Freesound Forums

VlatkoBlazek wrote:
At least they can tell us what our sounds are being used for.

Seems to me there are two kind of users, those like myself who enjoy recording and uploading them for others. (I do download some clips that I think are brilliant, but don't really search for anything yet), and those who download and use. So it's no surprise that either people download tons but have never uploaded, or upload tons but don't download much.

However, you would have thought considering all our uploads are free, that manners alone would have made a higher percentage say thank you. Its possible of course that they just download them but never use them, so they have little to inspire them to say thanks.

This is where I was really coming from when I started the thread. Given that its all free, why do people feel it's necessary to knock your work with a low rating or a crappy comment. No manners and no respect. I think that must be the reason.

VlatkoBlazek wrote:
I understand that, but they can comment and attribute, can't they?

Correct, but they most likely do not see this site like a community as we do.

Headphaze wrote:

Correct, but they most likely do not see this site like a community as we do.

True. Which is a shame, because then we'd know what they were using our tracks for

Which raises the question, how do we encourage them to use the forum more?

PapercutterJohn wrote:
Which raises the question, how do we encourage them to use the forum more?

Make it more appealing somehow, but that's like a snowball's chance in hell.

I have no bright ideas, unless we start injecting memes into the place, which seems to be what's "hot" these days for generation Z. I do know It's hard for a non-profit organisation to do PR; no prizes then unfortunately.

The Dares were supposed to add some zest into the community. I haven't seen much traction gained from this though.

Over time I have accepted that this is not really the place for a buzzing forum, because everyone is too busy tinkering with synthesisers and out in the field. At least, that's the impression I get.

Headphaze wrote:
Over time I have accepted that this is not really the place for a buzzing forum, because everyone is too busy tinkering with synthesisers and out in the field. At least, that's the impression I get.

That's probably true I guess, which is a shame. However, I guess the people who appreciate the forum will gravitate to it, and the others will use the rest of the site in whichever way suits them. Which is a good thing really! It means many different types of people will get benefit from it.

I guess one of my problems is I'd like other people to think like me. Say why you're downloading, say thank you, be appreciative etc. Well, in truth the world doesn't work like that, and for it to do so everyone else would have had to be brought up by my parents. I'm saying nowt about what they'd think about that!

Anyway, I guess Freesound is teriffic precisely because of its wide variety of users and uses and I should be grateful for that.

So thank you Freesound and Forum users. I appreciate your company (and advice)

PapercutterJohn wrote:
Anyway, I guess Freesound is teriffic precisely because of its wide variety of users and uses and I should be grateful for that.

Perhaps you should

PapercutterJohn wrote:
Anyway, I guess Freesound is teriffic precisely because of its wide variety of users and uses and I should be grateful for that.

Perhaps you should

Hi Everybod. My thoughts.

I'm pretty much glad that FS and the forums are just the way they are. There's always room for improvement, but that is happening. Organically.

I'm a very minor player here and contribute but a little. I've only uploaded a handful of very amateur sounds yet still have over twenty thousand downloads. That's just a piddle in the ocean compared to the serious members. If only ten percent of these downloaders left comments then I would probably not have the time or curiosity to look at them all. As it happens the dozen or so comments I have are very welcome and all the more valuable to me for their scarcity. The same is true for the forums. I read, enjoy and learn from the handful of posts and replies every day and get to know the style and ideas of the frequent contributors. If the number of posts increased vastly I doubt the quality would go up, or even remain the same, and I would probably not want to spend the time or energy sifting through them in the hope of stumbling across the occasional gem. So facebook had a billion members active on one day! Yeah, right! - That's exactly why I don't use facebook, twitter, or any of the other popular mega-blog type "communities" where 99.9% of it is "look-at-me" blah-blah. I am all for encouraging everybody to contribute, but make it too "popular" and it will lose it's focus and dilute it's most valuable contributors. We will have a whole bunch more 18h*ltcs but won't attract more kl*nkbs H*dph*z*s, P*p*rc*tt*rs, Al**ns or T*mbr*s etc.. (list curtailed simply due to a shortage of *'s.)

I thoroughly agree that more feedback and "intelligent" comment would be great and should be encouraged, but I think we should be very careful what we wish for!

Wibby.

strangely_gnarled wrote:
We will have a whole bunch more 18h*ltcs but won't attract more kl*nkbs H*dph*z*s, P*p*rc*tt*rs, Al**ns or T*mbr*s etc.. (list curtailed simply due to a shortage of *'s.)

Wibby you're strange. But that's exactly why I love you!

strangely_gnarled wrote:
I read, enjoy and learn from the handful of posts and replies every day and get to know the style and ideas of the frequent contributors.

Oops. I'm being watched! Better smarten up my thinking a notch.

Good points though Wibby.

I'm stunned at your 20000 downloads! Didn't realise anyone could achieve that. I was amazed I got up to 100.
Just shows you how many people actually use and get something from Freesound!

Actually, 20k isn't as high as you might think. It may be daunting at first for someone who is relatively new and only has 100 downloads.

Take a look at this RHumphries - This user I estimate has well over 150k downloads

Imagine the count for users with over a thousand good uploads like ERH of which some of the sounds individually have 10k+.

And then we have Jovica too, the user with the most uploads superseded by Modularsamples recently.

Just puts it into perspective.

PapercutterJohn wrote:

Oops. I'm being watched! Better smarten up my thinking a notch.

Good points though Wibby.

I'm stunned at your 20000 downloads! Didn't realise anyone could achieve that. I was amazed I got up to 100.
Just shows you how many people actually use and get something from Freesound!

Don't worry, Your thinking's smart enough. The downloads add up over time. The comments add up too, but slower. Do a search with a blank field, i.e. all sounds, then add search order by downloads(most first) and check out rbh thunder storm. Imagine(or work out) how many downloads Mr Humphries has in total if you add up all 137 contributions he's made. As I say, strangely_gnarled is small fry, but that's okay, I'm not here for my ego. Anyway, most downloads never get used in a serious way. My 20k+ downloads have led to maybe a dozen or so works referenced on google. Coincidentally that's probably a very similar number to the number of comments I've got. I'm sure there are quite a few times my sounds have been used one way or another but have never been given credit, but I'm not going to get over-heated by that. It happens to every sound on here. I've downloaded quite a few sounds myself but haven't used any of them (yet). I liked them, and/or they gave me inspiration in the little creative recording I do. (Just some sound effects for a local Amateur Drama group.)

Anyway, good luck with your endeavors Mr Papercutter, and I hope you get the credit and feedback you deserve.

Wibby.

Edit. Ahh, Mr headphaze, I see you are a quicker thinker than I and beat me to the post!

http://i58.tinypic.com/2ik6vbn.jpg

I counter with my "Enchanted Bunny"!

https://www.freesound.org/people/jamesabdulrahman/sounds/320521/

This is a funny discussion

Yes: downloads and comments add up over time. To an extent, even star ratings do.
As you build up a large library of sounds in Freesound you will slowly see a stream of "thank you" messages or comments. - Yes, they are few and far between, but they might turn a very grey day into a happy one when they come. Some users will be particularly nice or encouraging on their messages.

I have seen a few members who have an account for 10 days and have uploaded 3 sounds complaining in the forums: "where are my star ratings?", "Why doesn't anyone comment on my sounds?", etc.
Here at Freesound it pays to be patient.
I am sure the site owners will not change that and turn this into some kind of social media website. That is not the purpose of Freesound.

We have about a dozen or so active users in the forums. But the community is surprisingly helpful.
Post a request for help on mic choice, how to record 'in the wild', EQ tips... you name it! Usually you will find someone types to the rescue. - And very often will be a user that is not even an active user of the forums, but has the know how.

@PapercutterJohn
You are kind of the new guy here. There is a compulsory warning to sound uploaders. not sure if anyone has given it to you yet.
"It is never the sounds you expect that become top downloads."
OK... there may be a few exceptions to the rule... but...
You upload a great sound/recording that you are really proud of -> 2 years later it could have only 5 downloads.
You have some shitty sound (if there is such a thing). You were going to throw it away (imagine a taperecorder click at the end of an enterview you recorded to tape.) But you upload it here instead.
Within a week , it reaches 100 downloads. 2 years later could have 800, and several comments.
No one understands this. We blame the Freesound gremlins...

AlienXXX wrote:
It is never the sounds you expect that become top downloads.

@AlienXXX I've noticed this already! I'm guessing it's because people use them for things I would never dream of. "I used this for a piece about manufacturing polyurethane foam" came as a surprise, and frankly made my day, cos it meant someone got something out of the recording.

To go back to the beginning (cos it has indeed been a strange discussion but, for me at least, very interesting), my initial point was that I thought I noticed a trend that negative ratings reduced the number of downloads following it, which would be a shame because people might miss sounds that they might like. If so, this in turn would mean the rating function was having a negative impact.

Having had all this discussion I now think "Hey, it's a great site, what does it matter how people use it as long as everyone is getting pleasure doing what they do. If they choose to skip low star rated sounds they have that right".

With that in mind I decided to make all my recordings public domain. That way I won't get upset if someone doesn't attribute correctly. If they make money out of it, good for them. As long as people are getting something out of my recordings I'll continue to upload them and ignore the bad ratings as irrelevant. After all, what is a good or bad sound? It only depends on what the rater wanted to use it for.

And yes, I am a newbie here, but at 55 that makes me feel young!

I wish everyone had such a relaxed approach!

The truth is that, despite our efforts and those of many others, many people still do not understand and do not care about licenses.
All they want is a sound for their latest cartoon/school project/etc.
People making music should know better, but hey some of them may be 10 year olds with access to a PC. - They have access to the technolocy, but they are not mature enough to understand licenses.
Many others, really just don't care. Plain and simple. This is not just generation "now" it is also generation "free" - for them everything on the internet is free and up for grabs.
Those that download all their music from illegal sites will not care about ripping out sounds from youtube or other places. Freesound is just easier (sounds are searcheable and easy to download in high quality wav or flac formats).

Each of us needs to realise that the sounds that we put here are free for people to take without giving anything back. Realistically, we cannot police the internet and the Universe, looking for un-attributed use of our sounds or other violations of the licenses on our sounds.
If we cannot deal with that, then maybe we should not upload.

The CC licenses are, essentially, a matter of goodwill. As all goodwill, they are subject to abuse.
We can debate the moral and/or legality of it, but it is academic.

Back to your initial point. There are many different user types at Freesound.
Some are just passing by. They create an account to download the sounds they need at that point in time and then never come back.
There are also people that download sounds they find cool. They are not organized, they throw all of these sounds into their hard-drive and then one day when (if) they actually use it they have no idea where it came from. This makes it difficult for them to attribute, especially if they have renamed the file.

Your point is actually a very good one:
It is not the first time that the sound rating system is criticised BUT this is the first time that a consequence (or side-effect) has been pointed out that is actually very relevant for Freesound. I am going to bring this up to the site admins. They can analyse the data at the Freesound level. If they do that and determine that the current rating system is actually detrimental they are likely to remove it or replace with another system.
So you may be a newbie - but you seem to bring good anf fresh ideas.

AlienXXX wrote:
Realistically, we cannot police the internet and the Universe, looking for un-attributed use of our sounds or other violations of the licenses on our sounds.
If we cannot deal with that, then maybe we should not upload.

Although most of my uploads are released as CCBY, I actually really don't care all that much if people attribute me or not; call me crazy. I only get precious about it when the sound is being used commercially.

It's just occurred to me that as the site is called Freesound, maybe it should be for public domain uploads only (not a serious suggestion but a valid thought). After all, any other licence is actually not "free". Perhaps this contributes to people grabbing stuff and not attributing. A free sound is by implication there for the taking.

I agree with AlienXXX that most people probably can't remember where they downloaded it from in the first place!. My decision to go for public domain was because I read a thread about someone nicking sounds and putting them on youtube with a donation button. I started to get really angry about it, but then thought, is it really worth getting upset about? Then I was listening to someone elses public domain sound and a comment said it had been used in a professional record that can be downloaded at iTunes. It was so good I downloaded it! I thought "If that was my sound being used in a professional record I would be so thrilled!" That's not likely to happen if they have to credit me.

The interesting thing though is that since making all my tracks public domain I've stopped caring if anyone else makes money out of them. After all, I'm not going to, I wouldn't know how to, so if someone else has taken time to aquire that knowledge, they've earned their money in a way. I think the background worry is that I'd think I was a mug if someone made big bucks out of a sound I uploaded. Frankly, it isn't going to happen is it.

One thing I should qualify though is I'm not a sound engineer. Some of you people put a lot of work into your sounds. I absolutely understand you'd be mad if someone took your work and made dosh out of it (I'm a professional artist. Copyright is taken 100 percent seriously, so I understand). As for my recordings though, I just notice a sound is happening, check the record level and hit the record button. So yes, I understand, at my level the arguement is totally different to many of the other Freesound users.

@Alienxxx Nice to know I bring good and fresh ideas. That'll be a first for me!