Champ213

Testimonial time:
 
Received my delivery today and everything went smooth and fine. Can recommend!

Well, that's the internet for you. It pretends to be a place of tolerance and personal freedom, but the collective hive of the internet is actually rather small-minded, conformist and reactionary.
 
 
Either you conform to a very narrow ideal of appearance and conduct - or you're meme material.

If your favourite bands haven't released anything worthwhile in 8-9 years, maybe it's time to reconsider your favourites.

I like me some good doom metal every now and then, so I will try out Church of Misery for sure!

My main suggestion was and remains... rather than choosing ONLY 1 candidate for each category, we should be able to submit perhaps 3.  

My rationale for this is that it is often quite difficult to decide the absolute best in any given category (especially for fickle people like me, ).  That combined with "voting politics" (trying to consider, will my vote for 'obscure band x" count if everyone is picking Mejibray or GRIEVA for some award) makes it extra tough.  I think having the chance to submit 3 candidates for a category solves these problems.

Now I realize that having 3 candidates from each participating MH-user will increase the amount of work for you, so I am volunteering right now to help with anything you'd need regarding this competition (if you want)!

Sooo, my order arrived today, and everything was fine and as described. Included a bunch of random flyers too.
I also received an excellent mp3 rip of the tape, so I wouldn't have to digitalize it myself.
 
 
 
Shipping was pretty fast too. I actually hadn't checked my mailbox for a few days, so I'm not sure how long it took exactly, but I'm guessing roughly a week to Germany. It was post-stamped the first work day after my order in any case, so no complaints there.


10/10 will buy again

Well, that's the internet for you. It pretends to be a place of tolerance and personal freedom, but the collective hive of the internet is actually rather small-minded, conformist and reactionary.
 
 
Either you conform to a very narrow ideal of appearance and conduct - or you're meme material.

Well, that's the internet for you. It pretends to be a place of tolerance and personal freedom, but the collective hive of the internet is actually rather small-minded, conformist and reactionary.
 
 
Either you conform to a very narrow ideal of appearance and conduct - or you're meme material.

Well, that's the internet for you. It pretends to be a place of tolerance and personal freedom, but the collective hive of the internet is actually rather small-minded, conformist and reactionary.
 
 
Either you conform to a very narrow ideal of appearance and conduct - or you're meme material.

Raphael's "Huckleberry no koi" -  I give them props for the mere wtf-ness of making a country song, but I just can't get into it. XD
 


 
Other than that, there really isn't a single song in their repertoire that I don't like.

But he is a vampire, he will live forever. Besides, graves are dirty and too confined.

Except Kamijo. By now I am convinced that he will take that gothic-aristocrat-thing to his grave. XDD
 
 
In all fairness though, most vk bands drop the vk image long before just getting too old. Actually most vk bands disband before they get to the point of dropping vk imagery, lol. I can fully understand though that after a few years of needing more time to prepare your makeup for a concert than actually spending time on stage, you want to tone down your visuals. And, since being in a vk band typically doesn't pay your bills, some people may just drop the pink hair in favor of getting a decent job. XD

Um yeah, here is mine: http://elmtree213.tumblr.com/
Maybe I will even use it one day. XD

That's the case with almost all genres, I would say. For every good band in each given genre, there are 10 mediocre bands that only have 2 or 3 good songs, and 20 more bands that are just plain bad.
 
 
Also, and this may be a bit of an unpopular opinion, I think that originality is overrated. There isn't really that much in music that hasn't been done before. You can mix things up, change a bit here and there, but in essence there is very little stuff that is truly original (and much of that is just plain weird in their attempts to create something new).
 
But I don't think music always has to be original. There is a good amount of bands I enjoy that are completely unoriginal - but they just do it damn well. And sometimes that's just enough.

Current system is fine right now although I would like the people more versed in proper tagging to do so for the uploader. Some uploaders are just bad at tagging, including me.

Yes. Make tagging obligatory. The system will be more efficient if everyone has to use it. No more releases will fall through the cracks and go as untagged either.
 
I like the open tagging system we have now. However I can see the downsides it poses. For example people tagging releases incorrectly, whether they are using quotes, "rock" or using incorrect descriptions that have nothing to do with the music genres. I'm with Aion on only using tags that apply to the music and not having labels, band members etc used as tags. I say keep the open system for now, make tagging obligatory and sees how things go. If people are tagging too many releases incorrectly and it becomes a big problem switch over to the closed system. 
 
Although tags by bitrate/realse date would be cool, I think it's unnecessary. Most people already provide those two things in the post anyway. And I'm not sure how often someone would use those tags to look up a release. It seems like a lot of effort to go through when someone could just easily look up a release using a number of other keywords like band/album/genre etc.
 
The only tags I think should be disallowed are redundant ones. Like the ones that already banned. J-pop, J-rock. I have no problem with people using visual kei, old school, or a specific genre of kei as a tag. Although they may fall under the vk umbrella each of the subgenres of vk have their own distinctive sound which may help people who are looking for a certain type of kei. 
 
I think tagging by mood is flawed since releases can have several moods. I don't want to tag an album with a half dozen moods in order to post a album. And I said before, I think tags should stick to describing the musical genres of a release. However broadening tags for releases marked visual kei would be useful. Tagging an album as VK isn't enough to describe what type of genre it is. In addition to the vk tag, it should have at least another tag like rock, metal, pop or whatever. Unless this poses a problem. Say your looking up a rock tag and then get a whole bunch of vk releases you're not into. If it's possible to use the search function in the vk download section and like wise,  use the search function in the general download area, but only get results for the respective section your in, than do it.
 
 
 
 

ok, point wise
 
1: YES, a definitive yes. Even if it is blatantly one genre, you can also add female vocalist / male vocalist to it or whatever. Just keep it civil and don't give it tons of tags... I mostly give my threads like 3-5 tags (f.e. rock, garage, indie, male vocalist OR alternative pop, synthpop, major, female vocalist)
 
2: I prefer an open system (hate dropdown menu's that have a shitload of options), but there is probably noway of auto-correct right? For a better version than the closed system should be better...
 
3: tags should be genre or music-specific items. Not bandmembers, bandnames, labelnames or whatever bullshit some people use... If I want to search for label-specific or band-specific things, there's a search bar on top... tags should be for recommendations imo...
 
4: GOOD POINT~!!!!
 
5: Nope, as I said earlier, tags hould be genre or music-specific items. Everybody can get different emotions with the same album. Especially if it's in a different language. Some bands sing very happy about horrific events. for example vamos a la playa. A very happy song, but not untill recently I knew the actually meaning, which is the aftermath of a nuclear war...
 
So should it be funny? happy? summer-y? comical?
 
My €0.02

A closed tagging system seems more...functional? Not the right word, something closer to 'useful'. At the moment a lot of the time I feel that it isn't really worth having tags due to the large variety and as you mentioned, tags like 'kote kei' and 'old school', within the context of MH anyway, seems to pretty much overlap. I also think that compulsory tagging would be a good idea, maybe more people will be inclined to read the rules then >< but I think more than one tag to be compulsory would be better, as visual kei is quite broad ><
 
I do like the idea of tagging mood though! This is presuming that tags will be included representative of all the different subgenres such as oshare etc etc... It would probably be helpful to have a kind of guideline to them. Not really sure angura kei consists of tbh and it would probably be useful for and if anyone is unsure then it would be a good reference point.
 
Maybe this is slightly influenced by my obsessive nature and want to put things into little boxes
But it'd be interesting to see what everyone else thinks

Release dates, bitrates, and moods are interesting concepts for tagging! Never considered those, but I think that'd be a cool idea.

And this is more of a question than a suggestion, since you oversee the tags.  Do you notice a problem with hyphenation when it comes to tagging?  For instance, "post-rock" or "post rock"?  I assume that would appear as two "different" tags.  Are people consistent enough that this isn't an issue?

 

As you know, with the change to the new forum software earlier this year, we also introduced the new tagging system. We started with a few basic rules, but otherweise we wanted to let the system grow organically and see how it works out.
 
Obviously A LOT of people don't read the rules though. So I have to do a very tedious clean-up on a regular basis. XD
 
 
Anyway, after having the system around for several months now, I would like to get some feedback.
 
Do you use the tagging system (either by adding tags yourself or by searching for releases via tags)? Do you find it useful? If not, what could be changed to make it more useful?
 
 
Here are some issues that I would like to raise myself:
 
1. At the moment, tags are voluntarily (except for the topic prefixes indicating the release type). Should we make it obligatory to add at least 1-2 tags to a release?
 
2. We are currently working with an open system - that means anyone can tag whatever they want. The system allows to change to a closed tag system, where only predefined tags are allowed (just like the topic prefixes). The advantage: tags would be more coherent, no wrong tags, no variants of similar tags etc. The disadvantage: less flexible. Since the predefined tags appear as a drop-down menu, we can't just expand them ad infinitum.
 
3. The fine tuning: are there any tags you think should be disallowed? Changed? Merged? (For example, we have the tags "kote kei" and "old school" - while that technically could describe different things, they are now being used for the same sort sort of music). Also, do you like to see release years added as tags? Bitrates?
 
5. Broadening: at the moment, most tags decribe a loose genre. Should we encourage to use other kind of tags? For example, decribing a mood. A release tagged just as "visual kei" is pretty non-descript. But imagine you had tag combinations like this:
visual kei | rock | happy
visual kei | metal | aggressive
rock | ambient | relaxing
Or whatever you can think of. I think these give a better idea of what a release sounds like.
 
 
Anyway, let me know your thoughts and suggestions!

A friendly reminder to everyone: please keep this on topic and don't let it descend into personal bickerings and bitchfights, or else we will have to intervene.

I never heard of any of those bands, but I do like me some Portishead! So... maybe worth checking out!

I will say two things about this:
 
A while ago we reorganized the forum to reduce the number of subforums. Why? Many subforums simply weren't used. For example, I think we did have a subforum for Anime and Manga long time ago - but it had very little activity, so we merged it with the general Entertainment forum. So obviously we are hesisant to create a new spree of subforums that in all likelihood won't be used either. The general Entertainment forum has a decent amount of activity - but now imagine we would split this up into seperate forums for Anime/Manga, Games, Books, etc. Each section would have a lot less activity. Less activity would mean that people won't go through the extra clicks of checking all these subforums individually, slowing down activity even further.
 
As a general rule I think forums should only be split up if they get a lot of activity that makes a split necessary, and each new subfoum should be able to "live on its own" ie. be able to attract enough users to make it active. If I look at the Entertainment section, I don't really see enough anime/manga-related posts to make a viable subforum. As a matter of fact, the majority of posts seem to be videogame-related. So if anything it would the Games that deserver their own subforum. Our past experience has shown that simply creating a subforum for something will not make users post in it.
 
 
So, let's talk about the forums with the most activity. That would be the News and Downloads forum. Splitting up the DL forum in particular has been discussed by staff members many times. Some are in favour, some are not. Some problems include clear genre seperations and the fear that a "Non-vk" forum would not receive enough activity. There's also the worry that splitting the forum into "vk" and "Non-vk" would also split up the userbase of the forum, reducing their interaction. We hoped that the introduction of the tagging system would help a bit in this regard - if you look for a specific genre, you can click on the tag and get all downloads for that genre - as long as it's tagged correctly. Obviously, adding proper tags is the responsibilty of the uploader. Once a month or so, I go through the list of tags, merge duplicates, delete tags violating our rules etc. but I cannot check every thread that is missing tags, download it, listen to it, and then add the matching tags myself.
 
Overall, the idea to split up the DL forum into subforums is an idea that's still on the table, if enough people really want it.

Since the tagging system was brought up a few times in this thread, I am going to make a seperate topic for it in the next day or two (it's really a seperate issue anyway). The tagging system is a bit of a pet project for me and now that we had it for a few months I would like to get some feedback on it. I'll just have to think through some of my own thoughts on it, then I will post a thread in the Suggestions forum.

I only came here for the topic title. Well played, Kai, well played.
 
 
Also, loving your artist descriptions. XD