We are Sexual Perverts as W.A.S.P.'s alternative name? Hang on... *checks* Did WASP have an alternative name before now? You didn't even put "We Ain't Sure, Pal".

I have no doubt that it's possible to add but it will definitely require our developer's involvement which will cost money. I'll speak to Ben about it as a potential option for the future.

It's something I've always wanted to do. Unfortunately it would require completely rebuilding the search function, so comes at more cost than I can currently manage. I'll do it one day, but in the meantime, Daniel's solution works well enough. I'd also like to search for releases that ONLY have a particular genre or subgenre.

That's fair comment Ben. With an acceptable work around there is really no need to run to excessive expense.

I did the best I could with this at the time, but I agree it's not ideal (particularly with long lists). I'll revisit with my developer at some point and see if there's a better way of doing it.

I think the members of a clan are probably best to judge if a release belongs in that clan. If moving a release out of a clan results in it being moved to non-metal there is surely nothing stopping someone else from submitting a further Hall request for it to be included elsewhere if they feel it deserves inclusion in a different clan. I would have thought this would be a very rare occurence as usually Hall requests are quite well considered before being submitted.

If a release is tagged as some kind of extreme Horde genre such as gorenoise or grindcore for example, yet the Horde members don't believe it has enough metal to qualify - maybe it is just harsh noise or extreme hardcore punk - I don't think most non-Horde members would really have enough knowledge of those extreme non-metal genres to judge it's merits accurately. So, what I am saying is, I think things are best left as they are.

In short, yes. If there's no available data, or at least very little data, to help me allocate a genre or clan, then I will trust the requesting Metal Academy attendee's judgement. This occurs from time to time.

That said, I will always use RYM genre data when it is available. In other words, I won't accept requests from Metal Academy attendees to add a new release to a different genre / clan to what RYM users have voted, when there is adequate data available. That's what the Hall of Judgement is for.

I hope that makes sense.

It would be cool to see pages for albums on the list challenges have a small section denoting which list it's on, specifically above or below the user lists section.

Good call. I've been meaning to ask Ben about exactly that as it probably affects me more than anyone given that I've submitted so many Hall entries that I can't remember which ones were mine & which ones aren't.

I feel like part of this problem would be alleviated if this site had something like older forums where you can see which topics/forums have new posts because they're in bold. If one topic happens to dominate, like some Hall of Judgment threads, or say, this thread, well, one knows where the other posts are.

This works, as a former Tez forumite, like Daniel, I found that feature useful.

It's an interesting suggestion thanks Vinny. I assume that the idea will also encompass the polar opposite functionality so that I can filter the forums to show only my beloved genre-tag related threads? :) Would the ability to simply filter out the Hall of Judgement forum suffice?

Yes, appreciate this needs to work both ways so me not seeing endless reams of classification threads need not be at the expense of more...passionate members 

Anything that can be done to save my eyes from the horror of genre-tagging/judgement halls etc would be appreciated.

Lemme share with you some Metalforum usernames: Goatmaster General, Relentless Oblivion, Sheol, Surgical Brute, Macabre Eternal, True Belief and Father Alabaster.  You'd think they'd have something better down for the ranks, especially if we implement them here where there's a clan system.

Actually, I wouldn't mind if each clan had different names for the ranks.

This has been on my list for a while. Next time I work with my developer, I'll see what we can do. I'll PM you all when it's done. 

I have to admit that the Hall situation is frustrating. I do think it's something the site needs, so it's disappointing that we haven't attracted a large enough membership to make it really tick. I also have to admit that I struggle to stay on top of all the submissions (I'm currently close to 5o behind!). I guess there's not a lot of encouragement for me to put in consistent effort in that area when very few submissions go past a couple of votes.

Daniel and I have been talking about it though, and I think I'm going to hand him the keys to manage the whole process. I'd rather not lower the amount of votes required, but since submissions can be completed manually, I think we just start calling them successful or unsuccessful when it looks like a forgone conclusion. For example, if a submission has around 6 yes votes and 0 no votes, I think we just need to call it successful and move on, at least for now.

At least it was a good album!

The best! Funnily I have been considering it for some time, but most regulars are familiar with it I think, so I've stuck with less well known ones.