Mod Archive Forums
Community => The Lobby => Topic started by: eltopo on January 30, 2019, 22:57:39
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To paraphrase the movie "Platoon", opinions are like *ssholes, everybody got one. People that submit modules to the archive have a responsibility to post quality work and so has the people commenting on those modules. Take a look at the comments for this module for instance: https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=184287
If you can't offer any constructive criticism other than calling it "earrape" perhaps you shouldn't say anything at all? Deep Core Mining have 800 (and counting) modules in the archive, they can't all be masterpieces.
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I think the commenters have a bit more to say than just "it's earrape". There's something to be said about the fact that this module is just an unoptimized mess of pre-made samples.
I'm highly convinced that deep core mining lets a bot create their music. Their music often is very formulaic with lots of channels being completely unused, same goes for a lot of samples being used in the patterns but being seemingly empty, as if a computer decided "okay let's flip a coin whether this sample slot should have a sample or not". Same goes for the names of their music, it always follows a certain pattern. I can't imagine a human being can manually create 800+ of these works without going completely insane. I don't think they really take the responsibility you mentioned in the first place, as their only purpose on TMA is dumping these (probably) computer generated modules and nothing else.
I really wouldn't be worried about this person not getting constructive criticism, since they're rather inactive on TMA beyond uploading modules, and they don't seem to give a f**k if their modules get caught in the duplicate filter every now and then, or whenever their modules get rejected for being completely unoptimized. I don't think they would pay much attention to comments either, guessing from that. There's way better examples of poor comments on TMA modules than this.
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I'm going to agree with what WouterVL says. The artist in question has flipped their nickname many times over the years.
I have renamed everything I have of theirs as Suntripper because I was getting a little tired of how often their nicknamed had been changed. I think I even emailed the admin here because it seemed so weird.
Also, as a collector of tracked music, I've stopped downloading their tracks. Think I stopped at 400. I find that most of the songs sound the same, almost like a dupe or a wip of the same module. Most of them seem to just be the beat and very little melody, but hey, I still have 400 of them. ;D
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No matter how much you dislike a track - keep it polite.
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WouterVL: Yes it could be a bot or some simple manual method to produce tracks galore. But the person behind the bot still deserves respect, especially since the results are fully listenable.
Axxy: Ok, I only have 6 so far in my collection but sometimes I'm in the mood for some Deep Core Mining and I check to see what they have come up with since last I looked :)
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Hmm... The question is...
Who is deep core mining (formerly known as Sunraysia)? And what is deep core mining's nationality?
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Axxy: Ok, I only have 6 so far in my collection but sometimes I'm in the mood for some Deep Core Mining and I check to see what they have come up with since last I looked :)
Don't get me wrong, there's some great tunes in amongst them, just wished there was more variety or variation.
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Yes it could be a bot or some simple manual method to produce tracks galore. But the person behind the bot still deserves respect, especially since the results are fully listenable.
Sure, the bot took a lot of effort to make, but not the songs themselves. This is a site about actual tracking skill on the direct part of the author, not about how many songs you can generate from your bot. Even if they are all listenable, they're still not as good as modules that are made manually.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to side with WouterVL on this.
TL;DR: Quality over quantity.
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Well, the main reason I started this thread was not to debate the quality of Deep Core Mining's modules (even if I went on a tangent). It was to highlight what people write in comments in order to prevent the community gaining a toxic atmosphere.
Saga Musix sums it up best I think.
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Okay, well I'm pretty sure there isn't much anybody can do about these not-the-nicest comments. What do you want them to do about it?
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Well, quite frankly I see this community slowly progressing into a direction where it badly requires a Code of Conduct even if (or because) some people are not going to like it. You cannot prevent people from writing bad stuff but at least you can draw consequences.
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Perhaps I shouldn't play the game if I can't take the heat, but I find having received two pretty negative comments recently kind of ruins the fun of tracking. Sure, my modules might suck and/or I might have a different idea of what music could be etc.
but I would still like the ability to disable module comments/ratings. That's how I feel at the moment.
Edit: Ok that might be easier said than done. Since the removal policy states that modules will not be removed just because their author feel bad about them, I will instead think at least twice before uploading modules in the future, saving myself the embarrassment and the listeners' ears.
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I think we're going to have to clarify the differences between actual valid negative criticism and rude comments first.
Not saying any names here, but in general, I've seen a lot of people try to equate the two and fail to acknowledge the differences, and to be honest, it's an easy beginner's trap to fall into.
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As a thumb rule to commenters, the lower the rating, the more elaborate your comment should be.
I think it's a polite and a logical way to approach it, as it's quite obvious that if you're giving a track 9-10 score, there's really not much to comment apart from how awesome it is; it's fine to drop a vague one-liner on a track you find that good. Problems arise with lower scores as especially newer trackers would probably find it incredibly helpful to know why they're getting rated low by the commenter.
I've gotten trolled by one-line 1 rating comments too (I think Beyond was drunk) and I can say that if that happened when I wasn't confident in my music and was still looking for feedback/validation, it would've felt really bad to not get any explanation for the low rating.
And obviously no matter how bad a track is, rudeness and/or insults are still not justified.
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Very well put and good rule of thumb.