I’ve been building music4dance for well over a decade now, and I am still amazed at how passionate people can be about what is right or wrong, not just with respect to dance, but also with many other aspects of the site. Two such instances came up in a recent piece of feedback that I’d like to address, as they are related to ambiguities in language.

Dance

The first is that the site is oriented to a particular local community and is “completely useless” for dancers from other locales. I’ve never heard that specific feedback before. But I do read it as a variation on other feedback that amounts to how I’ve organized the site doesn’t line up with how everyone thinks about dance. I believe that is a good thing. Dance is diverse. A single individual shouldn’t be able to wrap their head around the whole breadth of the dance world, or even something slightly less broad like the partner dance world. Here are some previous posts where I’ve explored this idea in more depth:

I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my adult life and learned to dance here. And while I’ve spent some time social dancing over the years, my primary focus was on competitive ballroom dancing. Indeed, with social dancing, there will be some bias towards what I know, and that is the scene in the area where I dance. With ballroom, not so much, as there are standards and organizations.

But the bottom line is that the more the community gets involved, the less the site will reflect my editorial viewpoint. My focus is on making it easier for anyone with an account to add songs and tag them with dances, which will shift the “editorial center” of the site slightly closer to their viewpoint. Some design limitations make it more difficult than I’d like to add new dance styles. But I’ve been rearchitecting the site to make that easier, so if dance styles are missing from the site that you would like to see represented, please get in touch with me. I’ll be happy to work with you to add them.  I am also working on a feature that I hope will make it easier to filter on variations of dances – more on that in a future post.

Donate

Another aspect of the site that has bugged me for some time, but that I haven’t addressed, is the use of the word “Donate” on the site. I’ve never received any feedback on this subject before now. However, I understand that using the word ‘donate’ can imply that the money spent would be a tax-deductible donation. That is not my intent, as I would use the phrase “charitable donation” and include a tax ID if it were. If someone could give me a better word than donate, I’d be happy to update the site with it. The only other contender I have come up with is “give,” but that has pretty much the same issue. I have not registered music4dance as a non-profit in any jurisdiction. For more details, please visit the subscription page.

The other word that this person objected to was “contribute.” My intention in using that word was to encompass different ways that someone could help improve the site. That does include monetary contributions in the form of subscriptions or (non-tax-deductible) donations. But it also covers voting on dances, adding songs, sharing the site with friends, and any of the other ways I’ve listed on the contribute page. I’m less concerned about the ambiguity of that term. But apparently at least one other person is, so I’d be happy to change that as well if someone has a better term.

While we’re on the subject of contributions, I want to take the time to thank everyone who has financially contributed to the site, including the person who provided the feedback that inspired this post. Ad and referral revenue only covers about 10% of my core operating costs; your (non-tax-deductible) subscriptions cover more than that. So thank you!

Please let me know if you have any thoughts about the subject of this post or the site by commenting below or using other feedback mechanisms listed here. I’ve still got a ways to go to get to the goal of covering the core operating costs of music4dance that I set in 2019 when I first turned on the subscription feature, so if you’re not already subscribing and would like to continue to enjoy the site and the blog, please consider contributing (in a non-tax-deductible sense).