Hello all. Here you will find a list of the features that will appear in version 2 of metal-archives.com. It can be updated at any time.

This thread is not for you to ask about the release date. To be blunt, we don't know. Coding all of this, along with testing and debugging, takes a shitload of time, which we have in very limited quantity. Progress is slow but definitely steady, that's all we can tell you. That's life. Anyone who asks, whines or makes a smarmy comment about that will get their comments deleted as a warning.

That said, we are now more confident in revealing a sort of ETA: so if all goes well, version 2 should be launched by the end of 2010. *crosses fingers*

This thread is where you can ask if feature X will appear on v2, assuming it's not on the list already. If applicable, I'll update the list.

You may also ask for clarification on certain features that draw your attention. If the item in the list is unclear, I will gladly clarify it.

Do not ask about forum features yet. We do have plans on either upgrading phpBB or using better forum software, but we are not the ones who code it and don't know which software will be used.

Thanks.

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Confirmed features - version 2.0

These features will definitely appear in v2.0; either because they're already coded or being coded, or because we have a definite plan to have them immediately.

• No more frames!
• Support for international characters with UTF8 encoding
• Individual artist pages: birth date, full name, bio, etc.; see on which bands/albums the artist participated in
• Artist pages may also include producers, cover artists, etc. and not strictly musicians
• Label pages: status, contact info, website, trivia, etc.; see the label's signed bands and released albums; child and parent labels (e.g. Elitist & Wicked World are sub-labels of Earache)
• Sorting reviews; alphabetically, by date, rating, author
• Improved discography: tabs grouping release types together, somewhat à la allmusic.com
• "My reviews": page with the user's own reviews, including review drafts (as-yet unsubmitted), approved and even rejected ones (with the rejection message displayed for each rejected review);
• Notification emails for rejections/acceptance of submissions will be automatically signed by the moderator.
• Feature to preview a review before submitting it
• For moderators: improved queue mechanisms, such as "next" and "previous" buttons in the review or band queues
• Improved reporting: selection of a report category (e.g. "lineup correction", "bootleg", "page sabotage", "broken image", etc.) rather than a priority
• Improved reporting: report queue visible to all (in read-only), with the possibility to add comments to the report and "escalate" the report if it requires mod attention
• Improved reporting: logged users can set a report to "resolved" if they have fixed the problem themselves, after which a moderator can set it to "closed"
• Audit trails: update history on bands, albums and artists
• Non-buggy splits!
• Pagination on long lists
• Various improvements on the advanced search: searching songs, artists, labels, album date range, etc.
• "Similar bands to"/recommendation system for bands, using a point system (I won't go into the details here) with moderator veto

Confirmed features - v2.1
These features may not appear right away in the initial v2.0 release, but WILL be added in a future version for certain (v2 will be scalable and much easier to maintain and improve, unlike the current version).

• Multiple versions of the same album, e.g. re-releases, LP vs CD, Japanese version, digipak bonus, US vs European album art, etc.
• Catalogue numbers for album versions
• RSS feeds: for reviews, newly updated bands, possibly more

Wanted Features - v2.x

These features may not appear right away in the initial v2.0 release; but may be added later, maybe in v2.1 or a later v2.x. The difference with the previous list is that they are of a lower priority: we aren't sure in which version they'll be in yet, but we do think they are good ideas and leave our framework "open" for them. You may even see features in the list below get moved to the list above at some point.

• User preference for discography tabs: default tab displayed, "custom" tabs with a checklist of release types, etc.
• User preference for a site skin: choose between alternative CSS layouts/colour schemes
• Notion of "trusted" non-moderator users; whose "resolved" reports would automatically close, for example
• Possibility of uploading an image from a URL rather than a local file (note: this doesn't mean the image will be hotlinked at the URL, but rather, it will be downloaded from the remote server to ours)
• Possibility to have more than one logo and/or photo for a band, displayed in rotation
• Tagging bands as "incomplete" or "info needed" to encourage users to "fill in the gaps"
• Years of activities for bands: year formed/split-up/reformed/re-split etc.

Uncertain Features

These features still have an "undetermined" status. That means we don't like them as much as those in the above lists, or don't think they are that interesting, but we are not completely opposed to the idea either.

• "Watch" lists internal to M-A, without RSS feeds
• Trade/want list match (e.g. find profiles who have, in their "want list", albums you have in your "trade list" and vice-versa)
• Listing band's songs that are not on actual releases (e.g. songs recorded for a soundtrack, compilation, etc.)
• Having releases for an individual artist, such as instruction videos

Just wondering, weren't there improvements in the advanced search planned? It may not seem like a big deal compared to other planned changes, but honestly it's one thing I'm looking forward too very much. What I mean by that is, the ability to use the advanced search with song titles, lineups, and the like (rather than with just the little dropdown search on the main page), and the ability to give a range of years instead of just one (i.e. thrash albums from Germany released between 1985-1990, all appearing at once without having to search 1985, then 1986, etc.).

Aye, thanks for reminding me.

Many of these are, "Well, it's about damn time" sort of things. I do have a few questions, however:

Are label pages added like artists or are they automatic?

Will the user be able to delete their own reviews, especially if they would rather not display rejected reviews?

For the multiple versions of the same album, would there be the inclusion of the catalogue numbers for each of the releases?

We'll have a script that will pre-generate basic entries based on the currently entered label strings. This will create duplicates of course but we'll clean them up as much as possible (other duplicates we missed can be reported and merged later anyway) before the live release. After that, users can fill in the blanks in the information, and of course add new labels (after making sure it's not already present). I'm not yet certain if new label submissions should be moderated or not...


Rejected reviews are never displayed. The logged user will be able to see his/her reviews, including rejected ones, but no one else will. And yes, logged users can delete their own reviews - they already can, as a matter of fact, in the same way that they can already edit their own reviews.


Sure, we'll have a field for the catalogue number. For each of those there will be the format (CD, vinyl, cassette, VHS, etc.) as well, though I'm not yet certain how we'll deal with albums with bonus DVDs and the likes...

I like the listing, especially the release type tabs so I can uncheck single, best of and boxed set.



Keep up the good work!

This will be glorious

Yes! This would be a good feature, for sure! I'll use that.


These are more eye-candy ones, especially the site skin, I believe, but still a worthy addition.

All the coming attractions are going to be great. Keep up the good work.

Do you guys really think artist's pages are a good idea?



This, for example, could possibly be quite problematic- when does a "producer" become the "dude who recorded one or two obscure black metal albums", or, for that matter, someone who, say, just did assistant engineering on one early metallica album? Some sort of notability clause or something could be pretty useful in this respect, I think.



These are all great ideas. Basically, there's a lot of good stuff here, keep up the good work.

By all means.


Fair point, I agree.

Doing all of the artist pages is going to be one hell of a job for the userbase. / /

As for the review sorting, I'd also suggest adding a function for the release of the reviewed item as well as the review date.

Label pages will be VERY helpful, and I mean VERY.

Any plans to include compilations and maybe even tribute albums?

Awesome. I was going to ask about this but never got around to it. Glad to hear you're going to include it.

The rest of the features sound great. Keep up the great work!

EDIT: Not sure if this was asked before. Any thoughts on including a mass delete option for the collections and wanted lists? The functionality is there for "for trade?", but not deletion.

It's nice to finally see such a list!

What about the recommendation system, in which users will be able to recommend similar bands?

Wasn't the "album collection" feature going to be revamped?

What do you think of keeping a list of metal venues and shops?

Audit trails is the same as an "edit history"?


I still think you should consider a watchlist which can be accessed without RSS.


When the band credits the dude as their producer.


Nope. A notability clause will never work. Such rules need to be universal.

Shouldn't that be left to last.fm and such sites?



Then it's going to get really messy, really fast.

I think it would be cool to have a list of the highest rated albums (by reviews) through some sort of percentage (based on the number of reviews/score) obviously...to eliminate those albums who only have 3-4 reviews.

Why not have it here?

We've already discussed in the moderators' forum how that could be done.

Better to leave that to the forums I think.

I still think it would be more trouble than it's worth.

Definitely going to like this.

As for the forum, to be blunt I'm honestly surprised it's as stable as it is, unless some updates/patches have been plugged, I'm assuming this is an incredibly old version of phpBB (copyright 2001?), lol. I'd hate to lose things as they are, but it's not a big deal. Perhaps just upgrading to phpBB3 would be the best route, though I'm not sure how that works ... I know some board software makes it easy to do this but who knows.

Looking forward to v2.

Judging by the list, V2 is going to be something godlike. And I'm more than glad about it.

Well, I guess it's not so bad; it just doesn't seem particularly encyclopedic- but I guess reviews don't, either.

I'm definitely looking forward for the label pages, recommendation system and selection of a report category rather than a priority, besides obviously the assorted bug fixes, support for international characters, etc.



I could probably say the same thing about half of the new features, since I personally will seldom have use for them. But I wouldn't like to spoil anybody's excitement or belittle Morri and HB's hard work.

I can foresee myself gladly losing nights toying with this recommendation thingie. On the Last.fm comparison, that site is based on listening statistics, and therefore leaves a lot to be desired on the more obscure bands. It can't touch our collective user knowledge.

Especially considering the fact that there's one page for all different artists of the same name @ Last.fm. That irritates me a lot. Plus listening statistics aren't necessarily accurate - band X may be listed under "similar artists" for band Y even if their music differs drastically.

The problem is that it's not encyclopedic in anyway, it's a basic redundant opinion. Of course Reviews could be seen that way, but at least with reviews you're getting (hopefully) detailed descriptions of some certain music, with just a list of bands which people think sound similar is just a redundant "I think Band X sounds like band Y". I guess it does in some way lead to finding new bands, but I think that there isn't much information given in a list like that. I think a simple sticky for each of the genre threads on the forum would be more useful due to there being more information as to what the similarities are, and interactivity between users.

On the other hand, rec threads grow rapidly, and I doubt a newcomer will look through several dozens of pages just for a couple of bands.

The recommendation system will be a little more sophisticated than that. At least how we originally envisioned it.

This is great

Something else I thought of...

Will the rules/FAQs/etc. be amended, and not just for the new features, that's self-explanatory, but for existing ones as well? One that's notable to me is the rule about links. I remember when I first started, which isn't that long ago compared to some, I could get away with adding a ton of merchandise links with no repercussions; however, somewhat recently (perhaps in the last year or two) I've noticed that such behaviour is considered point-whoring, but this behaviour is covered in the rules as legitimate. Just small things like that. I'm sure there are others, or other situations where the rules may have fit the times, but either no longer apply or have changed but really haven't been amended.

Negative.


Sure. This is part of the various improvements on the user interfaces so I didn't list here. I don't list those other than the greatly revamped ones.


Possibly yes. I'll have to ask HellBlazer, he's more familiar with it.


Negative. I'll leave that to metaltravelguide.com.


Aye.


V2.1 maybe.


I'm not sure yet. I think caspian makes a good point. Note that it doesn't have to be a "notability" like they mean it on Wikipedia. We'll have to think about it.

I'll add those I forgot to name to the list.

This thread is very reassuring; I was always afraid that, despite your claims to the contrary, V 2.0 was more myth than reality. It must be a bitch coding all that in your spare time, and I salute you for having more motivation than I.

I am curious as to the reasons behind this especially if you're going to be adding pages for the labels. Couldn't the compilations be added similar to how splits are added to artists already? I know the rules currently are fairly black and white about this, but without any specific reason. Though as it's your site no reason really needs to be given, I was just wondering.

Frankly, I see nothing of interest in V.A. compilations and tributes whatsoever (with the exception of a few historically interesting ones), not to mention the staggering amounts of all sorts of samplers from magazines and promoters we'll get. I don't see what it will add to the encyclopedia.

The problem with them is that their database is severely outdated. There is also metalshops.net, but that site isn't free anymore. It was until 2003 or so.

What about some conceptual compilations or compilations featuring exclusive tracks from the bands? I understand these can be mentioned in "Additional Notes" for each participating band, but what if a band has contributed to, say, 10 or more compilations? Adding compilations to label pages like usual albums to band pages seems a rather good idea to me.

Samplers and tributes are definitely nothing interesting and useful.

Tributes can be interesting. Useful though, no.

I wasn't thinking of compilations attached to magazines but rather the more official ones from labels. And one of my reasons was that bands often submit tracks exclusive to these compilations. For instance the recent Speed Kills compilation on Heavy Artillery is full of tracks that are exclusive to that compilation.

probably with V/A will be problem like with side project
which is "more official ones", which is not, etc.

My suggestion is that if the majority of tracks on compilation is exclusive, then it should be allowed, if not, then sorry.

@ Visionary: that's exactly what I tried to say.