Sadly, all things must come to and end, thusly, we're putting contest 8 in the 'GTFO' folder.

Congrats to our three winners:
1 - sledgbrainerd
2 - eric (hey, that's me!)
3 - youandme

youandme should have probably overtaken my spot, but the masses have spoken.

A new contest will probably be posted by the end of the week -- anyone have any ideas?

Rock on y'all.

It looks as if our host's database servers are having some issues. Hopefully they'll get resolved soon. But, I suppose, if you are seeing this, then things are probably getting better.

Cross your fingers.

A new contest emerges! Click the 'contests' link on the left to play along.

Sorry, not MC related directly, but check out http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/music/18dram.html

I have no idea who the guy is, but that is ridiculous.

Alright, kiddies, take off your headphones and listen. Or maybe just read. Either way...

The next mission, should you decide to play along is to find an artist/ album/ track in the database (probably by using the 'music' option on the left) and write a short personal story of a time in your life and how that song reminds you of it, relates to it, influenced it, etc. Next, copy what you wrote and leave it in a tag below, telling us the track, album and artist as well.

My example:

Love & Communication / The Greatest by Cat Power
Cat Power, probably my fourth favourite woman in the world (my mom, my girlfriend, joni precede her) took a stage at Coachella 2006 just after sunset and put on a simply stunning show. Dry and parched from the heat, the girlfriend and I leaning on each other from support, it was just shy of perfection.

So, delve deep into your brain-RAM, make a post on that song page and leave a comment here. We have badges to issue and will pick three random entries for a neat-o point bonus.

ROCK!

So eric and I pried ourselves from our Wii's and finally ended the contest!

Actually, to be honest, it wasn't all Nintendo's fault; we've been pretty busy too!

We've been pouring a lot of time into 2.0 as well. It's still a ways off but we have made some pretty monumental progress so far. A good portion of the new database schema is complete and we began writing scripts to convert the 1.0 data over. We're going to remain pretty tight lipped other that though. We might decide to leak a little bit later though.

Congrats to our winners d-loot, rover and sledge! The usual rewards were given out, 200, 150 and 100 points given out and custom badges.

Also, we issued out the christmas badges for everyone who logged in on the 25th (*hint* check in on new years!)

In the holiday spirit, the contest has been extended! (actually, I think eric left town, and I don't have photoshop to make badges anymore). We're going to give it another week.

To make up for that, I'll have a surprise for you guys this afternoon...

Mixtape contest 7 is here. We decided to change things up with this contest. Check out the rules on the contests page; we're looking forward to seeing your submissions!

After nearly a year of working on this site, I've finally decided to turn my hat in. I want to thank all of you for playing along, but come Sunday, the site will be no more. It's been real.*



* kidding -- I just moved and won't have internet access for ~1-2 weeks. SUCK!

Congrats to Galaxiepi, Eric, and Johnny_Luddite for their winning mixes.

Thanks to everyone who entered. We'll bring out a new contest in a week or so.

Mixtape contest VI is underway. Galaxiepi gave us the idea. I want to see you all come up with some sultry stuff...

On a side note... I was sad that I didn't get more of a response from people on my bug hunt request. Some people managed to find what I was looking for... others came up a little short... but the turnout was so low that I've decided to give anyone who helped out at all a badge to hopefully encourage a better turnout next time. The badges will be going out in a little bit, but eligibility for them is over.

I didn't get around to finishing the contest yesterday, so there was a little bit of an extra extension. Anyway, congratulations to our winners: d-loot, johnny_luddite and sledgbrainerd. Enjoy the badges.

Thanks to everyone who participated. We'll be starting up a new contest soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Also, while I have your attention. I have a favor to ask of anyone who is willing (there might be a badge in it for you). I'm going to start working on fixing/redesigning the way our form inputs work for 2.0. There will be some notable improvements (URLs won't get destroyed anymore for starters!).

Anyway, I've noticed quite a few places across the site, tags/forum posts/liner notes/favorites lists/mix descriptions/etc, text has sometimes broken the page. Sometimes it is too long for the container it is in and it screws up the layout, other times it might cause graphical glitches (borders sometimes disappear from mixtape tracklists if there is a hyperlink in the description), etc etc. I am going to fix these problems, but I want to have some test cases to use and am far too lazy to dig through the site to find cases where this sort of thing happens.

If anyone knows of any off the top of their head, or if they feel like searching... I will greatly appreciate and appropriately reward you!

Corey and I are both going to be away from computers tonight, so we won't be able to finalize the contest until Saturday (the 11th).

So, take this extra time to go out and vote, suckers.

Much love, y'all.

Like Johnny 5, I need input:

In the next version of MTC, how would you like to be able to rate mixtapes? Corey and I are fairly cemented on having ~3 separate metrics for rating a mixtape in order to provide better filtering, ranking, etc.

I enjoy the simplicity of things now, but I think it would be cool to be able to rank on originality, flow, concept, execution, etc.

What do you think? What would you like to see?


ps -- happy halloween!

Contest V is now live. Mix your face off.

Corey and I have just recently emerged from a continuous, month-long think-tank session in regards to what we’re going to do regarding the rating system on the site.

As our quaint little website site continues to grow, we’ve identified a number of issues, two of which revolve around ratings. Firstly, without adding tons and tons and tons of tracks to the database or making tons and tons and tons of mixtapes, it’s quite hard for a newbie to get to any respectable level. Secondly, as we grow, our rating algorithm (and our server) just can’t stand the heat. Now, pertaining to that last issue, we have some time before our server bursts into flames, but you know us – we’re proactive as shit.

Our concept for a fix can be summed up in one word: Seasons.

Essentially, if breaks down like this: every few months, a new season will start. Your profiles and mixtapes will have a ‘lifetime’ point tally on them, but will also have a season tally that gets reset at the start of every season. Any points gained during season play pipe directly into your overall score. The top 10 overall will still be the most coveted positions on the site, but now we have a way to let everyone play on a balanced field.

Plus, dividing it up into seasons will allow for more detailed statistics and easier browsing, allowing some mixtapes that ‘fall through the cracks’ to be found more easily.

At the end of a season, the users with the most season points (or highest mixtapes, etc) will get all sorts of badges and huge point rewards.

This is all still very hypothetical and we’re looking for input. Any suggestions, comments or concerns?

You guys rock.

Well, the contest is over and although it was a close battle, the monsters slaughtered their mechanical foes.

Well, the contest turned out pretty well, although the ratings ended up being a little skewed. In light of that, we have decided to award all participants with a team badge rather than just the victors (although the winning team is all getting a 50 point bonus).

Congratulations to Eraserhead, d-loot and Qualca for their top finishing Monster mixes.

Congrats to cst003, riotshields and sledgebrainerd for their top ranked robot mixes.

Points and badges have been awarded. Thanks to everyone who participated.

No new contest yet... if you have suggestions for a contest, now is your chance to voice them. We'll give you all a week off and will start next week with a brand new one!

(p.s. 2.0 kicks ass!)

Just a heads up for you all... monsters are sitting ~1709, robots ~1609. Pretty close matchup so far. 9 days left!

Okay, actually 13 days / baker's dozen left in this weeks' current contest. there are a boatload of mixes already entered and still a ton of time to get a new one in there.

Remember, at the end of the four-weeks, the person holding the number one spot for EACH team will take home 200 points and a badge, with smaller bonuses and badges for silver and bronze. Every participant for the team with the highest average mixtape score will earn 50 points and a badge in honor of their efforts.

So, get out there and make a mix or at the very least, rate the existing mixes.

ROCK OUT!

So, as you all know, Eric and I have been slowly working on the 2.0 redesign. Yada-yada-yada, we've talked about it a bunch...

Anyway, I wanted to get some feedback from you guys about fundamental aspects of the site that need to be changed/fixed/updated.

I would post this on the forums, but I want everyone to see and read it, so we can get a better idea of what you all think.

Let's try to keep this on the topic of serious things that need to be changed. If you have ideas for new features or if you notice small bugs (typos, etc) on the site, please bring them up elsewhere.

Here are the major ones are already going to get taken care of in the redesign. We recognize these as problems and are planning on fixing them:

- Music Database rework: although the current form works fine, it needs some adjusting to be a more accurate database. Currently a track can only belong to one album, and an album can only belong to one artist. This becomes a problem for soundtracks, compilations, etc... and also for songs that might appear on an album, plus a greatest hits, etc etc.

- Moderations: the entire system is crap. In theory it is good, but I poorly executed it because we were rushing the last week before we had to get the site up and running for our class.

- General efficiency: some of this we can't help because our provider sucks, but this is getting addressed.

- My account section: the layout of this is annoying. This was the first thing we wrote for the site and it shows. Having multiple save buttons was a dumb idea. Anyway, this will be fixed in 2.0.

- A way to search for users and mixtapes, as well as flag them as 'favorites' so you can quickly navigate to them.


Other than those, what other major things do you guys want to see fixed or updated?

The one thing that personally bothers me is how stagnant the top user list is. I feel that we probably offered far too many points for adding to the database. Unfortunately, I don't know how to address this really, other than to retroactively reduce the value of database additions. Obviously, this would be a point of contention for those that spent hours slaving away on the music/mix creation pages graciously populating our db (thanks a ton!).

What would the reaction be if we retroactively decreased the value of points earned in this fashion (say to 75% or maybe 60%). I have a feeling the order of the top users would remain close to the same if we did this, but the point differences would be less so newer users could maybe have a shot to be in the spotlight for a bit.

Or what if we had a system of diminishing returns... so the first 1000 tracks you add give you 1 point, the next 1000 give you .5 points, the next 1000 give .35, etc etc etc.

Ultimately, I think we would like to see the top user list be more dynamic, but is it worth the cost of possibly alienating some of our high-ranked users?

What do you guys think? I especially want to hear from the people in the top 10 (you guys are some of most loyal users and we strongly value your opinion!)