Based on some of the comments on my last post, I’ve been thinking more about my early decisions concerning who can edit various aspects of a song in the music4dance catalog. I was worried that malicious actors would mess with the data, and spent considerable time designing and implementing a system that lets me roll back all edits for a specific user if I find they’re up to no good.

Oddly, I have had to spend significant energy dealing with bad actors who have been attempting to hack the site. But they’re all about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the music and dance data. I haven’t once had to back out dance votes by someone trying to break the system. I think I was overly influenced by stories about moderating issues on Wikipedia (which was relatively new at the time), and by my personal history with programmers fighting over whether three or four spaces is the “right” number to represent a tab in C.

And in my defense, dancers are often very opinionated about the definitions of dances and what is “appropriate” music to dance them to (e.g. Why is the tempo range you list for West Coast Swing wrong? and Why are the tempos that music4dance lists for Salsa wrong?). But most of what I see in those cases are angry emails about how I’ve gotten it wrong.

In the spirit of assuming that the members of the community are well-intentioned and knowledgeable (or at least self-assess well as to the limits of their knowledge), I’ve changed a couple of things about the Dance Details pages.

Tempo Editing

Some time ago, I started preferring human tempo edits over algorithmic ones. But I was only allowing a few vetted moderators to edit tempos. I’ve now opened tempo editing up to all registered users. So if you see a tempo that doesn’t make sense for a song, please go to the Song Details page (generally by clicking on the song title in search results or lists) and click the pencil icon next to the tempo. That will put the song into edit mode, and you should be able to edit the tempo. Don’t forget to save when you’re done!

If you are signed in and don’t see the pencil icon next to the tempo, it is probably because I, or another user, has already manually edited the tempo. You can generally tell this is the case by looking at the changes section in song details. If this happens frequently, I’ll consider building a moderation system of some kind, but in the meantime, please just contact me with your thoughts on the tempo and why, and we can work it out.

One special case the system can’t handle yet is when two very different dances can be danced to the same song at different tempos. I’m getting close to pulling the trigger on a solution for that, so if you come across any of these, please let me know – the more examples I have, the more general I’ll be able to make the solution.

Tag Deletion

Another attribute of song editing that’s only been accessible to select moderators in the past is the ability to delete tags created by other users. But, like tempo, the algorithms sometimes get the meter wrong (labeling something as 4/4 that should be 3/4, or vice versa). I’m also not thrilled about how broadly musical genres are applied, so I’d be happy if anyone would be willing to go in and trim some of those down. Again, generally, I’m going to assume that a discerning human user will do a better job than the algorithm. I’m also limiting this feature to deleting algorithmically created tags, not tags created by another user, for reasons similar to the Tempo Editing feature.

In order to remove tags, just click on the pencil icon at the end of the tag list on the Song Details page. The single list of tags will split into two lists, one labeled “Remove Tags.” This list contains the tags that you’ve added + the algorithmically generated tags. Clicking on the (x) icon in the tag will remove it. Again, don’t forget to save. And again, if you don’t see a tag in the Remove list that you expect, it’s probably because another user, not an algorithm, added the tag. You should be able to confirm this by looking at the changes section. Please contact me in such cases, and I’ll resolve them manually.

Step of the Month:

As I noted previously, I’ve traditionally closed out these posts with a generic ask to check out the contributions page and to please send feedback on anything in the post or your general thoughts. That’s been less effective than I like, so I’m pivoting. Each month, I’ll choose one specific ask that may or may not be on the contributions page lists, but would really help keep music4dance and the community strong. I’ve decided to call this section “Step of the Month” – a play on dance steps and steps to help – and see if that gets a response. If the response is to hold your nose and run away from plays on words, please let me know that, too.

The “Step of the Month” for April is to vote on songs that you like to dance to. This will make the catalog more useful for everyone.

Thanks, everyone, for your continued support.