Freesound Forums

frederic.font wrote:
This is something users can configure and make spectral view the default (see the account settings page). I use spectral view by default and I think it is definitely much better than the waveform. But maybe hard to understand and too unfamiliar for non-sound experts.

I mean, make it the default view for newcomers and everyone.

Let Freesound lead the new digital language of online sound.

Spectral view is very easy to get once you click play, you can see how it carries the same information as the soundwave + how that soundwave is distributed across the spectrum.

Spectral view also looks way cooler. It just has a fresh, modern look. Way more informative about a sound than the wave

Since I switched to spectral as my default view, I now really dislike the use of sound waves in all the other websites. It just seems so outdated and primitive

Spectral view is the future, you have developed a really cool feature, I say push it forward and maximise its impact.

Just my two dB

Make Freesound a more modern and social experience

Evolve from the rating system, just have a Like button.

Does it really make sense to have a score from 1 to 5? Either you like/used the sound or you don't really care about it

Do people really need to be able to score 2 out 5? or 4 out of 5? If you have feedback, write a comment and suggest improvements

This way, you have two very useful metrics to make Top / trending sounds the focus of the frontpage. Downloads and Likes

...

Just for the record, in the message right above this one, user "strangehorizon" openly insulted me and said he would delete his account, then he edited the message and replaced it by the content you can see now "...". He tried to delete his account but something failed (he has many sounds and in these cases sometimes we have to do the deletion manually). He opened a support request to get his account deleted. I'm now in the process of manually deleting his account as this is what he wants. Therefore, soon his username will no longer appear in this thread and his sounds will be gone.

I wanted to make clear that, even though the message he wrote and later removed was clearly infringing our terms of service, it was him who requested his user to be deleted, not ourselves.

Hi Frederic,

I absolutely agree with strangehorizon that the new UI is by no means the supposedly groundbreaking burner, but the criticism he then deleted himself (and I'm all for rather clearer words than mumbling around) then actually crossed red lines.

Nevertheless, it also shows, of course, how much he is actually personally affected. If someone is closely connected with this site for eternal years, 6090 sounds!, always connected with a lot of work, really speak volumes...

In short, allow someone emotional exceptional situations like this, do not delete his account, the 6090 Sounds, immediately, put it offline somehow and let things calm down for a few days. If then there is still his explicit wish for deletion, well, so be it. But right now is disproportionate for me, there are just so uncounted years destroyed!

Seelengold

Thanks for your message Seelengold.

strangehorizon has contributed all his 6090 sounds in the last two years (even though his account is much older). This is an amazing contribution! He has also been very active in the forums. I'm actually very sad to see events developing in this way.

I've had further technical problems following his request of deleting the account, and thanks to that there is still a chance for him to give it another thought. I'll suggest that to him.

In the old UI each sound's play button icon is always visible.
In the new UI each sound's play button icon is hidden until the cursor hovers over the sound. This is cumbersome.

Now to play each sound I first have to hover the cursor over the sound to see the button, then move the cursor to the play button. It sounds trivial but when one is listening to page after page of sounds it's noticeably slower. A step backwards in my opinion, I prefer function over look.

JamesD

Since around 2011 and 2018, I have had experiences on Freesound that made me consider deleting my account on two occasions. The reasons behind my desire to leave Freesound.org were numerous but I eventually found a way to get around these issues, but I won't delve into them here. However, I want to express that despite my inclination to leave, I eventually found myself wanting to return. The current discussions have become intense, and I believe it would be wise to let the situation cool down before hastily deciding to leave and initiating the deletion process with Frederic.

Zeph/strangehorizon: If this is genuinely your desire, perhaps due to uncertainties regarding the new UI interface and the disagreements in this thread not being in your favor, then so be it. I also apologize for not fully grasping the extent of the situation since I only started reading the thread and past posts last night. With my responsibilities in moderation and daily life, I simply haven't had enough time to read everything. Please understand that I am not criticizing your reaction or intending to cause further harm. You have been an outstanding contributor for many years, and I've been impressed by the dedication you've shown to Freesound.org. It would sadden me to see you leave.

Anyway, Zeph, you will be missed if you choose to leave and I hold no judgment against you. You are always welcome back in my opinion, and hopefully, a resolution can be reached that benefits both parties involved.

J.P/Erokia

Allow me to set the record straight.

It's not just the UI that makes me want to leave - it's the type of people and interactions I encounter on here. I cannot get Freesounders to participate in anything or collaborate on anything. I can only find kids and spambots who will never produce anything.

I wanted to leave quietly and now I have to deal with all your opinions. I may have breached professionalism by insulting frederic but the direction this thread has taken since then has exceeded me. Who wants to use a site where their private actions get disclosed publicly by the admin and then picked over by the userbase? This just plays further into my deleted message concerning the nature of respect. Respectful people solve things themselves instead of dragging the public into it. This is my business, not all of yours.

It is odd to see messages of solidarity now. Until now I have only encountered silence and a couple of minor arguments. I'm expected to believe the work suddenly matters to you all, but you must understand that there is no evidence beyond what you've written here. I did this while it brought ME joy because that was the only aspect I could rely on.

I'm allowing the account to remain just because doing otherwise might break the website. I'm tired of thinking about and discussing this place. Please don't message me about it - I've turned all notifications off.

I understand that you're frustrated with the current state of Freesound and the interactions you've had. It can be uncomfortable when you don't find the engagement and collaboration you were hoping for.

I'd like to mention a few points you raised.

First, I understand that your private actions were disclosed publicly and caused you discomfort.

It's generally important for admins and mods on Freesound.org to address any concerns or issues that may aris, even if it involves some level of public discussion.

Regarding the sudden messages of solidarity, it's possible that people were not aware of the extent of your frustrations until now. Sometimes, it takes a specific incident or expression of discontent for others to realize the importance of someone's work or contributions. It doesn't necessarily mean they didn't care before, but rather they may not have fully understood the situation.

I respect your decision to keep your account active for the sake of the website's stability.
If you're feeling tired and overwhelmed by thinking and discussing the matter, it might be beneficial to take a break and step away from the platform for a while as I have done so many times before. Taking time away and focusing on activities that bring you joy, even if its not sound related can help you achieve a better/different perspective IMO.

Lastly, I won't reply further to you about the issue, as you've requested that and I respect your boundaries.

If you ever decide to revisit the matter or seek support in the future, don't hesitate to reach out to me or whomever you think can help.

J.P

Thanks @Erokia and @Seelengold for contributing to the discussion, and thanks @strangehorizon for deciding to keep your account. I think we can re-focus the discussion again on the feedback for the new UI.

JamesD wrote:
In the old UI each sound's play button icon is always visible.
In the new UI each sound's play button icon is hidden until the cursor hovers over the sound. This is cumbersome.

This has been raised by other users in this thread. Our impression is that the play button is "redundant" once you learn that all players have the play button in the same place and, in our experience, it does not make it difficult to play sounds if the button only appears on hover. Without all these "repeated" play buttons, pages look much cleaner. But seeing that you're not the first one mentioning this, maybe we should organise some sort of poll to make a final decision on that. Note also that you can play a sound by clicking anywhere in the player, not only in the play button. That will start the sound at the place where you clicked and maybe for short sounds you might prefer to click the play button to make sure you don't lose the attack.

saorenjoyer wrote:
Does it really make sense to have a score from 1 to 5? Either you like/used the sound or you don't really care about it

I guess this could be argued in both ways. It is true that more "modern" social media has tended to the "like/thumbs up" button, and it is also true that more than 50% of sound ratings in Freesound are "5 stars", but some people do like to give more detailed ratings and I think this provides good information. In more mainstream websites were content might be rated by more users, it would make less sense to have the 5 stars. But Freesound is smaller and sounds are sometimes only rated by a few people (or by non at all) so having this granularity is still nice I think.

A kind of small thing. Today I found myself clicking on a sound's rating, with no effect. Then I thought: "did the user disable ratings? Is that possible?. I tried clicking again... And then finally I started to think: "wait maybe the start rating is somewhere else"...and I found it on the right.

Shouldn't they be combined somehow?Or if it's important to have them separate, why not make them both clickable?

frederic.font
I guess this could be argued in both ways. It is true that more "modern" social media has tended to the "like/thumbs up" button, and it is also true that more than 50% of sound ratings in Freesound are "5 stars", but some people do like to give more detailed ratings...

A problem here is that detailed enough ratings can't always be given in neither thumbs up/down, nor 5 stars. Sometimes, the ratings don't make sense. This happens when people, for some reason, expect a sound to be *different*. They then don't judge by quality, but by context. There can be all sorts of reasons for misunderstandings (AI has the potential to fix a lot of this, by improving metadata, etc.). I don't know the exact solution to this, but perhaps a few different ratings could work, or the star rating + a button "Sound is not what I expected"...

RutgerMuller wrote:
A kind of small thing. Today I found myself clicking on a sound's rating, with no effect. Then I thought: "did the user disable ratings? Is that possible?. I tried clicking again... And then finally I started to think: "wait maybe the start rating is somewhere else"...and I found it on the right.

Shouldn't they be combined somehow?Or if it's important to have them separate, why not make them both clickable?

Hi Rutger,

Thanks for your messages,

I guess you refer to the sound page right?
There are the small stars with the "current rating" on the left, and big stars with "your rating" on the right side of the page. The idea with the "your rating" section was that this might motivate people to rate, that is why it is big and right next to the download button. We saw in the past that moving the rating widget next to the download button increased the number of ratings.

Maybe we could make the widget on the left to work as well, but I thought that could be confusing and both would somehow need to be synchronised. Also having them separated allows you to see your rating and the overall rating by other users.

Hi everyone,

Thanks to Frederic.font and freesound team for update accessibility of freesound interface but for the moment, always impossible to add bookmarks or click on similar sounds, it's not working now. What is the problem with screen readers, I tried with voice Over on my apple device, and nothing happens, same thing on my pc. Is it screen readers can't work correctly because Frederic.font tell me in a private message that it's resolve for modal, thanks for answer about this!

Hi @Tealc166,
So your screen reader is not yet reading the modals properly? Or you can read the modals but then have problems to, for example, save a bookmark because the screen reader does not see the button?

Hi Everyone,

This message is for Frederic. Yes, my screen reader tell me the button bookmark this sound. If I click on it, the message loading is there and after, nothing happens, not bookmarks added but withthe old ui, yes. Is it because I have problems with voice over or other screen readers? Thanks! In the new interface, the play buttons pause, loop work very well! Question, what you changed for modal with screen readers?

Hi Telac166,

If you see the message "loading" and then nothing happens, I think this means that the screen reader is not properly notified that the modal window has been loaded and does not know that it has to switch focus. This is what I thought I fixed yesterday, but if the problem persists I'll have to investigate further.

On another topic, I've been releasing more things for the new UI which were still missing compared to the old UI:
* Flag sound modal
* Modals to see the list of users who downloaded a sound/pack, and the list of sounds/packs downloaded by a user

Hi everyone,

Please check this other thread in which I prepared 2 polls to help deciding about using spectrograms vs waveforms by default, and about having the play buttons always visible or only on hover.

https://freesound.org/forum/beast_whoosh_beta_ui_feedback/44135/

strangehorizon wrote:
Individual sounds take up too much vertical space. More scrolling = more energy spent, more time lost.

The new sound grouping on the profile page cuts descriptions short, hides tags and groups things into a grid so that the users' eyes now have to move both horizontally and vertically to take in the information.

Users now have to click twice to get to their own profiles.

The cooltype background color #10101D conflicts with the otherwise warmtype color scheme, causing weak (but noticeable) eye strain. Easy enough to change with Dark Reader, though.

There is still too much margin space on either side.

Allowing any user's forum post history to be searched directly from their page is likely to encourage spambots and general harassment.

Batch describing sounds is still unnecessarily complicated. The batch button should just display a form where the user can enter details to be applied to everything being described.

I myself tried the new UI yesterday, and I accord with @strangehorizon's assessment. I was frankly shocked at its unusability for me as it stands; it would cause me significant visual and mental stress trying to work with it, and it would significantly slow down my productivity on the Freesound site. I definitely need the old UI's single vertically scrolling lists, not any sort of grid arrangement, never mind how showy and 'cool' the latter might seem. And the light background of the new design makes the whole show difficult to read -- I have developing cataracts, as most older people do, and that reduces contrast, especially where there's a very light background and not properly (harmoniously) contrasting colours.

I've switched back to the old UI, and hope that at least it will outlast me (I'm not expecting to be around here much longer anyway)!