Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Re; Ratings feedback

["jorge o. castro" <jorge whiprush org>]

Derrick Ashby wrote:
> I think the point is that this should be a thing that the user decides for 
> themselves.  You prefer 3 because you only rip songs you really like.  I rip 
> every CD I buy, and I download tracks also: For me 0 is not rated, 1 means I 
> don't like it, 2 means it's OK, 3 means Good, 4 V. Good, 5 Excellent. 
> Starting at 3 is a waste of 2 stars.  I'd like to be able to turn Adaptive 
> Rating off altogether.
> 

I've got some feedback on adaptive ratings as well:

I also rate my music in the same way Derrick does. I've been "training" 
  my rb since .7 came out and have made some observations:

The IMMS-like ratings doesn't really apply to the 5-star model of 
rhythmbox very well. From scanning my xml file a good number of songs 
are "2.8" or somesuch. This means for it to be totally accurate partial 
stars would need to be implemented, but I'm not sure if that's a good 
idea or not. Obviously, the larger a user's collection is, the longer it 
will take for the "training" to become effective. During that time the 
user might just say "ugh, I've given the thing 3 weeks and it still 
thinks all my songs are three stars, this is worthless."

I've been doing some thinking about my music collection and listening 
habits, and there are certainly songs I keep around for "completeness", 
ie. I like an album and want to keep it in my library for the sake of 
completeness, but at the same time it has certain tracks that I don't 
care for.

We could probably argue that Derrick's rating is what most users think, 
but someone might say "well, if I don't like a song I just don't keep it 
at all." Perhaps a more balanced default behaviour is needed, after some 
thinking I propose the following:

1) Adaptive listening should be off by default.
2) A user's manual rating should override the automatic rating.
3) All imported songs should start off as 0. If a user skips the song or 
it is shown as unfavorable, then it remains at 0.
4) Songs that are shown favorable should start rating up according to 
listening habit.

I've come to these conclusions based on feedback from both my experience 
and some people that I know. Basically, when I hit "random" on my music 
player, I want rhythmbox to choose random songs for me. While I chose 
"random", I would argue that most users really mean "pick a good 
selection from favorite songs, but mix it up enough to surprise me on 
occassion." If you think about it, a "true random" feature isn't much use.

On top of that, I don't know a single person that takes the time to sit 
there and spend hours rating all their songs. If anything we tend to 
take the lazy way out and say "Well, I'll just sort by play count to 
figure out what I want to listen to."

 From a user perspective, we should be letting Rhythmbox do the hard 
work and figure out what my favorite songs are, I mean, it's the one 
sitting there doing all the playing, it should keep track of the stuff 
and figure out a decent random list that will keep me interested.

These are just some observations I've had, I have no idea what the 
"optimal solution" is, which is why I propose it be off by default, but 
at the same time, from my long experience with XMMS and IMMS, given 
adequate training the stuff really does give me a random playlist that 
totally rocks.

-jorge