Song Requests

[podakayne]

but my head is too stuffy to give a really coherent post...lot's of great ideas (roger you've picked up the best of them) and i agree with rick&Yspaz on the trickery idea (Yes they are in agreement!).

just do what cha gotta do jim, roger, unter...etc.

some listerns will just have to learn the hard way. it's obvious to me the guilty parties should now know the reason the songs are no longer on the list. they must come to the homepage to request...perhaps they will actually read the homepage and discontinue the abuse....i was shocked at the statistics roger 300 request and only a listing of about 20 songs! O...M...G! what a misuse the vast catalogue of music here.

anywho, i'm taking my stuffy head and retreating back under the covers
great thread!

poda

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by podakayne
it's obvious to me the guilty parties should now know the reason the songs are no longer on the list. they must come to the homepage to request...perhaps they will actually read the homepage and discontinue the abuse....

Not necessarily. I have the frame-less request page on my favorites list. I frequently am somewhere else on the web, pull it down, make a request, and go back. Never see the homepage. If you make a desk-top short-cut, even easier to miss the page.

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by podakayne
it's obvious to me the guilty parties should now know the reason the songs are no longer on the list. they must come to the homepage to request...perhaps they will actually read the homepage and discontinue the abuse....

Not necessarily. I have the frame-less request page on my favorites list. I frequently am somewhere else on the web, pull it down, make a request, and go back. Never see the homepage. If you make a desk-top short-cut, even easier to miss the page.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
I have to say I don't like the idea of altering the request to random. What's the difference between that and letting SAM dj?

None. Except we're not subjected to the 5th playing of a given song that week.

Also, I may be misunderstanding, but I think it's been suggested that if a song is being abused and someone requests it, they get a random song instead of the one they requested.

Only the person who's been overrequesting gets this treatment. The rest of the folk get what they've bargained for.

Then Rick 'n' Roll makes me spew my dinner all over my computer by saying:
I agree with spaz...

You owe me a new keyboard. You'll be getting the bill.

In all honesty, I was never seriously considering making those types of modifications to the station (well, not VERY seriously, anyway). They'd be far too difficult to implement correctly and without bugs, and it would be a real bear to police. I have the feeling that I'd trap far more of the good guys with this than the bad guys.

It just wouldn't be worth the hassle and problems that it would create.

I am, however, still actively pursuing the option of request blocking. I've narrowed it down to about three different options, one of which will block access to the station entirely and the other two just blocking request functionality.

Roger -Dot- Lee, you realize, Rick, that this is like the third time this week. You trying to set a precedent or something? or maybe some kind of record?

[Yesspaz]

Yeah. Blocking is better than bait-and-switch. Go Dotty Go.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Michael Rawdon
I've occasionally requested a song several times in one week. The main reason I've done this is because sometimes the song doesn't get played until after I've left my desk. Due to the delay in processing requests (which I understand is partly programmatic, but probably also due to other requests in the queue), I can sometimes request a song at 10 am my time, and it doesn't get played until after I go to lunch at noon. I've come back from lunch on occasion to find that I missed my song by 5 minutes.

Actually, it's much more than partially programmatic. In our licensing agreement terms thing, as I understand, we have to put in a minimum delay of a certain amount for requests due to copyright/piracy issues. That is my understanding of why we do it. The configuration and decisions predate me, and, while I like to rock the boat on occasion, this isn't one of those times.

And, for the record, our delay is minimum of 1 hour. I say minimum, because after that delay, the request gets placed at the bottom of the queue. Any remaining delay depends on what's in the queue. If there's only two songs, then yours will be on deck shortly. If there's a whole bunch, then your wait will be longer. Also note that only the two songs that are waiting to play are listed. There may be others -- many others -- waiting to play.

Something else you'll want to consider is if there's a show running at the time. I see by your information that you're from Good Olde Silly Con Valley (I made my escape from Sunnyvale in 1996 -- used to live right off Central Expressway and Lawrence Expwy). Anyway, our shows tend to co-incide to your morning/afternoon hours. When a show is running, everything gets pushed back. Tuesdays, from 8am to noon your time are when we do the Gagliarchives replay. Four hours right there. And the requests back up fairly heavily during those times.

So you'll want to keep that in mind when you're making requests.

I'll also sometimes request several songs by an artist over the course of a week, because I'm trying to get enoguh of a handle on them to decide whether to buy their stuff. For artists who only have one or two albums up on AM, this means requesting tracks from the same album, of course.

Not a problem. We have no problem at all with this nature of requesting.

See, the difference from the way YOU request and those that we have problems with are:

• while you may request one or two songs repeatedly, once you get a handle on things, you MOVE ON. This, in our opinion, is a valid use of the resources.
• when you have requested (at least from the IP address from which you posted this note), you may hit a duplicate, or you may do two or three songs off of a given album. But that's it. You move on. Again, we have no problem with this. You don't continue to request the same song week after week. THAT is where we have the problems.
• You've come in here to help try to solve the problem instead of just opening Winamp/iTunes/whatever they happen to be listening to.

I could go on, but I think everyone gets the point.

In this latter case, I tend to make requests partly by song length (figuring a 9-minute track is more likely to give me a feel for the band than a 3-minute track), and partly by song title (if the title "sounds interesting"). Not an exact science, I know!

I'm hip. Although attempting to judge a song by it's title is identical to judging a book by it's cover. I can't count the number of gems I've discovered because I had a jumpy mouse at HP.

(FWIW, I almost always requests songs I'm interested in hearing but don't actually know; most songs I know I like I tend to buy the CDs of.)

oy, if we only had a bunch more like you instead of the two or three that request the same blasted songs daily.

I bring all this up not as a matter of objection - I'm happy to have AM around in practically any form, and understand why the moderators have taken the actions described earlier in this thread - but as another data point for how someone uses the request system.

Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's this type of use that we encourage. If everyone used the system this way, we wouldn't have these problems.

(In fact, there's a song on the playlist which was getting played seemingly every morning for a while which I simply could not stand, and I'm happy if it means we'll be hearing less of it!)

Which one? If you could give me a name, I'll see if it's being overrequested and yank it if necessary. Who knows, you might even get a round of applause from the regulars!

I actually rarely make requests, primarily because of the long delay before they get played. I don't often have a 3-hour block of time when I know I'll be around and listening to AM, either at work or at home (though once baseball season ends, I may have more such blocks of time at home!).

Yeah, unfortunately we can't do much about that and still be within the good graces of the recording industry. Although you might have better luck with the additional information in the above post...

Roger -Dot- Lee
Second in Command
Professional Spewster

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by Roger Lee
And, for the record, our delay is minimum of 1 hour. I say minimum, because after that delay, the request gets placed at the bottom of the queue. Any remaining delay depends on what's in the queue. If there's only two songs, then yours will be on deck shortly. If there's a whole bunch, then your wait will be longer. Also note that only the two songs that are waiting to play are listed. There may be others -- many others -- waiting to play.

Also, there is a 3 hour delay between plays of the same artist. So, if you request a newly added Mogwai track, and at the time the third song in the queue is a different Mogwai song, you'll have the same delays Roger.Lee mentioned + 3 hours. Keeps it from being a Mogwai marathon.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
Also, there is a 3 hour delay between plays of the same artist. So, if you request a newly added Mogwai track, and at the time the third song in the queue is a different Mogwai song, you'll have the same delays Roger.Lee mentioned + 3 hours. Keeps it from being a Mogwai marathon.

That's a VERY good point.

There's also an additional limitation -- that the same song, once played, can not be played again for another 8 hours.

Roger -Dot- Lee

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I am not a programmer and know next to nothing about programming so if this sounds stupid, I'm sorry.

Is there a way that you can force people to logon to AM in order to request any songs and then once requested, the requested song will be grayed out to that user ID for say 14 days rendering it un-selectable for the 14 days by that user ID? On day 15 it will become active again. Kind of like spam guard that a lot of forums have but for a longer period of time.
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[straymoose]

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Sorry, I posted that before I logged on. I am registered.
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[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Unregistered
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I am not a programmer and know next to nothing about programming so if this sounds stupid, I'm sorry.

Is there a way that you can force people to logon to AM in order to request any songs and then once requested, the requested song will be grayed out to that user ID for say 14 days rendering it un-selectable for the 14 days by that user ID? On day 15 it will become active again. Kind of like spam guard that a lot of forums have but for a longer period of time.
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It doesn't sound stupid. Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer either (in spite of what my boss thinks). So what you're suggesting, while possible (and in fact likely feasable), I'm not quite sure where I'd start in implementing it.

It's not a half bad idea, though it'd likely be a tad rough on the database.

Let me mull it about and see what I might be able to come up with.

Roger -Dot- Lee, another good idea...

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by Unregistered

Is there a way that you can force people to logon to AM in order to request any songs and then once requested, the requested song will be grayed out to that user ID for say 14 days rendering it un-selectable for the 14 days by that user ID?

Holy crap that's the best idea ever.

[Avian(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
Holy crap that's the best idea ever.

I've seen some stations where the song is blacked out for 10 days even after one person has requested it. This is one of my favorite readio station websites They have very sophisticated database management - I've used them as much as possible for great ideas. We're still talking a lot of programming and testing, though.

Avian

[VAXman(Admin)]

I suggest that one would need to be registered and logged in to request quite some time ago.

... and nothing is impossible when programming code!

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by VAXman
I suggest that one would need to be registered and logged in to request quite some time ago.

... and nothing is impossible when programming code!

Did I hear a ... VOLUNTEER?!?!?

Roger -Dot- Lee, you can stop laughing now, VM.

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by Avian
I've seen some stations where the song is blacked out for 10 days even after one person has requested it.

While I like Straymoose's idea, I don't like this one. I don't think my requesting of Awaken at 10pm should inhibit KW's hearing of Awaken. He'd be asleep when it played. But Straymoose's idea stops abuse by one person.

[kirk]

yeah, penalize the over requester,
not the song.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Notice: this message is directed at one person, and one person only. If you did not send an email to Avian at or around 2:45 pm (14:45 hrs) Mountain Daylight Time on September 22, 2004, with the subject heading of "What's Up?", requesting why your requests were removed and demanding to know why we were editing requests (even going so far as to ask why you were "being singled out here"), this message is not directed at you.

If you DID, in fact, send such a message to Avian (avian@auralmoon.com), then I'd suggest you pay very close attention to what I'm saying. It will likely have a significant impact on whether or not you can continue to tune in to our station.

Originally posted by kirk
yeah, penalize the over requester,
not the song.

Well, that came one step closer to reality this morning.

We finally received a whiney quit-pickin'-on-me email from our favorite overrequester this morning. I saw it first thing in the morning, and my initial response was to send it off to Jim. Had I actually sent off the response that I would likely have, it would have likely scorched the wires between here and there, leaving a sizable crater where it landed.

But let's make it official, shall we (in the odd event that our favorite overrequester actually visits the forums (as Jim suggested in his response)):

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Any further overrequesting from you will lead to one of four results:

1. You will be removed from making requests on a permanent basis.
2. You will be removed from access to the web site, partially or totally, on a permanent basis.
3. You will be permanently blocked from access to the streams that provide the substance that is Aural Moon.
4. any combination of the above three, including and not limited to, all three.

Now since I can already imagine you opening your mail client or hitting the reply button, let me save you the effort.

The official definition, subject to change with or without notice and at the sole discression of the management of Aural Moon, of the practice we call "overrequesting" contains, but is not limited to:

• requesting the same song more than three times by the same person or location within 1 week
• requesting the same song more than six times by the same person or location within 2 weeks
• any series of requests by the same person that the management deems to be overrequesting.

The management reserves the right to remove any content at any time for any reason.

The management reserves the right to refuse access to the station as a whole or any parts of the station to anyone at any time for any reason with or without consent or warning.

In his response to you, dear overrequester, Jim indicated that it was not his intention to drive you off or alienate you. I do not feel such constraint. Whether you listen to Aural Moon or not is a matter of monumental indifference to me. Listen or don't, I don't care. But the amount of effort I and the rest of the staff at Aural Moon is expending because of your action far exceeds any benefit being derived by your presence, and I, for one, am growing VERY weary of having to monitor your activity. I have many other things I can be doing that are much more pleasant. Thus, if I have to block you, I will, without hesitation or remorse.

And if I have to do this, I can assure you that it will be permanent.

I'd be lying if I said that I was sorry if you felt that this missive was threatening. I've invested a great deal of time in this station, the bulk of it over the last few months being as a direct result of your activities. And I am getting well and truly SICK of it. Consider it a warning -- far more than I personally believe you deserve.

You have been warned.

Roger -Dot- Lee, becoming VERY fed up with this nonsense.

[Bob Lentil]

Originally posted by Roger Lee

• requesting the same song more than three times by the same person or location within 1 week
• requesting the same song more than six times by the same person or location within 2 weeks

You might as well add these for good measure.

• requesting the same song more than nine times by the same person or location within 3 weeks
• requesting the same song more than twelve times by the same person or location within 4 weeks

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Bob Lentil
You might as well add these for good measure.

• requesting the same song more than nine times by the same person or location within 3 weeks
• requesting the same song more than twelve times by the same person or location within 4 weeks

Probably a good idea.

However, it is now no longer necessary.

Instead of admitting they were wrong and agreeing to play nice in the future, they took the defensive, attempted to guilt us into believing it was all in our heads (in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary), and said, and I quote: "don't worry about blocking me, because I'll be blocking you".

The laughability of this particular statement not withstanding, this person is being removed, permanently, from the station. Their access (and the access of their entire organization) is being removed.

Once I have reasonable assurances that this has occured, I will be replacing all of the removed songs, since the problem has been permanently rectified.

I'll also be posting their whiney temper tantrums for the amusement of whoever cares to read them.

Roger -Dot- Lee, finishing up and getting on with life.