Getting more eyes on style / guideline posts

Note by @reosarevok: I moved this to its own thread because it’s about how to get more of the community to see and participate on discussions related to guideline creation / modification, and it seems like a conversation worth having - more people active is a good thing.

For what it’s worth, the forum actually allows for participation for a lot more people than the old system did, where it was literally a few power users who subscribed to the style mailing list who took all the decisions. A minority of the community is always going to participate in threads, but posting on the blog (which is followed by another small minority of the community) is not going to make that better.

If we feel there’s a problem with how many people are seeing style discussions, then we can try to figure out a way where people can follow style discussions only (which might be as simple as subscribing to get notifications of the Style subforum).

If people want to continue a discussion on this topic, I can move this to be the start of a new thread about it :slight_smile:

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I would still like for:

  1. A new thread being made with a title that draws attention like “Unofficial remix style”.
  2. A blog post being made to draw attention to the forum post. The blog itself is visible on the front page, and something like “New remix guidelines - editor input wanted” would probably get clicked by editors who see it.
  3. Guideline being unlisted for now at Style - MusicBrainz following more discussion, the actual page can be left on the wiki, but with a notice saying it’s currently at a draft and linking the forum thread.
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I kind of agree with this - ideally in the future rather than starting to write guidelines on existing threads, the guideline should be proposed on its own thread to make it more clear.

I might be wrong here, but I really don’t feel this would help. I literally only ever go to the front page to leave the front page, and I haven’t a single time paid attention to the blog stuff there (or, really, anything outside of the top menu to get me wherever I want to go). How many experienced editors even look at the front page content?

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Maybe having a notification on top of the page for logged in editors you could dismiss permanently by pressing [x] once would be better. Kind of like the occasional server maintenance ones?

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I’ve made a new tag specifically for guideline proposals, or discussions that have headed that way: styleguide-proposal (so people can subscribe to that tag)
I can’t promise it will always be up-to-date, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

I’ve also drafted a blog post re. all the guideline discussion, recent updates, and reminding people to keep an eye on the forums if they want input. @reosarevok, can you review and publish if you’re happy with it? I’ll tweet to it as well.

re. adding a new blog post every time there’s a guideline proposal or change, with my ‘comms person’ hat on - there are too many, and MeB blog posts shouldn’t be too short-form. I’m going to keep this in mind though. Doing the occasional summary of what’s been happening shouldn’t be a problem (if I have time!)

I think more notifications on the MusicBrainz website are a great thing~ whether style guideline updates, edit notes (even on others’ edits), and perhaps messaging~

a solution here on the forums might be to create a new thread (as suggested above), marked with the #musicbrainz:style category, add a style ticket on Jira, and/or “[STYLE]” or something in the title. for example, [STYLE-4268] new remix guidelines or [STYLE-2244] Add style guidelines for digital media. that’s what seems to be recommended from the tooltip for the style category (maybe that should be more visible somehow?)