2008 Users Survey: Results and Analysis Now Available!

It took us a while, but we are now proud to present to you an in-depth analysis of the data collected in the recent 2008 Users Survey. Once again, thanks to those of you who participated.

The document is downloadable here in PDF format: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/2008-survey-results.php

Any comments on our interpretations, findings, plans etc. are welcome as always. :)

I've read through the document and most of it was more or less as aspected by me. it was akward for me to read that you devote so much time to make it a friendly place around here, that even a few people are thinking of leaveing because of they are being badly treated. I've never come across anything like that.

Further more i do agree with the suggestion that pieces are commented on reasonable rarely. Therefor, as suggested by me before, i think it's an idea to make an standardized reviewing option. As in 1-10/a+-c-(?) rating options or something in that order. I can imaging this would have some againsts, since i would be easier to refrain from commenting more easily. But in all, as for me, most of the time i'm just curious to know what people generaly think of the piece. If people want to comment more detailed the can make that comment, but for those who listen but don't comment i would still be possible to get their general idea.

And most of all i want to counter-thank Chopin and Mike for the time they invest into this site and the efford they take to make it what it is. This site has become a fairly important place for me in my developement/live as an amature composer. I come here almost daily and realy enjoy being part of a part of the developments in the area of my passion. So without getting dramatic or emotional, i want to thank you two and also the other adminstrators here for their effort and investements it takes to make this possible for me. Thanks guys!

Hmm.... no A+, B, C- letter grades, I find numbered figures much more recognisable and easily interpreted. So how would this system work? When a member reviews another work, other users click a thumbs-up button, boosting the reviewer's score, or the contrary? Would this apply to only music reviews in the upload forums? In such a case, should it be disabled in Off-Topic and the Discussion forums? Or is there another system in planning?

Another way I see of interpreting this, is to have each reviewers select a general "like or dislike" score out of 10, and these would be calculated out to give the piece an average score. I'm not quite so fond of that idea as much, I would much like to see member ratings. This way, when a member responds in a not so helpful way, more will be likely click the thumbs-down, or "not helpful" button, and so he will have gotten nothing out of making the post. On the other end, if a person makes a detailed and helpful review, people will tend to click the thumbs-up button, and this person will be more recognised as a helpful and respectable member of the community, thus an incentive for more people to make detailed, constructive comments on other peoples' works. Maybe the higher your score, the more privileges your have, such as a little bit more upload-space?

On the topic of forum colour-schemes and whatnot, I can see why you put it as your last priority. The only thing I have to ask is to keep the old scheme as one of the options for those who like it and/or improve the current scheme without much changing the colours as changing the tones.

I was surprised more people do not have this as their homepage. I said that I have it as my homepage eventhough I don't. My homepage takes me to my e-mail sign-in, which I can't be bothered to type in myself, but the fact is, when I go on to the computer, more often than not, the very first place I visit is YC, by simply tying in "you" in my address bar, hitting down, then Enter, taking me straight to the forum index. As an additional note, I don't visit the YC homepage quite as often.

I second the "documentation of features" idea. I hadn't thought of it, but it is a great idea. I really hate that so many people have to create threads and topics, or ask questions in the Shoutbox about simple things, such as Wiki usage, file uploads, thread deletion, and such. It would be nice to have everything laid out in the FAQ. The FAQ also might need to be cleared up all around, methinks... and it's location and existence should also be made MUCH more obvious. I've been on this site for almost a year, and I can't figure how to get to the FAQ itself on occasion. I would suggest tab for it along the top. :musicwhistle:

Also, I support the addition of new forums. I believe our upload sections are continually growing in popularity, and the result is so many new works that some peoples' end up getting ignored. Having more upload categories might also encourage more participation, since there would be more space to fill. The only thing to worry about is having TOO many upload categories. Personally, I think we should have two subforums under Chamber, one for trios, quartets, and larger, and one for SOLO instrument alone, or with single accompaniment, such as piano. I think this would help keep things organised. Currently there are piece for solo 'cello by itself right next to works for septet - kind of a mess in my opinion.

Also, more on the categories, I think some of the larger forums, notably piano/keyboard and orchestral, should be divided further into style categories, such as "Contemporary", "Modern", "Baroque, Classical", "Romantic, Impressionistic", "Other". This might need some more in-detail consideration, but I think there needs to be SOME sort of categorization underneath what we already have, especially as this place grows.

Again, like Gijs up there, I'd like to thank the Mods, and especially our wonderful admins for keeping this place greased up and running smoothly. :happy:

Hmm, speaking of mods.... ever think of adding another mod to the list, especially in Anders' absence and as the forum grows? Personally I think there should be at least one Mod online at any point in the 24-hr day, and lately I haven't been seeing that. I know it's a hard thing to ask, but hopefully also something to consider.

Interesting results. Thanks for the analysis, guys, and I'll extend yet another thanks as well to our M&M administration for their amazing work in keeping this place such a joy to donate time to.

:happy:

With regards to the A/B/C grading scheme, it has always been our philosophy that numerical gradings are of little use given the subjective nature of composition as a whole. I could grade a beginner's piece with a C because I thought it was poorly constructed, even if I happened to like the actual material being used. And I could grade a PhD composition student's piece the same if it simply wasn't to my tastes, even if it was extremely well constructed.

Having said that, I think the music management system will optionally support ratings, mainly for statistical purposes. In the case of the forum, it's standard procedure to review someone's piece with a block of text - this is always going to be the most useful approach for the composer.

Also, I don't see a need right now to implement functionality for modding posts up and down dependent on users' assessment of their worth. The reason sites like Digg and Slashdot have such a scheme going is because of the sheer amount of throughput they receive. It's not possible for the staff to go over even a fraction of what's contributed to those sites, so the job of deciding what should go and, conversely, what should be highlighted, is left in the hands of the users.

As a regular Slashdot user (yes, I'm a nerd), I also find comment moderation handy in that you will rarely be duped into reading anything empty or non-contributory. The comments that get modded up are normally extremely informative and insightful (or just downright amusing). Handling things that way makes for a more rewarding end user experience. I don't think YC is yet at a stage where it needs to entrust its users with burying bad comments and highlighting the outstanding ones, because the quality is generally quite good across the board. Also, need I breathe the word cliquishness in the same sentence as comment moderation?

Anyway, thanks for the elaborative feedback, you guys. It's always good to discuss fresh ideas. :)

The stats pertaining to the wiki took my interest, and I don't quite share chopin's positive atitude on them -

I have used the wiki in some way at least once.

o True - 81 44.75%

o False - 100 55.25%

chopin

I think my favorite question of the entire survey was "I have mentioned Young Composers in conversation or correspondence with at least one other person."

I got a good laugh out that as Marius, Zawadzki and I read the results yesterday after school while sitting together on a couch. I can't think of a single day where I don't mention this place :laugh:

Marius, Zawadzki and I read the results yesterday after school while sitting together on a couch.

We are cool and dedicated members even in real life, you see. Spreading the woooooord! :D

I can't think of a single day where I don't mention this place :laugh:

Likewise, my friends must think I love this place more than them :laugh:

In which case they would be right.. :P

I wonder who the few who "Strongly Disagreed" are :P

Anyway, I feel that most of it was kind of expected, good looking results though

I have now read it. I am glad over the positive results. :)

Maybe it is just me, but a colour change is something I would not like. If you want to have a winning edge for "YoungComposers" as a trademark a logo would undoubtedly be a better choice. I am certain that changing the colour and forum design would help, in fact I really love the default theme. I see no other theme that can replace the pleasant colours of beige and brown:)

An aesthetical change should defiantly be a new eye-catching logo. I do not know what you guys think about the brown dude - maybe he is the logo (?)

These results actually surprised me...:hmmm:

I can't think of a single day where I don't mention this place :laugh:

Do you say YC like ''WAYSEE'', or do you just say ''Young Composers''? Throwing in ''WAYSEE'' in casual conversation would be awkward.. Works well in textual communication though.

It was fun to watch Mike go all OCD on Chopin's definitions. :toothygrin: Otherwise, an entertaining and informative read.

In regard to your years composition skewed by a few upper results. You should've calculated the standard deviation and figured out an infinite series to calculate the percent error and take the range to give a better picture.

In regard to your years composition skewed by a few upper results. You should've calculated the standard deviation and figured out an infinite series to calculate the percent error and take the range to give a better picture.

Uhm Ralph, they are musicians :thumbsup:

It was fun to watch Mike go all OCD on Chopin's definitions. Otherwise, an entertaining and informative read.

Hehe, yeah it surely was a good laugh :toothygrin:

Uhm Ralph, they are musicians :thumbsup:

Hehe, yeah it surely was a good laugh :toothygrin:

They have a mathematician one hand lol!

I think you'll be surprised how many people don't get that Articles = Wiki.

In regard to your years composition skewed by a few upper results. You should've calculated the standard deviation and figured out an infinite series to calculate the percent error and take the range to give a better picture.

Ha, I knew we'd overlooked something... :hmmm:

On a serious note, if there is a better way to express that (or any other) statistic, and you'd be willing to help out with the math(s), by all means contact me.

First of all, thanks for all the effort you've invested in this survey!

If you don't mind I have a suggestion about the mathematical side of it:

For questions like "What is your age?" and "How long have you been composing?" the median can much more representative than the mean, because extreme values are skipped.

To calculate the median you just have to sort the numbers in an acending or descending order and simply choose the middle one from the series (so if you have 181 numbers in an ascending order the median is the 91st in the series). If you have an even number of values (for eg. 140) there is no middle one, so you have to calculate the mean of the two middle number (70th and 71st) to get the median.

Example:

What is your age?

14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 23, 25, 60

The mean of this 9 numbers is 25 (= 225/9).

The median is the middle (5th) value which is 22.

You can see that the median better represents the average age than the mean (most people in the example are 20 to 23 year-old, so 25 does not seem to be the average age, 22 is much better).

Hope I could help a little, and sorry if it was too boring.

M

Matthaus: way to go :D I studied statistics at school, although it is one of the lessons I liked the least (mainly because I had missed some early lessons, and then I couldn't catch up because I had too much work, and then I got a 40% in the final exams, while I got 70-80% on the other two papers, argh!)

jujimufu: No problem, statistics are one of the most boring part of maths (at least for me)... :sleeping:

By the way, I'm happy with the results, too. It's good to know that most people like this forum much (me too!!!). :)

M

A couple of updates:

I've sent off some figures to DOFTS with a view to having a more thorough statistical analysis performed on them. Specifically, we're looking to obtain a better picture of the average age and number of years composing. The document will be updated once this process is complete. Thanks to DOFTS for the kind offer! :)

Secondly, there's been a bit of a change of course regarding the specific plans listed right at the end. Through discussion, chopin and I have decided to delay thinking about the points-based incentive scheme until we have the music management system up and running. Since it will support its own incentive scheme (of sorts), we would like to ensure this complements or even marries up with the forum's own setup, so we'll wait until the big roll-out. This means priority #1 is now to work on documentation and resources for new users. I'll post an update when something happens in this regard.

I've now written up comprehensive documentation for the Lessons system:

Young Composers Music Forum - FAQ: Lessons System

Hopefully this will address one or two confusions we've had regarding things like lesson thread assignment. If there are any suggestions as to potential improvements/additions, please offer them.

Up next to document: hopefully some bits and pieces for newbies.

Great work Mike!

I am positive that this will resolve any confusions :)

DOFTS has very kindly completed in-depth statistical analyses of questions 2 and 3: "What is your age?" and "How long have you been composing to the nearest year?".

View the updated document here: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/2008-survey-results.php

Conclusions for the age question were quite interesting. By ghosting anomalous values (i.e. people over a certain age), it became apparent that a more meaningful average for age is 16-21. Our youngest users are aged 12 and up, but there is seemingly no upper bound when it comes to our oldest users, which makes sense.

As for the second question, the slightly awkward eventual finding was that the question was too subjectively phrased for the collected data to be of much use. Ah well, that'll come in handy if we ever decide to do another survey in future.

Thanks once again to DOFTS for taking the time to do this. :)

Update: the competitions system is taking shape, albeit very gradually. Having to backpedal on a few design decisions for the benefit of user-friendliness has delayed proceedings slightly. This, along with the difficulty involved in finding time to code at length for YC while battling other priorities, means that it will likely be several months until testing can begin with the first public beta.

I may put up some screenshots (maybe even a video!) of progress thus far, though I have the feeling (the hope?) that nobody is exactly waiting with bated breath. So I'll just end by making another call for those of you who are PHP-inclined (preferably with experience of OOP) to get in touch if you'd be willing to assist with development in any way. :)