Project Feedback

[Blangzo]

Ideas for analysis please.

Current plans:

Bar graph of albums: --the 4 types of phrases --length (number of lines)

Bar graph comparing artists: -variety of phrases (different profanities)

Scatterplot: -comparing 2pac and eminem

[ttb11]

I think that the analysis ideas you talked about in class were all very interesting. I think the idea of comparing the profanity between the albums of the artists is interesting. Overall, the UX of your website is nice and very usable, but one thing I think you could improve is the home page by adding more color.

[pab124]

The corpus page that you have set up is one of the better pages that I think you have. It's quite interactive and I think that it presents the data and what you're analyzing fairly well. Additionally, even though the majority of the colors in the scheme are pretty dark, you've chosen quite contrastive colors for the elements that you've highlighted, which works very well. One thing about the UX/other aspect of the website that I had an additional comment on would be the corpus page's highlighting of the profanity. I was just wondering if you'd think it would be possible to encode the uses of the profanity in a manner that would not necessarily display them but would identify them? I'm hesitant in saying this because I understand the intent and necessity of using those selected lexical items within the lyrics themselves, but I wonder about whether or not it would be acceptable to have words deemed offensive or racial slurs on a website that affiliates itself with the University. Just curious.

[ebeshero]

@pab124 Thanks for that comment, because I'd been meaning to respond about the use of the University seal here: It's kind of problematic because your project isn't really being developed on servers at Pitt. newtFire is my own server and we're developing here because Pitt's resources aren't sufficient for our development needs in this course. (Similarly, when @djbpitt teaches this course, he has students build projects on his own server setup, Obdurodon.) There's nothing wrong with saying this is a project you developed in a Pitt course and linking out to the University of Pittsburgh, but the use of the seal is problematic to me because this isn't a Pitt-sponsored website.

[ebeshero]

@Blangzo and @pab124 One thing I'm noticing is that not all the toggles are working--I imagine that's still under construction. Since this project is investigating profanity in rap lyrics, it makes sense that it should handle this in an uncensored way--but perhaps you might want to tell readers somewhere on the home page (maybe in the way you introduce your research questions) that you're not shying away from highlighting, counting, and quantifying profane language. We've had projects that study profanity before--one actually made a network graph of curse words: See the Profanity in Quentin Tarantino's Screenplays project.

[flowerbee1234]

As a huge rap fan, I will say that I am in love with the idea you have in mind. I don't think many can argue that Eminem and 2Pac are two of the most influential rappers of the time period--and they happen to be my favorite rappers ever. I really liked the example lyrics page you have and the chosen songs. I think you picked a nice variety there; however, the background color and font is a bit hard to read. I feel like you'd be better picking the same design as the home page one. Also, once you further develop the other pages, I think you will have something really great here. I hadn't even thought about analyzing rap music: that is so cool. I wish I had thought of that! Bravo on the creativity, but I would make sure to get the rest of the content out there and to display it clearly.

@ebeshero