How's your progress on Guardian's list challenges?

I'm halfway through the Power Metal: The Early Days list.  I'm making sure I go through the albums I've already heard before as I write the reviews, but four of the remaining albums on that list are by bands I haven't checked out yet: Angel Dust, Demons & Wizards, Luca Turelli and Sanctuary.  I'm hoping I can cement my Guardians status in three days, MAYBE one if I rush it.  I have a day off tomorrow and I'm not going anywhere.

I've reviewed all 25 of the Early Days of Power Metal list, and I made sure they were in-depth, at least a good paragraph or two long, and carried much of my personal judgement.  So how does the "lock in" thing work?

Well you're already a member of The Guardians so I'm not sure what you're expecting here Rexorcist.

Quote:

"Completion of any Clan Challenge will "lock in" that clan for that Metal Academy attendee. Note that completing any Clan Challenge will achieve this, so you don't have to complete them all for any particular clan. Once you've locked in all three of your starting clans, you can lock in a fourth one to add that clan to your profile. That's right, you can earn yourself a fourth clan!"

So what does "lock in" mean?

Oh, I see what you’re saying. Sorry. I forgot you have to complete your existing clans before attacking a fourth. Consider it locked in.

Oh, I see what you’re saying. Sorry. I forgot you have to complete your existing clans before attacking a fourth. Consider it locked in.

Thanks.  But something tells me this is not a recurring theme here, is it?

It's fair to say that the clan challenges aren't something that's achieved all that often which is kinda the point. Most of our regulars have achieved them & earnt a fourth clan at some point although some of them have since voluntarily dropped a clan or elected not to chase a fourth in the first place due in the interest of keeping the integrity of the clan concept intact.

Participation in the Hall of Judgement only helps if the member understands & appreciates the clan well & are willing to explore the release in question with an open mind. Otherwise it can just as easily be a hinderance to the accuracy of our genre tagging. There's no point in someone that doesn't really like or understand the symphonic metal genre making calls on a symphonic metal record & that's the whole point of the Metal Academy clan philosophy. It's actually our differentiator over the competition.

Participation in the Hall of Judgement only helps if the member understands & appreciates the clan well & are willing to explore the release in question with an open mind. Otherwise it can just as easily be a hinderance to the accuracy of our genre tagging. There's no point in someone that doesn't really like or understand the symphonic metal genre making calls on a symphonic metal record & that's the whole point of the Metal Academy clan philosophy. It's actually our differentiator over the competition.

I guessed that.  I'm honestly in full support of this issue, of course this is also why I find it hard to decide what my fourth will be.  Ideally, whatever has the biggest range for me to participate in.  After literally 2,000 metal albums, the process of selecting one out of six mathematically twice as hard as selecting three out of nine, and I kinda of feel that pressure.

Hint: If you're genuinely unable to decide between multiple clans that you have identical amounts of interest for,  it will always help the site more if we have more people in the less populous clans. You'll also have more opportunity to contribute to activities like the monthly feature release nominations & playlist track submissions when there are less active members.

It's completely up to you though of course.

Would I get to change my fourth, though?  I may not want to stick with that fourth forever.

If you join a clan & then find that your interest diminishes over time then you can always ask to be removed from that clan & undertake another clan challenge for the opportunity take up a new fourth clan.

I ditched The Guardians after locking it in as my fourth and I am occasionally chipping in on The Fallen lists to see if there is any need for me to check out the content there.  Would do one or more challenge before asking to pick it up as my fourth as it is already a very popular clan and my tastes in the clan are more sludge-orientated with an obvious penchant for death-doom as well so the whole clan might not be for me.

Similarly to Vinny, I have never really been able to commit fully to a fourth clan. I have dabbled with the idea of The Guardians, The Horde and to a lesser extent The Infinite, but I don't like power metal which dominates The Guardians, I'm not keen on brutal or slam death and don't have much tolerance for avant-garde or post-metal so feel my membership of  any of those clans would be detrimental to the clans in question as there are vast swathes of releases in all of them that I don't care for. That said, I am still chipping away at the clan challenges for no other reason than I enjoy doing them even if I don't aim to take up clan membership as a result of completing any of them.

Then I have another proposition.  Since a big issue concerning the hall of judgment's progress is the lack of users therein, maybe we can cut down on the tumbleweeds another way.  Let's give every album inducted in the hall one month to complete, and the winning votes take over for that judgment unless there's only one vote.  I guess a minimum of 5 (3 at the extreme) should do it, that way there's either a 2-1 or a 3-2 victory.  In the event of a tie after one month, users who have completed three list challenges and locked in three clans have the right to vote on that specific hall regardless of their clans, but they'll have to review it on Metal Academy before anything else.  And after another week or so, the judgment is made, and if there is still a tie, the result is no.  This should give people a little more motivation to write reviews.

Of course, this should only be temporary due to the lack in activity.  However, I noticed that a full page of forum posts I hadn't yet read were taking over the recent posts section, and that didn't even cover all of the posts.  That's a good sign.

Thanks for your suggestions Rexorcist. Ben & I have often discussed this topic & I think it's worth highlighting a couple of things. Firstly, we have no visibility of who has submitted votes on the Hall entries. All we can see is the number of votes so we wouldn't be able to allow or disallow votes from our various members without opening the Hall up completely as a free-for-all. Regardless of that, I think it's important that we maintain the integrity of the clan system. If you're not a member of the affected clans then I think it's important that you can't impact the releases in that clan as that's kinda the point of the clans system. Secondly, I have strong evidence that leads me to believe that we have at least one member who religiously votes on every available Hall entry without ever having heard many of the releases attached to them. I have no way of proving that as I can't see who has submitted the votes & have no way of knowing whether they've actually given the releases in question a few spins either but I have a pretty good idea given the clans that it happens on, the obscurity of some of the releases I've submitted, the swiftness of the votes being submitted after being posted & the lack of any other ratings on these releases in our database. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two & two together. As long as that sort of thing is happening I'm reluctant to reduce the pass requirements too much as it has the potential to skew the result one way or the other. I'm certainly open to closing entries out if it's obvious which way they're going to go though (e.g. a score of 6 or 7 to zero for example). We have a number of those situations at the moment which I've highlighted in the "Hall of Judgement submissions that are close to a result" thread I posted in the root "Hall of Judgement" folder. My preference is that we try to get to the required vote numbers wherever possible but (as is always the case at the Academy) we're open to the thoughts of the wider community. What does everyone else think?

While I'd also like to see the amount of Hall of Judgement entries lowering, I don't think we should force the issue by accepting less votes. There's no real urgency, and I think Metal Academy will be better for it if we wait for the required knowledgeable members to contribute in a natural way, rather than accepting a 2-1 or 3-2 vote when 1 of them is the submitter themselves. By having this sort of "event", I also think we'd be encouraging people to push judgements through without really understanding what they're voting for.

I have faith that if we continue to improve the site and make it more complete, the community will grow. With that in mind, if anyone ever has any ideas for how the site could be made better, we have a history of implementing a lot of community-raised ideas.

The issues are valid.  Then I have a different suggestion.  Metalforum allows users to change their username three times a month.  What if we're allowed to change our fourth clan once a month?  Just until we get more popular here.  And this only applies to those who have a fourth clan, such as you or Ben.  Depending on how much free time I have, it may be around a month before I'm able to lock in all three threads, but for the most part.  But I think if this is the case, the first clan that needs my votes is either The Fallen or The North.  There are some things I definitely have to say about some of the albums submitted to those categories.  Of course, I've only heard about five of the Fallen albums and ten of the North albums.  But I'll get onto the Early Thrash challenge the moment the Lamb of God album I'm listening to ends.  I've rated a few of them, but I've only reviewed two or three so far.

The issues are valid.  Then I have a different suggestion.  Metalforum allows users to change their username three times a month.  What if we're allowed to change our fourth clan once a month?  Just until we get more popular here.  And this only applies to those who have a fourth clan, such as you or Ben.

Good suggestion, Rexorcist! There were a couple times when I lost interest in one of my clans and had to ask Daniel via PMs for a change into a clan that we know I like more. Changing only one of your clans after a certain amount of time seems like a nice easy way to signify a different direction for your metal interest. However, there are two things I would like to suggest to avoid needlessly changing your 4th clan whenever you can: 1. Maybe let Ben or Daniel know beforehand in the PMs anyway to see if they're OK with it. 2. Once a month seems a little short, not a lot of people can change their taste in a metal genre that fast. Once every 6 months, perhaps?

Sixth months is WAY too long.  Besides, my mood changes every month or so.  Why don't we make it either two or three?

Fair enough. 

I can't say I agree with this approach. A member's clan assignments are intended to play a strong role in their identity at Metal Academy so I would discourage repeated swapping of clans. It's important to remember why we have clans in the first place which is to ensure that anyone that's voting on a release's clan or subgenre is well qualified & to do so & that there's an easy avenue to differentiate between a devoted & a casual listeners feelings on a release. The Hall of Judgement is such a small part of the site in the grand scheme of things so I don't think we should be diluting the fundamental intent of the site in order to better facilitate fast outcomes there (& in doing so risk the integrity of the voting just quietly too). Remember, not being a part of a clan doesn't restrict you from enjoying the releases & sharing your thoughts on the releases it contains in any way so I can't see why anyone would want to swap to a clan simply because they feel like listening to some releases from that clan. I'd suggest that I have one of the broadest taste profiles at the Academy but there's no doubt that everyone has comfort zones where they're more knowledgeable than others & I'm well aware of what mine are. That doesn't mean that I don't love a whole bunch of releases from each of the other five clans & I don't feel in any way restricted. I know perfectly well that there are people that are more qualified than I am to select the feature releases & nominate the playlist inclusions for the other clans & I treat it as an opportunity to discover new things while I can do the same for others within the context of my own clans.

It's probably also worth me highlighting that swapping a clan will remove your impact on the clan you're dropping too so things like clan ratings & clan charts will immediately see your contributions disregarded, not to mention the logistics of repeatedly changing the monthly feature release & playlist rostered & allocations.