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Improving our awareness of 'missing artists' on PA
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lazland View Drop Down
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Points: 13759 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote lazland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 8 hours 15 minutes ago at 12:54
Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

I think if there are fewer subgenres (for the people who want fewer subgenres), then there would be fewer artists on PA. There's some sense of puritanical cleansing that I get when I hear about getting rid of subgenres as it becomes questioned as to whether it is actually prog. As an example, post rock/math rock. Two types of music I enjoy but I get the arguments on whether they are a subcategories of prog. I also think it should be split because post/math isn't one genre.

If you culled subgenres on PA, there would not be fewer artists, there would be more. You just call them prog, rather than playing ping pong between narrow definitions of the constituent parts.
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mathman0806 View Drop Down
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Originally posted by lazland lazland wrote:

I have some sympathy with your library analogy, but I would say this in response. There are a lot of people who like "Historical Romance". They will look up books on that topic. They do not, though, need:

1. Georgian historical romance
2. The way Romans shagged themselves silly in a fictional sense romance
3. Victorian historical romance
4. Neo historical romance
5. Eclectic historical romance
6. post modern extreme technical historical romance

And etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. 


That's a good analogy to make your point. But, I think it depends on the audience. When you go to general public library, there's a relatively small section on mathematics often grouped with science. However, you go to Mathematics Library at a top research university with a PhD program in mathematics and you'll all sorts of subcategories you wouldn't even think of.
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lazland View Drop Down
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Points: 13759 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote lazland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 8 hours 6 minutes ago at 13:03
Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

Originally posted by lazland lazland wrote:

I have some sympathy with your library analogy, but I would say this in response. There are a lot of people who like "Historical Romance". They will look up books on that topic. They do not, though, need:

1. Georgian historical romance
2. The way Romans shagged themselves silly in a fictional sense romance
3. Victorian historical romance
4. Neo historical romance
5. Eclectic historical romance
6. post modern extreme technical historical romance

And etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. 


That's a good analogy to make your point. But, I think it depends on the audience. When you go to general public library, there's a relatively small section on mathematics often grouped with science. However, you go to Mathematics Library at a top research university with a PhD program in mathematics and you'll all sorts of subcategories you wouldn't even think of.

Agreed, and that is why the audience for PA is diminishing. Whilst I am not a fan of a mass market approach, neither do you only want to attract a bunch of sad geeks. I would, incidentally, think of the subcategories - I am a relatively intelligent person. I just don't want that level of detail on a music site.
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mathman0806 View Drop Down
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Points: 6635 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mathman0806 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 7 hours 45 minutes ago at 13:24
^I think there are many reasons why audience is diminishing at PA, but the use of subcategories would not be at the top of my list.

I would be curious as to whether there is greater diminishing in terms of participation versus site use as a database.

Though that is a good question of who the target audience is. If it wants to continue, then it has to bringe in younger groups of people. Not sure any cosmetic changes will do that. When I consider sites with forums of any topic, not just music, the forum traffic has diminished all round. While I think prog music production is doing well, I am not so sure about the audience.
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Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

^I think there are many reasons why audience is diminishing at PA, but the use of subcategories would not be at the top of my list.

I would be curious as to whether there is greater diminishing in terms of participation versus site use as a database.

Though that is a good question of who the target audience is. If it wants to continue, then it has to bringe in younger groups of people. Not sure any cosmetic changes will do that. When I consider sites with forums of any topic, not just music, the forum traffic has diminished all round. While I think prog music production is doing well, I am not so sure about the audience.

I will agree that forum traffic from participating members seems to have dropped. I'm not so sure the number of visitors has dropped. As I type this, there are 19 members on the forum with 2052 guests and 76 search robots. Who those 2052 guests are is anyone's guess, unless the forum software can't differentiate between people and something else. I'm assuming the search robots are search engines crawling the forum and indexing it.

But back to David's idea. I think a list would be helpful. I believe in the very early days of this site, quite a few people were working off lists in a similar manner. I believe I stumbled onto some them quite some time ago when I was checking on if a band was ever proposed before. Not sure I could replicate the search of the forum I did back then, but they were there from well over a decade ago. I would recommend treating the lists as a secondary priority where we can work on them when we have time. Active band suggestions should still remain top priority. 
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siLLy puPPy View Drop Down
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More genres rule! Those who don't see that are clearly out of touch with the modern age. RYM is a massively popular site where i spend more time there BECAUSE there are more genres. I find this site hard to navigate honestly at least as far as finding hyper-specific nuances. To each their own but living in the here and now requires MORE genres. Progressive punk is a thing. If i'm looking for it here you have to weed through an ocean of RIO / avant and read bios. On RYM you simply go to the top albums chart and type in prog and punk and get EXACTLY what you want. This site is simply outdated, neglected (by the owner) and too restrictive in its genre taggings. What makes this site great is all the hard work and enthusiasm from the volunteers and reviewers however it seems even that is losing steam in the 10 years i've been here. Imagine biology if everything was just called life and we didn't distinguish between mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, plants, protozoa and bacteria. Now that would be fun, huh?




Edited by siLLy puPPy - 7 hours 3 minutes ago at 14:06

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Points: 21287 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote MikeEnRegalia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 7 hours 10 minutes ago at 13:59
My two cents on the discussion, first - since it was mentioned - about the tagging system at AP:

- The tagging is entirely optional. Artists and releases can be added to AP without any tags.
- The tagging can be quite generic, and that is intentional. At the most basic level, you can just tag a release as "Prog" (or "Non-Prog", or "Prog-Adjacent"). Then you can add a base genre like "Rock" or "Metal". That's really quite enough for 90% of users and use-cases. More specific sub genres exist because users ask for them, or because they are just well established and frequently used. But I'm resisting the urge to add most of the "newfangled" genres that RYM has, like "Plunderphonics" or "Swancore".
- Tags do not necessarily create "division" - they just add information, which can be ignored if you're not interested. For instance, I recently assigned the "atmospheric" tag to the latest Klone release (which is excellent btw). As a result, the genre says something like "Atmospheric Prog Post Rock/Metal". This shouldn't be read as a really small box where only this release and ten others reside. It's just an attempt to give visitors some vague idea what other users think it sounds like. It's a Prog release which is mostly Rock, but also quite a bit Metal, it has a "Post Rock" vibe to it and is quite atmospheric.

Then about PA:
- I don't think that Max will change anything in the structure of this website. He wasn't willing to do that twenty years ago when I was heavily contributing to the website, and he certainly won't do so today.
- I think the main purpose of this website is to rank high in search engines, any prog aspect is secondary and only a means to a cause.
- And if that is the case, it explains why Max would not change anything unless he felt that it a) was necessary to ensure the ranking or b) the ranking decreases and Max feels like a major change is needed to fix that.


Considering the SEO priorities of the website, I don't think the biography requirement will be dropped. That leaves prioritization as the biggest potential for optimization. AP could help with that. With the AP database I'm currently in a position to be able to list releases which a highly rated and tagged as prog (at AP and RYM, for instance), but are not listed at PA. This list could serve as an input for the genre teams to prioritize the artist backlog. For example, Whom Gods Destroy was added to PA only recently. It's a really high-profile super group of prog artists which released a reasonably good album last year. This addition could have been prioritized over other less relevant artists. Smile


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - 7 hours 2 minutes ago at 14:07
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siLLy puPPy View Drop Down
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Points: 15314 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote siLLy puPPy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 7 hours 3 minutes ago at 14:06
^ spot on. The site's goal is to remain profitable. I noticed ads are now back on MMA or at least my adblock isn't filtering them if they were always there

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mathman0806 View Drop Down
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Points: 6635 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mathman0806 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 2 minutes ago at 21:07
Originally posted by yam yam yam yam wrote:

Originally posted by siLLy puPPy siLLy puPPy wrote:

I see artists all the time on RYM that aren't here. I only suggest a few but mostly don't because of the bio requirement.

Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

I have suggested just two artists in all my years visiting this forum and certainly could suggest more if it weren't for having to write something up.

And that's the problem in a nutshell really. A good many people are discouraged from suggesting new artists these days because they don't have the time or the inclination to prepare a biography or seek out an artist photo.

That's a good thing inasmuch as it has relieved the pressure that had built up on the genre teams by the end of 2019, but it has led to us falling behind with keeping the database reasonably up to date.

I'm not proposing a return to the Svetonio days, where we had at least two or three suggestions a day to be dealt with by the New Suggestions Monitors that we used to have at that time, but more of a compromise, where we have a 'holding pen' of potential artists who we know are missing from the site, but can then be released to the genre teams in a more controlled manner than was previously the case, as the necessary biographies and artist photos become available.

So, I went through the exercise of suggesting two bands, and just piecing together the information took me over an hour. Part of it for me is that I need to draft on my computer and most of the time, I visit PA on my phone. 

Although the eventual need to have all the "proper" information about a band would still slow down the actual entry of a band on the data base. Would there be  any through to allow 'provisional' postings, where site members could add the needed photo or bio. With bios, if we are talking about current existing bands, I think it would be nice to reach out and have the band or their management provide an 'official' bio, rather than something a forum pulled from piecing together information on various websites.
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