hmmm

[br3ad_man]

I realise this is most probably a pointless thread, but I would at least like to see other people's opinions.

sputnik isn't really working for me. Not a technical problem, just the idea in general. With the old forum system, I could write reviews and people would read them and I would know that they were helping people's decisions and exposing them to new music. Now, however, I don't think my (or anyone else's) reviews are doing any good. I love writing, it is one of my favourite things to do, but I don't like it unless there is a point or a reason I am doing it. The point I had for writing cd reviews was that they were helping people's choices. That was a cool thing. Now, it feels like no one uses sputnik. The reviews are harder to read. No one bothers putting comments in. There is no sense of community in it at all. I just wonder what the point of having sputnik is.

I would like to know what other people think about this. I have talked to a few people about this issue in the past (some mods and many respected members) and most people agree with me.

[Adam Jones is GOD]

It has an equal amount of pros and cons for me. Its well presented, and its easier to find a particular review. And in a way, nothing has changed, as the mass majority of my review comments are from people who have the albums, and very little from people who are seriously going to check them out.

Its also getting a bit overcrowded now, attempting to encorporate too many features (track reviews I still see as pointless), and the rating systems all round are not reflective of quality or populairty.

However, I still find it better that its independent from the forums. But its still far from perfect

[Iai]

I, for one, think we could salvage the best of both worlds. Hear me out here.

Presentation-wise, I think the site should stay as it is. It looks great, it's easy to navigate, and some of the features (Playlists, Charts, Featured Reviews) are excellent touches. On that side of things, Jeremy did a great job.

Having said that, it's almost unanimous that the community - which was something we all loved about the CD Reviews forum - is almost all gone. The addition of comments was a good idea, but it wasn't enough.

So here's what I'd try to do.

1. Leave the site, aesthetically, as it is. Nobody has complained about the way Sputnik looks - in fact, a lot of people, including myself, really like it.

2. Re-instate the CD Reviews forum.

3. Change the links to reviews, on the artist pages, to being links to threads in the CD reviews forum.

Sputnik, in effect, would now become the stickied 'Review Archive' thread that was in CD Reviews. Except, it would now allow you to do things that weren't previously possible. Searching by reviewer, for instance. Seeing 'at-a-glance' what rating the album was given. Seeing how helpful the review was deemed to be by other users.

I don't know exactly how feasible this is - I'm no expert in computing. But I feel this solution would allow us to take advantage of all the possibilities that the Sputnik site has enabled, and would also re-instate that sense of community we all miss so much.

That's my 2 cents.

[Ian Curtis Is Dead]

I absolutely agree with Iai's suggestions. It almost seems pointless to write reviews anymore, it seems like no one reads them anymore. I completely agree with what all of you have said abut the loss of community. Sputnik is a cool site and all, and I like the idea of it and the added features, but imo it doesn't compensate for the loss of community.

[Jom]

I have to echo everyone who has posted so far.

I love writing reviews. A lot of my more recent reviews have been basically Forced Listenings. I feel that I write thorough and in-depth reviews, but it's frustrating that only one person will read my reviews and say something as lame as "Good review ." I also hate it when people do that and don't click "Yes" when the review asks if the user found the review helpful.

It's just that I really wish that, with all the work that goes into writing a decent review, that people would take the time to read it and give a thorough critique.

I do know that a lot of Alt/Indie people have boycotted Sputnik, and although it's none of my business, I think that's a shame because Jeremy put a lot of effort into the site and it's just not being used to its fullest extent.

I also think that track reviews are completely pointless. There's one that's two sentences long and is the biggest piece of trash I've ever had to read. It mentions nothing about the song, the instruments, or anything. In a nutshell, it says "This is Green Day's first single off the new album and I don't like it. Let's hope that they do better next time around."

I mean, that's a sorry case for a review, and I'll look at full-length album reviews from br3ad, Iai, Med, Bartender, etc. and those will be some awesome reviews, because I admire and respect the amount of work that goes into the reviews.

I love writing reviews. I think part of my problem is that a lot of users tend to stay away from nu-metal and don't bother reading it... or if they do, they'll say, "Good review, horrible genre/band." I just started working on "Lost & Found" but realized that that would be a pre-emptive review... but then again I realized that no one cares about that to begin with, so I'll have it up sometime this week.

I agree with br3ad when he says that there is no community feeling with Sputnik. It just isn't as tight of a community, and I don't think it ever will be. It's a shame.

I agree with AJIG when he wrote that the reviews don't seem representative of the albums... the only problem is that not everyone is going to write an Iai/Med/br3ad/Bartender/DeathtoPop-Punk-style review, and that's too bad.

I also echo Med's observations (it's too bad you can't log-in, man).

I also like Iai's suggestion, but I think that the CD Reviews forum should just be changed to Sputnik Reviews (or something), and then have this entire forum stickied and moved there as a Report Problems/Bad Reviews section.

/long post

[Iai]

Originally Posted by AntiHero3314

I think that the CD Reviews forum should just be changed to Sputnik Reviews (or something), and then have this entire forum stickied and moved there as a Report Problems/Bad Reviews section.

I like this.

[Ian Curtis Is Dead]

Originally Posted by AntiHero3314

/long post

Nail, head, something in between.

[Damrod]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis Is Dead

I absolutely agree with Iai's suggestions. It almost seems pointless to write reviews anymore, it seems like no one reads them anymore. I completely agree with what all of you have said abut the loss of community. Sputnik is a cool site and all, and I like the idea of it and the added features, but imo it doesn't compensate for the loss of community.

I would not say the reviews are not read anymore. I wrote a review yesterday, and up till today it had more than 200 hits. It's on it's good way towards 300 now. I think the reviews are read, but not commented as much as before anymore.

[Ian Curtis Is Dead]

Originally Posted by Damrod

I would not say the reviews are not read anymore. I wrote a review yesterday, and up till today it had more than 200 hits. It's on it's good way towards 300 now. I think the reviews are read, but not commented as much as before anymore.

I just did a review of Vauxhall and I, it has about 100 hits. I can guarantee you 100% that no more than 10 people actually read the full review. Sure it was overlong, and sure most people probably haven't heard the album, but clicking the link != reading the review.

[Damrod]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis Is Dead

I just did a review of Vauxhall and I, it has about 100 hits. I can guarantee you 100% that no more than 10 people actually read the full review. Sure it was overlong, and sure most people probably haven't heard the album, but clicking the link != reading the review.

Sure, but if you see it that way, it was probably not much different in the old CD Review Forum

[Ian Curtis Is Dead]

Originally Posted by eldoctor

When I used to write reviews I visited it a lot. Plus, all the discussion on each CD used to provide more of a resource than the actual review.

El-Doctor just made this comment in the Pit, and I absolutely agree. I wish we could get that back. :'(

[Jom]

Oh good, I was worried people were going to scoff at my suggestion.

It's just that it would eliminate the extraneous forum into a single thread that way.

[the2stranger]

the lack of community feel makes for good users not visiting the review site too much, and therefore alot of other people stay away too,

I really like IAI's idea on how to re-do the site.
we'll see.

/empty

[br3ad_man]

Originally Posted by Iai

I, for one, think we could salvage the best of both worlds. Hear me out here.

Presentation-wise, I think the site should stay as it is. It looks great, it's easy to navigate, and some of the features (Playlists, Charts, Featured Reviews) are excellent touches. On that side of things, Jeremy did a great job.

Having said that, it's almost unanimous that the community - which was something we all loved about the CD Reviews forum - is almost all gone. The addition of comments was a good idea, but it wasn't enough.

So here's what I'd try to do.

1. Leave the site, aesthetically, as it is. Nobody has complained about the way Sputnik looks - in fact, a lot of people, including myself, really like it.

2. Re-instate the CD Reviews forum.

3. Change the links to reviews, on the artist pages, to being links to threads in the CD reviews forum.

Sputnik, in effect, would now become the stickied 'Review Archive' thread that was in CD Reviews. Except, it would now allow you to do things that weren't previously possible. Searching by reviewer, for instance. Seeing 'at-a-glance' what rating the album was given. Seeing how helpful the review was deemed to be by other users.

I don't know exactly how feasible this is - I'm no expert in computing. But I feel this solution would allow us to take advantage of all the possibilities that the Sputnik site has enabled, and would also re-instate that sense of community we all miss so much.

That's my 2 cents.

That's a great idea. I would be totally behind that.

Great comments from everyone else too, thanks for your opinions.

[sweboy]

I used to hang in the old CD reviews forum alot, but I very rarely go to sputnik.

[DLR]

Sputnik is too isolated, it doesn't feel like part of the forums, which is a real shame because we have a thriving community here, and sputnik, to me, just feels like a cold wasteland. The reviews are good, site is nice, but the forums need to be involved. static sites die young, and I know there are facilities for commenting on reviews, making sputnik seem dynamic, at least in theory, but the commenting is cut off from the rest of the forums.

I agree.

[Brain Toad]

I agree with most things said. With the CD Reviews forum, I'd peak around every once in awhile for reviews on some albums, and do some myself. But now Sputnik just seems off and not part of the site. I haven't gone there more than 3 or 4 times.

[Zesty Mordant]

i agree with everything said here. i used to frequent the CD Reviews forum all the time, but since Sputnik's launch i've rarely go there. when i do contribute i find that im just ragging on a shitty review some random n00b had typed up in 5 minutes on album that was already reviewed much better in the first place.

there's a complete detachment from mx with the new site. when i need another set of opinions on an album that im not sure of buying or downloading i could always check the forum and i would know that the people that contribute regularly were capable of providing earnest and unbiased (to an extent obviously) reviews and opinions of albums and n00b idiocy was rooted out and eliminated. on sputnik, the forum seems to be overrun more by random fanboys advertising their favorites bands by giving paragraph long reviews.

anyways thats my rant.

[Jom]

I'm going to make a poll in The Pit (yeah... of all places, but that gets the most traffic) and see how it goes. Hopefully Mav won't close it; every time I think I have a good thread outside of the normal trash that's there Mav winds up closing it.

I'll edit the link in when I make it.