New Submission Feature(s) Request

[LeviR.star]

Hello, NSM. Over the few years that I have been on this site, I have developed an appreciation for the relatively new submission system, and I am still grateful for it, as well as the fact that I joined after it was put into effect. However, with the recent change in staff over the past year, I have become concerned for the cycle, and would like to propose a couple of changes/additions to the system, in order to possibly improve the overall cycle of sheet-accepting, for both new and veteran arrangers:

YouTube Link Embedding

It's a common problem that needs to be addressed with newcomers: YouTube links need to be pasted into a submission topic, so that the updaters don't need to go looking for the songs themselves. But even for some that come to the site and read the rules before doing anything, they fail to paste the link; when an updater kindly reminds them, some take it the wrong way and are put off by the request. When the YouTube link isn't present for the updaters, they can't check it when they want to, and this slow the process down.

But I think this can be easily remedied. If a new feature when submitting was added so that a sheet cannot be finalized without pasting in a link, this would never be a problem again. An embedded link would replace the usual first reply in the topic, but would still be able to be opened by anyone. A two-step process of submitting work would be reduced to one, just like that, benefiting both the arrangers and the updaters.

Credit Information Requirement

I believe that crediting the right people should be a higher priority than we put it at. Right now, it's as if the only people that point out errors like these are just fans of the games involved, and notice the small mistakes easier than others. Yes, some games have better resources for credit information than others, but this shouldn't be an excuse to correct inaccuracies only when prompted by prior knowledge. We need a better system for making sure this information can easily be checked.

I propose that before submitting a sheet, the Composers, Additional Arrangers, Developers, Publishers, and Initial Release Date should all be researched and listed to insure these bloopers don't go unnoticed. This way, the sheet cannot be submitted incomplete, and with everything displayed in one place in the topic, the updaters can verify the credits in an easier, quicker way. Lastly, the release date requirement will save updaters the trouble of entering it in themselves later.

Email-Bumping

We all know what an updater bumping a submission means: one of them or a fellow arranger decided to give you some feedback to push your submission closer to acceptance, and you haven't responded to it yet (for a long time, likely,) so you're getting a nice little nudge. This either means that A.) You read the feedback but told yourself "I'll address it later" (and never did), B.) You hit the "MARK ALL MESSAGES AS READ" button and never noticed you had any feedback, or C.) You're not as active in the NSM community as some others, and you unintentionally drifted away from the site while someone took the time to help you. Some newcomers don't understand how this forum works, and don't find out when someone replies in their topic. And some truly wonderful sheets over the years have been archived because the arrangers forgot to take care of what they started. While this doesn't prevent them from submitting the same sheet again, it's a issue that doesn't have to exist. There's a better way to remind arrangers to fix their sheets.

Bumping would be a lot more universal if the updaters' system was to incorporate an automatic email reminder to send out, instead of bumping in the topic, where they're less likely to see it. This shouldn't be too hard to implement, given that we already have personal messages that automatically send a copy to the user's email. This is what I'm picturing:

Something like this

You cannot view this attachment.

[close]

It's not intimidating, and it can reach out to an arranger better than a post in a topic, even if they momentarily forgot about their involvement on the site. Simple as that!


If my above suggestions are added to the Submission system, the process will:

- move more efficiently
- insure accuracy
- make sheet assessment noticeable

These plans may not make updates occur more often, but I at least wish for everyone to have an easier time being involved in the sheet acceptance process, newcomers and old-timers alike; we can have more than just the regular arrangers involved in updates! Please understand that this isn't a list of demands, so please, staff, give me your thoughts on how well these concepts and ideas might work, or how they might be fleshed out/revised.

[Libera]

This isn't a full response, but just pointing out a few things before I go to bed.

YouTube Link Embedding

My only worry with this is for strange edge cases where either A: a youtube video isn't available or B: More than one youtube videos are required.  But you could always include an option to override the required youtube video for those purposes (but maybe have the default be requirement so that new people don't forget).

Email-Bumping

Email-bumping does actually already exist, but it's a feature that you have to turn on by subscribing to the submission thread.  Perhaps we could work about making this feature more visible and maybe even have it set up by default for submission threads.

Another thing is that maybe, especially for new arrangers, the updaters could be more clear what exactly we mean when we 'bump' a submission.  I.e. letting them know that what will happen if they don't respond etc.


Thanks for writing this up though, it's very useful for us to see how people view the system and consider improvements to it.  I'll probably have more to say on this at a later point (maybe after some others have chipped in?).

[ShyYoshiGuy]

YouTube Link Embedding

It's a common problem that needs to be addressed with newcomers: YouTube links need to be pasted into a submission topic, so that the updaters don't need to go looking for the songs themselves. But even for some that come to the site and read the rules before doing anything, they fail to paste the link; when an updater kindly reminds them, some take it the wrong way and are put off by the request. When the YouTube link isn't present for the updaters, they can't check it when they want to, and this slow the process down.

But I think this can be easily remedied. If a new feature when submitting was added so that a sheet cannot be finalized without pasting in a link, this would never be a problem again. An embedded link would replace the usual first reply in the topic, but would still be able to be opened by anyone. A two-step process of submitting work would be reduced to one, just like that, benefiting both the arrangers and the updaters.

Yesssssss.... that and being able to remove files without replacing them.

[Yug_Guy]

My only worry with this is for strange edge cases where either A: a youtube video isn't available or B: More than one youtube videos are required.  But you could always include an option to override the required youtube video for those purposes (but maybe have the default be requirement so that new people don't forget).

Still, I think those edge cases only apply in 1% of cases - I think it would be worth it for the 99% of the other times so that we don't have to keep incessantly reminding people to provide a Youtube link.

Credit Information Requirement

I believe that crediting the right people should be a higher priority than we put it at. Right now, it's as if the only people that point out errors like these are just fans of the games involved, and notice the small mistakes easier than others. Yes, some games have better resources for credit information than others, but this shouldn't be an excuse to correct inaccuracies only when prompted by prior knowledge. We need a better system for making sure this information can easily be checked.

I propose that before submitting a sheet, the Composers, Additional Arrangers, Developers, Publishers, and Initial Release Date should all be researched and listed to insure these bloopers don't go unnoticed. This way, the sheet cannot be submitted incomplete, and with everything displayed in one place in the topic, the updaters can verify the credits in an easier, quicker way. Lastly, the release date requirement will save updaters the trouble of entering it in themselves later.

I mean, this is certainly implicitly required considering that we require composer info, publishers, copyright years, etc. on our arrangements already. And tbh, the only way we can assure accuracy in regards to this stuff is if we have someone checking each arrangement to make sure all that info is correct. After all, some people don't put nearly as much research into that stuff like you or I do, and some people flat-out don't care. Actually, that's not a bad idea now that I think about it...

Then again, I'm not trying to be a downer on this particular request of yours - I think there's still things we can do. For sure, we should definitely make a more official standard for how to do copyright stuff; I know that's been talked about in the past, but since you bring it up, now would be a good time to get on that.

[Dekkadeci]

We should try to standardize the composer-determining process more, though--it's easy to check the Wikipedia article on the game in question and find its 6 composers, but it's harder to consult the right online resources to find the fewer (and often sole) composer(s) of the theme you transcribed. I know I've already had to narrow down the composers of one of the themes I transcribed for NinSheetMusic.

[Latios212]

Hey Levi! Let's see...

YouTube links - totally agree, this has been suggested a number of times in the past. It's just a matter of getting around to it, I think.

Crediting - not really sure what value this brings if submitted through the panel (as I take it you're suggesting). It's not going to change the fact that we have to manually check everything. (Re: standardizing a format for copyright info and stuff would be fine in another topic unrelated to site features.)

Email notifications - I suppose we could look into a few options here. Although the personalized messages could work, I'm not sure they're necessary. The simplest option would likely be auto-subscribing users to email notifications for their submission topics. Keep in mind we already have a page for submission info for people to read when they submit something for the first time (you can find it under NSM Panel > Submissions > Submission Info).

I'll check with our Code Monkeys to see what we can consider getting done when as we've all been kinda busy lately it seems...