I find the site in general extremely good with a massive amout of valuable content, however, I still have a few observations / suggestions to make ...

1. What happens when you click on a username does not appear to be consistent and the behaviour depends on the page on which it appears. For example ...

From the homepage 'today's 10 most popular songs' , you get the a list of songs posted by the user ...
www.harptabs.com/searchsong.php?HarpType=0&Username=WaltP

From the Homepage '15 Largest Contributors' you do get to the user's profile ...
www.harptabs.com/account.php?User=WaltP

When you open a tab, and click on 'Posted by' you also get to the user's profile ...
www.harptabs.com/account.php?User=WaltP

If you click on the user's name in the Forum, you get an empty profile ...
www.harptabs.com/phorum/profile.php?6,12539

I would like all cases to see the user's 'harptabs' profile.


2. Tab 'Fav Count', the Count of the number of users who have included a tab in their "My Favorites" list. It would be nice to be able to drill down from this count to see the list of users who have 'favorited?' the tab. The thinking here is that if a user has the amazing good taste to include one of my tabs amongst their favorites, then this favorites list may have other 'gems' worthy of further investigation


3. Inconsistent sorting of entries in a user's profile between the 'My Favorite Tabs' (more or less date of entry order) and 'Tabs I have Posted' (alphabetic order). There may be a reason for this, but I would like the option of being able to present the 'My Favorite Tabs' in an alphabetical order. As the list becomes longer, it is increasingly difficult to find a particular tab. Suggestion: A 'radio' button in the user's profile which conditions the sort order of view of 'My Favorite Tabs'. The default would retain the current behaviour i.e. date of entry order.


Some things disturb me but I don't see an easy/acceptable solution , or are simply observations ...


4. Typing errors in tabs e.g. harptabs.com/song.php?ID=45 (clementine by 20). In my view there is an error at the end of the 2nd an 6th lines. I may be wrong - it does happen occasionally - but the point about errors still remains. The tab author has gone or at least has not been seen for at least two years so you can't ask him to correct it. This also causes 'near' duplicates to appear (see below).

5. Lots of user profiles where the last login date is 2009-09-04. It looks like this was a "system reset" and they probably disappeared even earlier. "A Harp Tabs Obituary Column ?"

6. Lots of songs where the artist is marked as unknown. e.g. www.harptabs.com/song.php?ID=284 (rocket man). Clearly, this should be Elton John. Oh, or is it Bernie Taupin ? Anyway, in this case, it shouldn't be left unknown because it makes searching more difficult (not only from the site's own search mechanism but also from google etc.)

7. Lots of songs where the song title is not correct (typing error etc.) or the tab author simply can't spell ...
harptabs.com/song.php?ID=1289
harptabs.com/song.php?ID=2444 (OK, it may be funny but it makes the tab difficult to search for)

8. Lots of duplicates. Search for song name 'yesterday' for example for plenty of versions of the Beatles song with inflated song titles '... better version' , '...best version' etc. Or 'let it be' where a recent version does not distinguish itself sufficiently from some of the more established versions harptabs.com/song.php?ID=16135 (and would not show up in a normal search because of the way the song name is presented ).

"2. Tab 'Fav Count', the Count of the number of users who have included a tab in their "My Favorites" list. It would be nice to be able to drill down from this count to see the list of users who have 'favorited?' the tab. The thinking here is that if a user has the amazing good taste to include one of my tabs amongst their favorites, then this favorites list may have other 'gems' worthy of further investigation"

haha, I've thought the same thing. Maybe it's a bit stalkery, but given how little that has happened with me so far I'd just kinda like to know who is actually appreciating what I'm doing. I'd also like, if I can jump in, to have a favorite count column for the tabs listed on my profile. That way I don't have to look at all 60+ and counting of my songs every week to see if any of them got favorited.



"4. Typing errors in tabs"

That's the nature of free online tabs. you're trusting the author not to have boobed up, either in making the transcription or typing it. We're not professionals. Mistakes happen, and when they do oh well. I've caught two old mistakes of mine so far that were up for probably a month, and I wouldn't doubt there are more I haven't noticed yet. If you want something better you'll have to buy a book. Also applies to 6 and 7.

"8. Lots of duplicates."

There's more than one way to play a song. In the cases where there isn't anything new being added, I agree it's a bit annoying, but what I find more annoying is that there's a system in place that to try to prevent it, but that system doesn't take into account that there can be more than one song with the same name. If people are just going to circumvent the system anyway and post the same thing someone else did, then why have that system making it a pain in the ass to post completely different songs that happen to share the name? (Note, I would find this less intrusive if we had more space to type the name of the song, so as long as we're tossing out suggestions.... that would be nice)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2011 11:11AM by ,,,.

NoName responded the same way I was going to. I'll add that mispellings in song titles may sometimes be intentional. The system will not allow the same exact title to be entered twice. I think that adding a description at the end of the title is a far better solution, though.

"Unknown author" is a very vague name for that box. It's up to the tabber what goes in there. It may be the most popular performer of that song, it may be the performer of the tabber's version, it may even be the actual author. I think it should be filled in. It doesn't matter to me what the tabber puts there, but he/she ought to put SOMETHING. I'll admit that I don't always fill it in. Sometimes it might be a song in public domain, or I just don't know what to put there.

If you find errors in my tabs, you're welcome to let me know about it.

OK gene, I will take you up on your offer and propose that the tab Clementine is amended as follows:

The last note on lines 2 and 6 should be -4 and not a 4 as appears in the tab.

However, if you change it you will create an interesting situation because you will cause a duplicate tab to be created. This is because, from what I see, the tab Clementine (2) is an attempt to make the correction I am now proposing.

I am also curious to see how you (or if) you mark the tab with any sort of edit history to indicate that somone other than the orginal author has made changes.

^He said if you find an error in /his/ tabs. I'm not sure if he can correct other peoples' tabs, and even if he could I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to have a policy where people can go in and "correct" other peoples' tabs. Some of this stuff is subjective.

These are all things which are discussed on the site regularly. I have brought up about removing the exact name blocking and people have said they find that a good way of seeing that the tab is out there and it has prevent people from posting other duplicates. The consensus was to leave it at that time.

The different links when you click on the user was something that has changed over time. Profiles used to be for logged in members only so the link was meant as a way for people who were not logged in to find other tabs for that member. Since member profiles has gone public it can be corrected but was an over site.

The favorite list is something that I have always been meaning to "finish" but just never get around to. I want to make it user sort-able where you can choose the order which the favorites get listed. I just keep getting pulled away to work on different aspects of the website and never get to it.

I love the idea of listing out who has the tabs marked as a favorite... it gives not only the poster some insite but it also allows anyone to find people with common tab interests which will help them find more tabs they like.

Typing errors, tab names and authors have been discussed thoroughly and in the past the consensus was that no one should be going back and fixing other people's tabs.

The start date you see of 2009-09-04 are all accounts which are inactive. We have had to move servers many times over the years and not all of the servers were fully compatible so occasionally some pieces of data are lost. That most likely happened on one of the server moves.

Duplicates Duplicates Duplicates Duplicates... they suck! This is something we are always fighting but no matter what you do people still post them. The policy is unless it is an identical tab we leave it up. If someone reports two identical tabs then we remove the newer one... which never happens anymore. We used to have a member who was diligent about reporting duplicates and having them removed and sometimes have members banned for posting nothing but duplicates. But that member is no longer here.

I'm pleased that this post has got some positive feedback. The issue I want to deal with most urgently is my mis-interpretation of gene's answer (thank you ,,, for pointing it out). In my enthusiasm, I assumed that gene was offering his 'moderator' priveleges to correct all 'sins from the past'. It is now clear that this offer was limited only to his own 'sins'.

Nick gave me the technology to be a moderator, but I won't wear the hat. The original idea was that I would handle spam and spammers---ONLY---

But I think Nick was playing a joke on me. Since I've been given the powers, there has not been a single piece of spam on the site.

I haven't had a slice of spam in I don't know how long. But if a piece does show up perhaps we should send it to feed the hungry.

Glad the policy leans against changing other peoples' profiles. That would just open the door to squabbling over judgement calls or people not understanding there are different versions, or etc. But Meanon, if you're bothered by it, I'd say a wiki tab site is an interesting idea. Anyone able to post songs and anyone able to edit them. That's not what I want this site to become, but if you'd like to make a site like that, go for it and I'll check it out.

As for pointing out duplications.... umm, you can start by looking at pretty much everything "catwomen" has posted so far.

[www.harptabs.com]

Bohemian rhapsody to begin with. It's odd, she even wrote the lyrics out as

eye* *

die* *

just like the version that's on the most popular page. It's almost like she's ripping things off directly from this site and reposting for some reason.

I spent some time comparing her tabs to others. Most of them are at least different enough to keep, a few are one-of-a-kind, and two are duplicates. I'm betting those duplicates are not intentional.

I got tired of looking, so I did not check Amazing Grace, Blowin' in the Wind, Let it BE or Oh Suzanna....There's too many of them. :p

I'll PM her....Then we'll march to her door with torches and pitch forks.

I like the idea of being able to comment on tabs, but even I would not suggest going as far as having a full wiki style format where anyone could interfere with other peoples tabs (but see below for a qualification of this statement). The main argument against permitting users to comment on tabs is the risk of abuse (spam/insulting comments etc.). However, this risk can be minimised by (a) the participation of an active moderator (which of course we now have, armed, ready and waiting for the first bite of spam to be served on this site ) and (b) if, necessary, the technical measure of limiting who can post a comment (say to users who have achieved 500 points or so). This could also help with the problem of duplication, by allowing users to make helpful comments on a tab like "see harptabs.com/song.php?ID=16 for a very similar version of this!"

I do see a role, however, for a wiki format if we went as far as producing a book (pdf) of tabs because this would require a monumental team effort in knocking the tabs into shape so these are fit for publication (standardising the style, terminolgy, layout etc. etc. ). But that is another story.

^I too love the idea of a comments section. People can offer corrections and even if the tabber is gone other people can still see the comment and decide for themselves.

Also, it would be much better for giving feedback than the ratings system. So far I've tabbed over 80 songs and not one of them has a rating, and I don't blame anyone for that because I've never rated a song myself. I don't have the ear for music to know how correct someone was in their tabbing, so I really can't rate. But with a comments section I could say "hey, thanks, it is awesome that you tabbed this because I enjoy playing it."

I'm not too worried about spam, give all users the ability to mark something as spam and make it so the comment gets hidden if it's flagged by X people. the only thing I'd suggest is to have the entire comment section hidden by default so we have to click to see comments. I just find comment sections to be unsightly in general and for the most part I don't /want/ to see the racism-laden diatribes about the healthcare system posted under cat videos on youtube or whatever. I always want comments hidden by default unless I'm choosing to look at them.

Gene said: I'll PM her....Then we'll march to her door with torches and pitch forks.

I say: ALL RIGHT!!!! Finally, a party like we used to have around here!!

gene Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I spent some time comparing her tabs to others.
> Most of them are at least different enough to
> keep, a few are one-of-a-kind, and two are
> duplicates. I'm betting those duplicates are not
> intentional.
>
> I got tired of looking, so I did not check Amazing
> Grace, Blowin' in the Wind, Let it BE or Oh
> Suzanna....There's too many of them. :p
>
> I'll PM her....Then we'll march to her door with
> torches and pitch forks.


She's still at it.

Hers:

[www.harptabs.com]

The first:

[www.harptabs.com]

(I assume that making the numbers bold, eliminating any helpful spacing, and misspelling the title don't qualify hers as unique)

And I notice she still hasn't taken Bohemian Rhapsody down yet either.

Yeah, I've sorta laid down & fell asleep here. I still haven't looked through those couple of songs I mentioned. I did PM her, got no response and did not follow through. I've been busy AND I've been troubled by other stuff. If you would, please, find those other duplicates (Make sure that they are duplicates), and PM or e-mail Nick for us. ([email protected])

EVERYBODY'S participation in suggestions, problem reporting, policing, whatever is appreciated.