Spring Cleaning!

Spring is almost upon us, and YC wishes to engage in some spring cleaning, so to speak. :D

We want to hear what you want from the site - suggestions for new features, modifications of features that already exist, requests for stuff to be removed even, and so on. Ask for anything, whether it's to do with how things feel, how things look, how things work, whatever basically!

Obviously we can't guarantee to follow through on every suggestion, but we will certainly listen to what you have to say. This is your chance to make your voice heard.

So, fire away!

If posible change the color of the back round. Add more bords to help organize the site.

If posible change the color of the back round.

What would you suggest as a new background? And do you mean totally do away with the whole cream/brown colour scheme? If you want, you can enable the Light skin by selecting it from the drop down combo box in the bottom left hand corner of the page, this is an alternative to the default.

Add more bords to help organize the site.

Again, you need to be a little more specific. Do you mean subcategories? I personally feel that having too many boards is confusing and tends to fragment everything. Less is more, in a sense. That's just my opinion.

What would you suggest as a new background? And do you mean totally do away with the whole cream/brown colour scheme? If you want, you can enable the Light skin by selecting it from the drop down combo box in the bottom left hand corner of the page, this is an alternative to the default.

Again, you need to be a little more specific. Do you mean subcategories? I personally feel that having too many boards is confusing and tends to fragment everything. Less is more, in a sense. That's just my opinion.

I wouldn't mind having the ability to change the color of my background. Mine used to be green but then one day it went back to these ugly colours =(.

I personally believe that making more subcategories would be bad. I think we have enough categories for a person to put their topic in. Also we don't need more mods. The mods we have are doing a great job.

If posible change the color of the back round. Add more bords to help organize the site.

I kinda like the brownish color :wacko:

I personally feel that having too many boards is confusing and tends to fragment everything. Less is more, in a sense. That's just my opinion.

Agree

I think Jen318tkd idea is better than mine. I do agree with Mike about our bords. March 21 Spring comes to lighten our day. :D

I agree that keeping the board numbers down is important - however, in the interest of accurate review of atonal and experimental pieces, could we separate out the "other" section?

I second/third/whatever the idea that we need more colors: the "light" option is scarcely different.

why not open up a poll, we can vote for new background colors, or we can pitch some ideas in now, and open other polls on other improvements.

OK, I started a poll about the theme here: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/Skin-Poll-t2396.html

Please take the time to vote and have your voice heard.

I have also installed two new skins, a green one and an orange one, and have re-enabled the default IPB theme.

Regarding seperating out things into subcategories: I don't think there is yet enough support of this idea to warrant a poll. If more people reply to this topic stating that they believe the forums should be further seperated out with extra subcategories, then I may start a poll on that too.

i think there are way too many "boards".. advice and technique could be added to Composer headquarter... or incidental music/soundtrack could be added to experimental and atonal music... or soemthing like that... some people, and i include myself, don´t have time to read all the posts because they are everywhere... i think everything related to contests, submissions should be one thing (one board), the other one related to techniques, advice, composition talk, theory, (another board)... and then the last one could be free talk (orchestral, music history, ) something like that :glare:

The amount of boards is a great set. It makes sense to distinguish the major works from the minor and then to separate those further. Without doing so people would have no idea what they might be listening to when they go to review.

Maybe a more efficient 'View New Post' system if possible or if you could separate the new posts from the old directly in a sub forum with a space. The system is set it just needs tweaking.

I am brand new to this site and I have not been on it too much yet. I do not know wether this already exists or not but what I would like is a place on the my controls to have a posting history. This would be a place that you could go and see all the threads you have posted on. You could also click on them and it would take you to your post.

So far I have had to ask a lot of questions about how the site worked. I have been a little confused and lost. This is probably due to the fact that I am new. I will probably get used to it and think differently later. I think what would help me is if on the front page of the website you could put an area were you can sign in. Once you have signed in it would take you directly to your homepage. This page would tell you all about you information such as posting history, the information you have submitted, your friends list, you own composition postings, etc.

On the topic of spring cleaning, is there any way to somehow save, or forward your PMs to another email address?

Space runs out too quickly.

On the topic of spring cleaning, is there any way to somehow save, or forward your PMs to another email address?

Yes, there is:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/archive-messages.html

If the truth be told, the system isn't all that elegant, but it does allow you to export your PMs elsewhere. I also just doubled the max number of storable messages for every group, so now mods have 200 and members have 100.

If I have time today I might write a small script which shows you a page of all your PMs which you can then save onto your computer. So don't delete them just yet.

Thanks!

If I have time today I might write a small script which shows you a page of all your PMs which you can then save onto your computer.

Glorious php. And Mike.

OK, try this:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/pms_html.php

There's also a link to it in the user CP under Messenger which reads "View All Messages In Exportable Format".

Each PM in your inbox is shown one after the other in chronological order. Quotes are displayed (albeit in a plain fashion), as is bold text, italic text etc. but emoticons are not parsed because....well, it's complicated, but anyway, the script does the job, overall.

Again, thanks!!

Now that I have been on this site for about a week I have found soemthing that I constantly am wanting to have. That is a favorites list that you can add you favorite compositions to. You could look at this list and play all the MP3s or look at the Finale file without having to go to the post to find it. That would be very helpful.

That is not a pre-existing feature of the software and I would therefore have to write a modification to allow for it. However, we are going to be changing software soon so there isn't really any point in doing this - it would be a waste of time, both for me and for members.

I think the software we are moving to has a Favourite Threads feature though (or a mod that we can install) so this would probably suffice.

Hey.

As regards spring cleaning, how bout we get cracking on that? I mean, I've been flicking through the topics in Chamber and Orchestral and there's some pieces that date back to this time last year (i.e. when they had their last message). Shouldn't these topics be deleted as clearly they're not being used and wasting up space. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Last week, I took it on myself to be a nice person :P and review new compositions though most of these haven't had a reply since from the composer or anyone else - it's a kind of thing that I just wasted my time on those compositions where I could have actually reviewed someone else's piece that I know would have some impact and would be responded to.

Now I know you moderator's are extremely busy (aren't we all? :laugh:) but I wouldn't mind submitting myself to help this cause. I won't be able to be on every day but I could slowly trim away the unnecessary stuff to make it easier. What's your thoughts on this?

Actually, we have unlimited storage space. It would be nice to get rid of topics of that sort though, I support this. Let's hear what the big guns say now :laugh:

It takes a while for anything to get replies. Within a few days, though, most submitted music has some comments.

As Letehn said, our storage space is (for all intents and purposes) unlimited, so there is not a pressing need to delete unused or unwanted things. I guess this would be up to chopin in the end.

so because the people aren't listening to the music anymore... that means it should be deleted so that it can never be listened to again? hmm... if you delete the topics at least all the songs should be kept in some sort of archive.

It was more of an idea to cut away, or archive pieces that haven't been used. As I said before, what's the point reviewing a piece if no one's going to read the reply (and I'm talking about the people who WON'T reply ever)? Just an idea, that's all and it means that reviews go to people who need them and people won't be wasting time :D!!!! If you have a look at the Major Works list, these have been streamlined and you know that these are pieces that want your attention - with the continous long lists, your enthusiasm does seem to disappear....