i think whenever one of us releases a linkable album, the 10 most recent ones should be shown in a list underneath Recent Battles (THAT IS, A SEPARATE LIST BENEATH THAT ONE. NOT IN THE SAME LIST).

also the "botb support" div should contain both the "become a patron" button and the donate button and be placed where the patreon button is. ok

Hell yeah! I love this idea!

Also fully support this idea C:
Would tie in really well with the write an ep in a week challenge.

I also like this! I will say that I wonder what the criteria would be for featuring. I think it should be author's discretion and can just be whatever, but For examples of possible points of contention:

• Does a *band* of ours meet the criteria to be featured? If not, what if its a band where we are the primary or exclusive songwriter?

• If "music more directly related to BotB" is the criteria, some of us don't normally release music under our usename (Damifortune comes to mind) or our usernames are a variation of one of our projects' names (sc and myself come to mind)

Just two little things that I know might come up in discussion!

(To reiterate and make it clear: I think author discretion is cool, because I personally want to know if you're ALSO someone who is like playing in a grindcore band while you're making MIDI files here)

I think the criteria should be:

- You have a Battle of the Bits account that is level 3 or higher
- The album's main artist is you, the owner of the account, specifically (even if it's not your botb name) (bands probably count too?)
- You willingly submitted it to be featured
- You haven't already uploaded like 5 albums this month

Album of the Day?

that would be a totally different situation, it wouldn't feasibly be able to highlight recent botbr releases

tl;dr: yes i want this but let's also discuss potential limitations we need to enforce (on alts mainly)

on one hand: yes absolutely, this is a wonderful idea and would do so much to further promote people just doing their own stuff! i'd put it in its own section rather than as part of the latest battles, but yeah totally would like this.

on the other hand: i do wonder if it'd detract from botb's intended atmosphere. you'd just get to level 3, then you'd get to just promote your albums and stuff. it would make it easy for people to make alts too, to promote their own music.
i'd up the level limit to level 6 or something where you gotta work somewhat to get it, but you're still entrenched into the sites culture sorta by that point.

regardless, i would limit it to 1 album per month, and also prolly make it so that any ailment prevents you from using this feature. we also need to consider alts (although i'd bet 99% of people with alts wouldnt abuse this feature, it's a possibility that should be considered imo).


ps: i just realized we could get rid of the alt problem by making it check parts of the url wherever feasible to see if the username or w/e matches up bc then itd just go like "sorry its promoted already :( try again in time" but that'd probably be a bitch to actually code to work as intended... idk i shouldnt think when im tired

i think these solutions are needlessly complex. you could probably solve this by having one big "post all *new* releases here" thread and/or running a new one every year (thereby closing the previous year's thread). though of course this requires people to be on board with this to actually post there.

an "album release" thread category could also work but is definitely more effort, with some UI and internal database changes.

personally i don't think it's a good idea to put development time into such a feature when the main focus of the site are compos. there are opportunities to share on the site already, which do the job just fine (including your profile bio). but it is possible to aggregate everything into one place (i.e. a thread) if that's what people want.

it should be 2 per month. that way when i release crazy plan and reconstructed at the same time i get two (2) slots

argarak: an actual sanctioned frontpage list would be trivial to create. we're talking a single ul div updated to the last ten, each with a username, a title, and a hyperlink. you don't even need a table for it; it can add via a basic form visible to admins and drop off old entries with pure PHP. i swear to god i'll proof of concept it in 15 minutes if you challenge me to.

the reason i want this is because i want a codified way to monitor (and celebrate) botb user releases without perpetually necroposting a thread people would eventually want off the homepage. botb user album releases genuinely don't feel like a sideshow to me, they're proof of this site's contributions to people's skills and resources. they're community milestones.

heheh yeah i'm aware it's not the most difficult thing ever but it's also not trivial. whatever form you're gonna use to add a new entry to that list is gonna need to be designed and all its inputs validated, and that validation properly tested. plus the additional checks including level and the number of albums you upload.

yeah I agree that a thread is not a perfect solution but it's simple and that's the angle i was looking at. though neither is this solution or posting individual threads, as has already been mentioned. (at least necrobumping isn't as frowned upon here as it is in most other forums, yearly threads only slightly solve that)

at the end of the day it depends if puke is interested. i like the idea personally but simple is also good!

i mean you probably wouldn't need to validate the inputs for a form that only clears if you're an admin, unless......kleeder was planning to destroy the website alls along...

wait, my idea doesn't even use tables!!!!

oh right yeah admin only.. i could see that working. i wouldn't be opposed to things working that way. and yeah, takes away some of the validation work :p

i would add that botb collabs would be nice to be allowed. kleeder collab album featured here eventually plss. so liek, not your friend's rock band but botb + botb

EDIT: I mean liek if the collab team goes by a diff name vs their botb accounts

that would be An Album Made By A Botb User by any definition

I've already been thinking about an album spamming solution for a few weeks. I don't remember why I started thinking about it.... maybe something to do with supporting the larger community outside of BotB. It's fun reading these ideas; many are in alignment with my own.

The lowest available BotBr Levels w/o Super Magic Powers:
6, 8, 9, 14 (should it be low?)

I think limiting it to listing 1 release a month per BotBr is plenty.

It could also cost boons?

I think BotBrs should be allowed to promote any release they want so long as it hasn't been announced before.

It shouldn't be that hard to create a new forum group for this where the top of the page embeds the release and allows for comments (like BotBr/Entry profile pages).

It would also be easier to detect duplicates if we all agreed on a single platform (most likely bandcamp (and there's some way to make sure a url is an album and not a single track / profile page / etc)).

Not very sure where to integrate it on the front page; also one spot should have them ordered by when they were added and another should list them by which got comments last.

Also, all battles with bandcamp releases could use a bandcamp button in their menus.

Paypal button is so low on the page because the Thank You page paypal tries to send people to is still a 404.

level 9 would probably work best since that's not TOO hard to get to and by that point you'd prolly have enough boons to post an album link

it should cost boons imo, theres not that much use for them and could totally cause a dent in that debt (not that it matters..)

maybe we could gamify posting more than 1 album a month and make the cost higher or require a higher level (or both): like to post just 1 album a month, you need to be level 9 and 80 boons, but to post two albums a month you need to be level 14 and have 400 boons, to post 3 albums a month you need to be level 19 and have 2000 boons etc

that might not be a worthwhile idea and we should totally just limit it to 1 album regardless, but food for thought. i think if people want to promote their albums they should be able to, but they should be active here too, not just use botb as like a dumping ground or something

i think the feature should be used scarcily enough so that its an event whether people do it? so that it doesnt become irrelevant/pointless like a month with the feature where people just ignore it because they got past that hype curve, but also so that the feature isnt horseshoed into being pointless because its too hard to actually promote something so noobdy does it

idk that makes no sense but Insights

as for decided platform, i think we can start with bandcamp. its the easiest way to put music up and free too. later down the line we can talk about adding more platforms, but i think promoting bandcamp would be for the best since it's one of the better, less predatory music platforms out there (to Other Botbrs: no, this is not where you jump in to remark about spotify again, make a thread about it if you want to discuss it!)

idk where id put it if im being truthful, maybe condense entry/battle activity into one thing and reserve the right side div of that for the album stuff? idk how the priority system works, but we could divide that down into 2 smaller sections.

whatever the decision ends up being, i do think we should probably make a new forum category for album releases only? people can click on "releases" or w/e and they can see everything. idk how feasible this is

food for thought comment over im tired and 90% of those ideas are bad

It would be best for me personally if it was done in a purely listed and non-thread format. that way, without clicking on individual threads and looking for the links, I can be like "listen to this album next, then this one, then this one" boom done, accessible, easy.

although I know the benefit of it being done as a thread is so that people can leave lieks and comments, it's the kind of thing I wouldn't mind being less gamified since it's an ancillary list. although maybe you can get special points for album releases?!?!? depends on how tightly you wanna integrate it with botb's usual systems. i just figured it'd be a straight, incredibly simple to click on list of hyperlinks.

if u do want comment priority, that should just show up in "recent activity" while the actual album listing is chronological to upload i think.......