The parody this past Friday by Otto http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/franksinatra195.shtml got me thinking. And although me thinking is banned in certain countries and a few regions in Canada, I'd like to suggest a rethink of the rating columns, specifically a rethink of Funny.

  1. I like the first column "Pacing." It's straightforward. Not a lot of wiggle room, even though I do tend to be forgiving in this category if the pacing is better than the original (and many of the originals have weird pacing based on the rhythms of the music, an issue which can cause issues when one tries to read it thoughtfully....maybe I shouldn't be thoughtful...that's a thought...).
  2. I like the last column "Overall" because it's, well, all encompassing.
  3. I've always had issues with Funny. With the political parodies, the serious parodies, the parodies that defy description, etc., Funny doesn't always fit. And having written a few on the less than funny side, I've felt a little weird getting a 5 for 'Funny.'

I think we should eliminate Funny and replace it with either one of the following:
  1. Clever- This is something I think can work with both serious and funny parodies.
  2. Witty- I’ve always been partial to this one because it begins with W. A letter of which I’m quite fond, having it in my first name.
  3. Weird- Not only does it have a W, but I think it can describe many of the parodies on the site, and maybe some of the people…
  4. Clarity- Though some will place a comment in the header describing the intention, motivation, etc. of/for the parody, some don’t. And with some of the parodies, I’m lost and confused. Though that’s my usual state of mind, it’s not my preferred state when I’m reading someone’s parody. I actually prefer the state of North Carolina, but I know we can’t all be perfect.

How about including a No Comment button for a column?

Just some thoughts. I’m no web wizard, and I’m not sure how difficult this is. But I think the rating process needs reviewing in some way, shape, or fashion.

Old Man Ribber, a frequent recipient of the Unabomber’s love gun, has suggested doing away with the rating process. I’m amenable to that as well, and it also gives me the ability to use the word ‘amenable’ in a sentence. I enjoy exposing myself to the world, and could be quite happy knowing I’m being viewed with a modicum of interest instead of being viewed in a cold lineup room downtown.

Thanks for listening, and a special thanks to Otto for prompting this.

I too have never liked the column "funny" but I don't think any of the other four options really improve upon funny. . .even funny parodies aren't necessarily weird, nor is funny always something that has clarity, Serious parodies rarely try to be witty--and clever is sometimes the opposite of the goal.

*If* funny were to be replaced I'd actually recommend a catch all such as "Achieved Goal" or better yet, a fill in spot that a person can ask what to be rated on from a drop down list. . .

Perhaps that list can have five options

1) Funny
2) Meaningful
3) Disgusting
4) Sincere
5) Educational

This would encompass the vast majority of parodies. . .political parodies usual aim at sincerity, education or being meaningful. . .serious parodies are usually aiming at being meaningful . . .many parodies are strictly educational, and a good number of parodies are aimed not so much at being funny, but being gross. . .

Funny would of course be the default, but this would allow the opportunity for people to be graded on the category intended for each given parody.

Thanks for chiming in, Dave.

The challenge is keeping the ratings succinct enough to provide a meaningful evaluation but not so broad that they have no value at all. In a perfect world, offering comments would be the ideal.

I'm hoping to tease out some thoughts on how to keep the descriptors valuable. I don't like the idea of having 5 or six categories to grade; starts to look to look more like a test if you go that direction. I like the idea of three categories, but I'm sure I don't like Funny being one of the categories. I threw most of my original suggestions in the mix just to get a thread going, and I'm not really partial to any of them.

I lied. I do like Clever. Clever works on many different levels that encompass both the funny and sincere. And many can be clever and sincere simultaneously. Maybe have a column called 'Interesting'? 'Boring'? 'Needs help'? Just tossing out thoughts.

Maybe the answer is a Not Applicable radio button for each of the ratings columns.

OMR's suggestion of eliminating the voting system is good, but I must admit I like seeing the numbers when looking at the different authors' profiles. It gives me a starting point on which ones to read first, though sometimes the numbers are of little use when trying to find some true 'gold.'

I hope others will join in this discussion. We can't be the only two that feel the evaluation grading system could use a little change.

Thanks for chiming in, Dave.

The challenge is keeping the ratings succinct enough to provide a meaningful evaluation but not so broad that they have no value at all. In a perfect world, offering comments would be the ideal.

I'm hoping to tease out some thoughts on how to keep the descriptors valuable. I don't like the idea of having 5 or six categories to grade; starts to look to look more like a test if you go that direction. I like the idea of three categories, but I'm sure I don't like Funny being one of the categories. I threw most of my original suggestions in the mix just to get a thread going, and I'm not really partial to any of them.

I lied. I do like Clever. Clever works on many different levels that encompass both the funny and sincere. And many can be clever and sincere simultaneously. Maybe have a column called 'Interesting'? 'Boring'? 'Needs help'? Just tossing out thoughts.

Maybe the answer is a Not Applicable radio button for each of the ratings columns.

OMR's suggestion of eliminating the voting system is good, but I must admit I like seeing the numbers when looking at the different authors' profiles. It gives me a starting point on which ones to read first, though sometimes the numbers are of little use when trying to find some true 'gold.'

I hope others will join in this discussion. We can't be the only two that feel the evaluation grading system could use a little change.


It does for me too--the ones with the lowest scores are usually the best because the ruffed the most feathers LOL

You do realize this conversation occurs once every two or three years right? The reason the funny entry is there at all, is because the site is first and foremost, a music humor website. It's kind of like the discussion of why there's no filk on the website that isn't parody based.

The person most upset at the column is of course someone who posts political stuff with no humor content whatsoever and then wonders why no one gives his "parodies" tons of positive votes. It's not a politics site, it's not forbidden, but it's not going to win you a ton of fans either, especially the bitter partisan stuff most people tend to write.  William Tong used to take it as a sign that his parodies were good when they'd specifically target them for down votes. Malcolm used to think the same thing as well.

You do realize this conversation occurs once every two or three years right? The reason the funny entry is there at all, is because the site is first and foremost, a music humor website. It's kind of like the discussion of why there's no filk on the website that isn't parody based.


I suspected this was a perennial topic, but I didn't dig deep enough to see past discussions. And I can understand why some would find the '1' a badge of honor. And humor is the main goal thrust, but current topics what they were, are, and will be continue to ebb and flow here.

That said, I can't help but like perennials in the spring...even if it's February and 78 degrees outside.

Even a 'not applicable' radio button would suffice, just to keep the flowers from popping up every other year.

Pesky flowers  ;).

And thanks, as always for this site. It's been a great creative outlet for me and a lot of other writer types.

wb

I suspected this was a perennial topic, but I didn't dig deep enough to see past discussions. And I can understand why some would find the '1' a badge of honor. And humor is the main goal thrust, but current topics what they were, are, and will be continue to ebb and flow here.

That said, I can't help but like perennials in the spring...even if it's February and 78 degrees outside.

Even a 'not applicable' radio button would suffice, just to keep the flowers from popping up every other year.

Pesky flowers  ;).

And thanks, as always for this site. It's been a great creative outlet for me and a lot of other writer types.

wb


Any change to the voting system would pretty much mean a clean cut off for results though... if NA is now an option, all those old votes where people would have chosen it if they could are no longer really as applicable. So I'd probably do something like present "historical vote totals" and then the "new style" voting results.

I'm not opposed to changing the system, it just needs to be simple and well thought out.  More than a handful of options and you make it too complicated for the average site visitor to bother with.  Youtube has a "Like/Dislike" and I think they used to be a five star rating system initially.  Even a disliked - neutral - love system might be better, do away with the averages entirely and just display totals of each. If we did away with the "averages" I could have a set of yes/no radio buttons next to a couple optional fields like "Made me think" "Made me laugh".  Maybe drop the vote on everything or nothing approach as well. Netflix has the ajax style stuff where you click on the stars and it just does the vote, I'm sure I could do that as well. It wasn't widely supported by browsers 10 years ago when I first designed the system.

so...

Voice Your Opinion
Cast your vote by selecting any of the choices below you agree with

Overall I think the Parody is: Great  -  OK -  Didn't Like
The parody made me laugh:  Yes - No
The parody made me think:  Yes - No
The parody fits the pacing of the original song:  Yes - No


Current Results

Overall I think the Parody is: Great (10) -  OK (2) -  Didn't Like (20)
The parody made me laugh:  Yes (5) - No (50)
The parody made me think:  Yes(30)  - No (20)
The parody fits the pacing of the original song:  Yes (10) - No (2)


This approach would give us the flexibility to drop or add questions (sitewide, not on a per parody basis)

The author page would probably only have the results of the "overall" category on it.  Maybe I could even put in a section with the "best liked" parodies at the top of each author page for authors with 25 or more parodies.

I've been debating about whether I should try a facebook tie-in as well... I've not been keeping up with the latest stuff on the websites like I should, so maybe it's time to do some more work on the sites I run. I hate the social network tie in stuff, but I guess other people use it.  Facebook tie-in's could be used with the voting system for votes people can't as easily fake. I doubt people would register 50 fake facebook profiles just for down voting a song parody. Would be a lot of work though, and still be optional, so not really keen on doing that.

I think I'm going to tweak the overall design some more as well (drop the font size down a point or two, clean up some spacing issues). Nothing as radical as the last time though. The 11 year anniversary of the site is coming up soon, so maybe that would be a good time to roll out some new changes.

My two cents' worth:


Any change to the voting system would pretty much mean a clean cut off for results though... if NA is now an option, all those old votes where people would have chosen it if they could are no longer really as applicable. So I'd probably do something like present "historical vote totals" and then the "new style" voting results.
PITA for no benefit. N/A has always been an option: comment but don't vote. Don't like the idea of having "old" and "new" votes, or losing accumulated votes. Maybe I'm biased because I still get hits on things I wrote my first day here, a little more than five years ago, and on many songs posted since.


<snip>  More than a handful of options and you make it too complicated for the average site visitor to bother with.
Amen.


Youtube has a "Like/Dislike"
Now we're back to either 555 or 111. No room in the middle for an almost-well paced parody with a few glitches, etc.


Even a disliked - neutral - love system might be better, <snip>
A one-to-ten scale is too much; neutral-love isn't enough. Same example as above: "This parody was very good, but there were some pacing glitches here, here, and here. Don't love it, but would if those were fixed". That is much more than "Neutral."

Most of the major polling organizations, like Rasmussen, etc., in reporting, for example, the POTUS' approval rating, use five grades: Strongly approve, Approve Somewhat (or "Generally Approve", or "Generally Satisfied", etc.) Neutral, "Disapprove somewhat" (same alternatives as before), and "Strongly Disapprove".  If it's good enough to rate the POTUS (etc.), it's good enough to rate a song.


Netflix has the ajax style stuff where you click on the stars and it just does the vote, I'm sure I could do that as well. It wasn't widely supported by browsers 10 years ago when I first designed the system.
How is clicking on stars easier than clicking on a radio button? ... In general, the less complex the code, the fewer glitches and the easier it is to maintain. Also, while I trust your sites and allow the scripting (and the ad scripts so that you can get paid, which isn't the case at some other sites, lol), "One man's feature is another man's exploit". More code = more possibilities for inadvertent XSS vulns (Cross-site scripting, which has bitten even the biggies like Yahoo and Google), and other exploits. KISS applies here. (Will PM you about one aspect of that.)


Voice Your Opinion
Cast your vote by selecting any of the choices below you agree with

Overall I think the Parody is: Great  -  OK -  Didn't Like
The parody made me laugh:  Yes - No
The parody made me think:  Yes - No
The parody fits the pacing of the original song:  Yes - No

Yes/No is waaaay too little for "Paciing", which isn't a binary question. A song with a few glitches shouldn't be rated "No" along with one that has missing verses, some lines as off by as miuch as four syllables (have seen that), half the lines mispaced, etc. The former should be a 4. "Yes" isn't right, and "No" is too strict, lumping the former in with the latter.

I support changing "How Funny" to "How Clever", because even though it *is* a humor site, satire and parody have been time-honored means of political and social criticism since the ancient Greeks and Romans. .. Not necessarily funny, but ... well, my comment to the parody linked in the OP says my thoughts. Main gist, excerpted:
**************
this parody is what this writer has often labeled TTTBF = To True To Be Funny. TT has probably wriTTen as many or more of those as anyone else on site. Consider the four parodies of the events in Egypt posted Monday, 14 Feb. There was nothing at all "haha" funny about those events or their retelling. They were thrilling, for the possibility of freedom vs. dictatorship; sad, for the casualties, and uncertain as to the ultimate outcome.

So, "funny"? Those would be a One, strictly speaking. Yet on those and many others, some kind readers have substituted their own criteria, such as "meaningful", "relevant", "informative", "witty", etc., just as this reader has done on similar works by others, and voted 555.
          "Ambition" -- trying a Big 7 parody (as all four of those were) could be included along with the other criteria above, into one category called, as Warren's first point suggested, "How Clever".

Cleverness includes: wit; originality; successfully tackling the difficult vs. Vile Tripes (play on "Edelweiss" there, lol); pertinence/relevance (to current events, etc.); informative value; technique beyond mere pacing, such as, say, syllable-matching (a parody can be perfectly-paced, with zero syl-matches, and justly deserve 5 on pacing; there is presently no way to reward the extra, uh, "cleverness" required for partial or total syl-matches - or, say, smooshing ...

.....Would all fit very nicely under "Cleverness". Ergo, replacing "How Funny" with "How Clever" is an excellent idea. In geek terms, the Venn set of "Clever" includes "Funny" and many other subsets of cleverness, whereas the Venn set of Funny excludes all of the others, to the detriment of such parodies. ....

... as for opting out of receiving votes altogether -- it seems that zero voting ]  is about as meaningless as unabombs or auto-fives. See TT's "100 Thousand Hits" parody: Every unabomb is another page view, and that helps support the site. ...
**********************

This approach would give us the flexibility to drop or add questions (sitewide, not on a per parody basis)
Again, too much complexity, or too-frequent changes, will confuse readers and muddle things.


The author page would probably only have the results of the "overall" category on it.  Maybe I could even put in a section with the "best liked" parodies at the top of each author page for authors with 25 or more parodies.
This writer's first 25 or so parodies were straight 555s, until someone apparently noticed that, and probably spent most of a day or a weekend dropping 111s and other low votes on them. They now show in the 2s and 3s. ...Also have been a frequent target of Unabombers. I can ignore those votes in evaluating sincere reader response to my work, but the above idea is contrary to the intent of the OP and the song by "Otto" that is linked in the OP: Too many readers give auto-Fives, either for quid-pro-quo or because they hate to hurt anyone's feelings by suggesting how the parody could be improved.

I personally consider page views over time as a better measure. Those which "have legs", as we say in show bz -- those that continue to accumulate hits for years, and those that get large numbers of hits, are resonating with readers. Just a personal thought there. But as for "most liked" -- we already have the ability to click the "H" (hits) column and sort by # of page views.


I've been debating about whether I should try a facebook tie-in as well... <snip>  I hate the social network tie in stuff, but I guess other people use it.
I hate it too, it's being cited for multiple privacy invasions, the latest being to use "friends'" names in endorsements for ads, without their permission -- "ChuckyG likes Brand X peanut butter" -- I'll have nothing to do with it. I don't see the benefit of a tie-in, and "other people" do a lot of stupid or useless things.


  Facebook tie-in's could be used with the voting system for votes people can't as easily fake. I doubt people would register 50 fake facebook profiles just for down voting a song parody.
Please pardon me while I LOL. Have you seen how many times Facebook accounts have been hacked? I warned one regular AmIRighter against it, and they wrote back several months later to say that they had been hacked twice in the interim. Hardly a way to prevent fake votes, and so long as non-FB users like myself are allowed to vote, there is no stopping malicious votes. This writer has assured many people, "Consider the source". Anonymous votes, low votes without reasons cited in the Comment, are meaningless, and one should pay them no heed.


Would be a lot of work though, and still be optional, so not really keen on doing that.
Considering the miniscule benefit, if any, haven't you just answered your own question? >wink<


I think I'm going to tweak the overall design some more as well (drop the font size down a point or two,
And here you just increased it, to the benefit of us aging Boomers,  ;) Pick a font and go with it! ... This writer posted elsewhere on this forum how to increase/decrease font size in one's browser.


The 11 year anniversary of the site is coming up soon, so maybe that would be a good time to roll out some new changes.
Any time that they're beneficial is a good time, but no need to make change for the sake of change. (Didn't think 11-year anniversaries were special, lol!)

O/T: Changing the Author listing to "Malcolms" was a nice tribute to a prolific writer, but even the passing of a POTUS lowers the flag to half-mast for only 30 days.... Will they be changed to another author's name, when, Heaven forbid, John A. Barry passes? Airfarcewon?  Tokusou Sentai Blessranger?

Main concern is that new readers checking that will have no idea what a "Malcolm" is. Minor point was that I thought that hitting 400 songs was a benchmark (same with 300, 200, 100 in first three months, etc.), but I'm now a zero-point-something -- not even a 1 on number of songs posted.

FWIW, I agree with the late Malcolm's opinion that 111s on political or social parodies are compliments. It means that your parody was *effective* -- you touched a nerve in someone; you've pressed their buttons; you've challenged their beliefs beyond the point where they can simply laugh you off or ignore you.

Enough. Kudos to anyone with the patience to read this entire post.  8)

Edit: Hope your headache is better. I'm sure that I haven't helped here. >wink<