Freesound Forums

So I'm not sure if this is the right forum to be posting in but I've had a question about freesound's uploading moderation process. I understand there are a number of freesound moderators working on their own time to go through and moderate new uploads but my question lies with the upload dates.

For example: If I submit and upload for moderation, say, today(June 26). And it's not moderated and uploaded officially until (June 29th). Why is it that the upload date and it's position on the "Sounds page" under "recent sounds" is the day I sumbit it for moderation(june 26) and not it's processed upload date on the (29th).

The way it is right now someone uploads a sound and instead of it showing first on the recent sounds list for a fair chance to be seen by many users, it's instead thrown 2-3 days back in the list under a pile of other sounds.

So in short: why are the upload dates for sounds the submitted date and not the moderated date.

Because the file is stamped with the date upon it's upload to the database, and doesn't change; it's that simple

It doesn't really make sense to append the date after successful moderation, because then it's not date of upload anymore in the backend.

@Headphaze logically it doesnt make sense for what I stated about the upload dates. However I think it would be fair to all users for a chance to be seen right off the bat on the recent uploads page rather that a spot in the list upon moderation date 3 pages deep

I see where you're coming from and your line of thinking isn't completely off.

All users have a chance for their recent uploads to be seen. When a sound gets approved by a moderator, there is a little delay before it goes onto the "latests sounds" list, but they all go there.

The problem with having uploads going onto that list straight away is that they have not yet been moderated, therefore they are not available for download.

Apologies, when I said right off the bat I meant, directly after moderation. Meaning after moderation they go directly into the recent sounds list on the first page rather than being placed further down the list because they werent lucky enough to have someone moderate their sound the same day of submission.

Because, once again, The way it appears to me right now. If someone were to submit a sound and it doesn't get moderated for 2-3 days, that person has less of a chance to be viewed by people browsing recent sounds (assuming most people don't browse very deep into that list).

Of course, people can still find that person's sounds through tags, and maybe not many people browse recent sounds as much as they search for specific tags. I just thought I'd get some feedback as to what other people think of the subject I brought up and if they felt the same way or not

Ah, I see what you mean. Well that is a totally valid point you have.

I see no reason why the order of sounds updated on that list shouldn't come in chronological order of processing, that is just a developmental decision.

It's always good to bring these things to attention

Hi everyone,

your point is completely valid. The chances of new sounds being displayed in the main page are at the end related with the moderation time. We have to think how to improve this. One option is to sort by the moderation date instead of the uploading date, the problem being that in many cases sounds are moderated in big numbers (when moderators find some time to moderate, they maybe approve a big number of sounds in a short period of time), and therefore a lot of sounds would have a very similar "date" and most would be again out of the recent sounds list.

In any case, this is something we are aware that needs to be looked at

The point is very valid, because the system as it is now positively discriminates whitelisted users.
For whitelisted users, sounds get approved automatically. These sounds can go on the recent sounds list as soon as they are uploaded.
Users that are not whitelisted have to wait for moderation, which as we know can take a couple of days. Ehen they make it to the list they will be behind all the sounds from whitelisted users that where uploaded up to the moderation date. Since there are quite a few whitelisted users and many of them are frequent uploaders, sounds from other users rarely make it to the top of that list

This is one thing that i think worked better on the first version of freesound (2005-2011).
At that time the front page had a list of only the names of all the recent uploaders ,making it possible to have many names without using much space.Clicking individually on these names bought up the uploaders sounds,description,playback etc.So once the uploaders sound was moderated,or whitelisted it started at the top and dropped down the list as newer uploaders contributed. All the uploaders names stayed on this list for three days before dropping off,in this way the list could be longer or shorter.
I think this way was less discriminatory and it gave more buzz and incentive to upload.

juskiddink wrote:
This is one thing that i think worked better on the first version of freesound (2005-2011).
At that time the front page had a list of only the names of all the recent uploaders ,making it possible to have many names without using much space.

Well, it will be hard to beat fs1 front page, it had tons of things
However, what you describe is kind of what we implemented for the "people" page in fs2. It is not exactly the same but the idea was to give visibility to users instead of sounds.

Regarding the recent sounds section in the frontpage, as you see there does not seem to be a single "perfect" solution. Maybe we could think of somehow randomising this section and show sounds approved in the last 2 days but not necessarily sorted by moderation date?

Regarding the recent sounds list:

If you update the list in order of moderation, and then consolidate multiple sounds by the same user (like what happens on the search results), this would mean that everyone gets a chance to be on the front page and not jump back a couple of pages due to their delayed approval.

Multiple sounds by the same users are already consolidated in the list of most recent sounds.
I think I'm starting to like more the idea of "randomising" this section in a way that we randomly chose X users from the Y users that got at least one moderated sound during the last Z days, and then change this "randomisation" every few hours.
What do you think? I kind of dislike the idea that the front page have "random" sections (besides the random sound of the day), but maybe that would be the most fair option.

Could we consolidate sounds in weekly buckets? - rather than going with a randomized option?

What do you mean? not sure I understand

Currently all uploads from users get consolidated by user name on the moderation screen.
Lets assume user Alfred uploads 1 sound on 1st July and 99 sounds on the 3rd July and user Bertrand uploads 1 sound on the 2nd of July.
If a Moderator looks at the queue on the 4th July, he will see 100 sounds from Alfred ahead of the single sound from Bertrand.

Obviously it is convenient to cluster sounds by the same user for moderation, but would it make sense for the clustering to be weekly, or even daily?
With daily clustering, the queue would look like: 1sound from Alfred, 1 sound from Bertrand, 99 sounds from Alfred. - so it is likely that this would speed up the moderation of Bertrand's sound and be closer to the actual chronological order of sound uploads.

I still feel, though, that the issue here is that the sounds from whitelisted users skip the moderation altogether and become available immediately. Because they are not subject to that delay, they are more likely to figure in the 'recent additions'/'latest sounds' and then on the 'most downloaded sounds' of the week.