Issues

[paul-millar]

Hi Team,

Whilst this is mainly directed at the changes in Austin's feature branch, I figured it was best to start discussion on on the architecture / intention of Radcircle. I'm aware there is a development doc going about but its not super specific as is. If everyone could chip in on this issue it would be great.

I am fully aware that some of these may be because everyone here is learning and you simply don't know any better. In which case, please dont be bummed out by the following questions I have. We're all learning here and the some constructive criticism is the way to move forward! : )

In terms of nitpicking / specifics:

1. Why are songs / posts marked as being different models? What is the intent of this? What is the difference? Dont we want to make creating a 'song post' as easy as possible? Why is this seemingly a two stage process? What is a feature? What sets it apart from being a post?
2. Why are admins / users different models? Should the user model simply not have an admin boolean field to identify administrators?
3. Are 'terms' in effect tags for posts?
4. Why is what I would call 'a 'feedback item' called a basecamp? Does this need to be a form? Can it not just open up an email? Especially if a user needs to register. Nobody is going to register to leave feedback.
5. Are people likely to register to leave comments? Is it not worth using Disqus or another system like that?

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A lot of the above relies around naming / intentions. There are a few principles in software development we should all be aware of:

• Dont repeat yourself (DRY). Try not to repeat yourself (as we seem to be doing a lot with similar functionality models)
• Keep it simple, stupid (KISS)

Also, naming things is often described as one of the hardest things in software development. Now we're all working in a team, we should be naming things and writing code so that it can be interpreted easily be other team members.

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The above specifics are key points in me merging everyones commits together so we can move forward as a team. If we can get some active discussion around this and decide on the way forward that would be ace.

As such, what is everyones 'vision' of Radcircle and what exactly should it be doing in terms of goals / intensions / features.

Cheers

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[austinRadcircle]

Response to critical questions:

1) Song and Post were separated in my branch in order address a few problems. The first of these problems was constructing a workflow for post writing that made sense with our 3 types of written content: 1. Quick Hit 2. Review 3. Long form (more later). Having a 2 step process to post writting REQUIRES at least a written description for the song. This would be considered ourDisqus hit", and if the author does not want to write a full review, they stop there. If the author chooses to write a review of the song, they can now do this right on the page of the song they just created in step one. This allows for the writer to listen to the song right from the embed on the page, or return to an older post as a "retro-review" of sorts. Comments has also been moved to belongto songs. The second problem this new issue addresses is the lack of focus on "song and artist first". I would describe radcircle right now as "written post" first, which removes the attention of the user from the song the author is curating (my opinion obviously). Song first approach of my branch is built to be driven by attention placed on the song and argument by the curator rather than a song and artist field in a post.

Feature is the long form, its built to be separate from the song and post as a longer piece should not be attached to one song. This is an area I would like to be better defined in order to better address what the authors want out of a longer post.

2) We can go ahead and strip out the admin model, that is a hold over from just trying to get something built up quickly and better understand devise.

3) my admittedly limited web development experience wants clarification on this question. My initial response is no, BC i built it as a has many association for categories and songs. Tags are not categories (categories would be electronic, rock, pop, hip hop, etc), but I could see tags as being the more specific subgenres of the larger genres found in categories.

1. Basecamps is supposed to be a clever take on the everest naming convention (didn't think about it too much). This was built just to collect feedback from our authors using the early builds of the website during development (which is why it requires user log in, assuming they'd already be signed in from posting). I'm OK with ditching it in the future in favor for email form.
2. I personally do not like disqus, which honestly might be more illogical than rational but whatever. I am interested in hearing what others have to say on this topic. (Also, Mohammad and I have discussed implenting a global chat for the website and there are some prebuilt tools for that).

Radcircle is a place for users to come discover great music from all genres curated by our authors. Radcircle is also a site that should allow artists to market themselves and be discovered. (I know its a little open ended, something that has been discussedbut absolutely needs to be defined so it can be built).

Thanks Austin

[paul-millar]

Hi Austin,

Thanks for your feedback. To put my thoughts onto the issues:

1. I think see what you're trying to achieve here. Can you confirm I've got this right?:
   1. All posts to to the website (be they be a quick-hit, long-form or review) start on the same page. Two of these 'post categories' require a song attribute and as such you've made this first page songs/new. A user fills out the song details and adds a description.
   2. At this stage, the user can go one of two ways:
      1. They finish there, in which they create a 'quick hit' post
      2. They write a review for the song, in which case they create a 'review' post. The review post should have the song embedded on there so the author can listen as she/he reviews it.
   3. The third 'long-form' post-category does not require a song and is a traditional 'blog post'
2. Grand, agreed.
3. So subcategories may be an appropriate name for this. There are better ways to model this now I know the intention. My advice at this stage however would be to keep things super simple and just have categories (for now) until we get V1 live.
4. Understood. See my thing above about naming - this becomes especially important given none of us really have any day-to-day or face-to-face contact.
5. I dislike disqus also. I just struggle to see how we'd get people to comment if we require them to sign up. There are some smart comment things these days that let you comment through twitter etc. Perhaps this is the way forward on this?

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"Radcircle is also a site that should allow artists to market themselves and be discovered."

The above is what we need to get creative with. This is what will set us apart from 'just a review website'.

[austinRadcircle]

Awesome! In a few hours, if you like, I can open the readying_user_function branch on my nitrous box so you can play with it.

[paul-millar]

All good - as its on a github branch I can pull it.