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Here's a small update! Mostly did this to test the new system.

And what's the conclusion? Does the new system work as awesomely as it seems?

So... with this new (great) system, it seems like sheets are accepted one at a time, resulting in a steadily growing backlog of accepted sheets. How many sheets do you plan to have accepted before it's update time? I currently count six accepted sheets using the new method, as well as those accepted using the old, however many that might be.

At any rate, the system appears to work quite well. Every posted submission seems to get feedback, the arrangers are actively present in the feedback threads and update the sheets as required, and the uploaders participate actively too, resulting in a very transparent and visible feedback-and-approval process.

Last, a couple suggestions for improvement:
1) A line of text somewhere in the NSM panel, asking the arranger to keep an eye on the thread for the submitted sheet. This to prevent people from doing "hit-and-runs", AKA submitting a sheet and then leaving. I guess feedback will be most active for the first couple of days after submission, after which the thread might fall to the second page if nobody tries to follow up the critique and improve the sheet.

2) This is cross-referring to the Abandoned Arrangements project: Clarifying the "legal" stuff, or at least our sort of code of conduct. If a sheet is arranged, submitted, critiqued, but not improved and abandoned, are other members free to take matters in their own hands and re-format and re-submit it? Or is the sheet considered the property of the arranger until it is accepted? Should there be a time limit? I just want this to be clarified, to prevent the forum from being filled with near-finished arrangements that are just not good enough to make it to the site.

Sounds nice and all, but... what's up with all the dromedaries?

Well, we have accepted worse offenses in the past...

[pass.]

Myself, I think this looks pretty decent, and it sounds awesome. Formatting seems to follow the rules, 8va is used where appropriate and the chords don't span impossible distances. I'd call it a pass.

Any objections or differing opinions?

EDIT: On closer inspection, it seems like the original sheet had 8va in the left hand as well, making it a lot easier for inexperienced players to see which keys they are supposed to be hitting. Could something like that be implemented in this sheet too?

As a layman, I'll say that the formatting looks good to. I recommend this for approval.

Granted, this system is a lot cleaner and simpler to the arranger, but I can totally see the arrangements being accepted at the same rate as with the old system, since Deku or Olimar still have to go through all the submissions to see if everything's correct. I'm just putting my two cents though.

Well, this is theoretically where the Veteran Arrangers could have played a role. Or, well, everybody can, regardless of their membership status.

Folks, we've got a big subforum for submitted sheets now, where everybody can discuss each individual submission. We can all go in there, look at the sheets, and voice our opinion on whether or not the submitted sheet is up to standard, pointing out the flaws, etc. If a respected and format-savvy arranger says "this is good enough" in big, bold letters, uploaders like Deku and Olimar could choose to trust the judgment of that person, and accept it after a quick glance. Likewise, if the sheet is turned down by a veteran or two, Deku and Olimar wouldn't have to bother checking the sheet. The Submissions Board allows for everybody to voice their opinion on very specific sheets, give feedback, and I'm pretty sure the uploaders will take the feedback into account when going through the queue.

In a regular arrangement thread, arrangers might put up five or ten sheets at a time, meaning that individual sheets won't enjoy much attention unless they're really well-known themes or otherwise particularly well done. In Submissions, however, there's only ONE sheet per thread. Each thread is dedicated to that song and that alone. A perfect format for feedback.

The Submissions board can be a great tool if we all start using it. Sure, Deku and Olimar have the main responsibility and carry the Official Stamp of Approval, but that doesn't mean they have to do all the checking alone. We're allowed ot voice our opinion too, and I know plenty of people here are as just as competent as D&O when it comes to judging sheets. You don't have to be an uploader to spot mistakes in formatting, or the lack thereof. And with the aid of your judgement, D&O can get their job done faster. Which means more uploads.

I hope to see you all in the Submissions board!

I really see no reason to have more updaters with the new system, since their work basically boils down to "press a button to upload, compile an announcement post". If I've understood the new system correctly, the uploading process is significantly faster now than it was before. The uploading itself is not where the problem lies.

If we want the entire process of updating sheets to go faster, we have to look at the entire system. Ideally, I'd add a flowchart here, but I think I can get the point across without one too:

Basically, the updating process is a multi-step process, starting with ideas/requests, then ending with "sheet on site, everybody happy". An arranger creates a rough draft for an arrangement, it is reviewed by peers (everybody who visits the arranger's thread), submitted, reviewed by "mods", and either approved and uploaded to site, or turned down for polishing. If the latter happens, the arranger has to fix what's wrong with it, and resubmit. I'd say the most important treshold of the system is the submission, where the sheets go from being the responsibility of the arranger to the responsibility of the site (represented by the mods). A turned-down submission will be sent back to the arranger for minor corrections, while an accepted one will make it to the site, as-is.

The process has a couple of bottlenecks, where the system is prone to "clogging" unless somebody puts in a great amount of work. Until this new system came online, the submission process has been such a bottleneck, where sheets could only make it from "finished arrangement" to "final review" through a somewhat tedious process involving threads that were opened very rarely, and closed shortly afterwards. However, it was never the only bottleneck, and now that it's fixed, the problem lies elsewhere.

What takes time is the reviewing process. Uploaders will spend a lot of time going through sheets to see if they meet the quality standards, and only then can they upload them or turn them down. One problem is the amount of imperfect sheets making it to the approval stage, because the peer review process, pre-submission, can be sloppy at times. If arrangements are given sufficient feedback before they're submitted, the uploaders will have a lot less work on their hands, and sheets will be uploaded more frequently.

Throwing more uploaders and more mods at the approval stage will help speed up that one stage, true, but it won't help much if all the competent "sheet reviewers" are tasked to concentrate on the post-submission stage instead of going to the arrangement threads themselves and give feedback there. Notably, at this stage anyone can help, regardless of mod status or uploader status or badges or bold letters or stars or post count or whatever.  Go to the arranger's thread, help the fellow format his sheets properly, and then send it to submissions. Pre-submission, anybody can help reviewing, and the arranger decides when a sheet is good enough to submit. Post-submission, the mods/uploaders have to scrutinize it for mistakes, and the more perfect a sheet is at the point of submission, the easier it will be for the mods.

JaMaHa and DekuTrombonist have been concentrating their efforts on speeding up the post-submission part of the process, but there isn't much to be done about the pre-submission. It is the responsibility of the arranger, and his/her peers (that is, everybody) to make the sheet good before it's submitted. That's how we can speed things up. If we fix the problems with a sheet pre-submission, a lot of work in the post-submission stage can be saved. Pre-submission, we can all help. Post-submission, the work is split across only a handful of people.

Hmm... I'll see if I can make that flow chart later.

^On the contrary, I think it was the sporadicity of the updates, and the requirement of arrangers to post their sheets in threads that showed up once in a blue moon and stayed open for two days, that caused many arrangers to simply not bother to. Historically, the process of submission was too strenous for people to bother with unless they spent loads of time on here, so many arrangement threads experienced a pile-up of sheets that never was submitted. They would have been submitted under conditions like the new ones, where submission is a continuously-running process, but when you could post two sheets every other month - if you happened to be logged on that day - they never were.

The thing I like about this system is that a user who isn't on the forums can still go to the submissions board to see sheets that might be on the site in the future. In that regard it's very nice.

Well... it has always been like that, actually. I think many people have been drawn to NSM after discovering where the sheets on the main page were made, going to the sheet factory known as the Submissions board on the forums, and seeing all the cool stuff that would feature in later updates...

...or, in some cases, fall into obscurity. I especially remember this awesome Butter Building sheet from SSBB that I found on my first guest-trip into the forum. It never made it to the site. Incidents like this is one of the main reasons why I think there should be a "safety net" for finished sheets on this site, to prevent waste of good work.

[We can't simply submit sheets without people's permission.]

Some of you might remember the old Abandoned Arrangements thread. That one died down, but I think the idea still is relevant.

Basically, the problem is that some arrangers create arrangements - good arrangements at that - at a faster rate than the site uploads. This typically leads to threads full of finished arrangements, that rarely are submitted or uploaded to the site (fun fact - The first arrangement Dahans made for NSM still isn't uploaded). Then, for one reason or another, these arrangers begin visiting NSM less frequently, they don't arrange as much any more and don't visit the submission threads - yet their arrangement threads are still full of ready-to-be-submitted sheets. Finished sheets even, readily approved and ready to be uploaded, if anybody just got around to do so.

After a while, file hosting sites will delete files from accounts that are unused. This phenomenom is known as "link rot", and it eventually leads to threads full of dead links, possibly linking to that one song you've requested time and time again. Once again I'll use GreekGeek's submission thread as an example. Loads of good songs not on site, many of them just a quick touch-up away from being upload-worthy, but many of the links are dead and the rest won't remain for long.

I think there is lot of unused potential lying around NSM's abandoned arrangement threads. Many sheets of varying degree of progress and quality, but some are good and some excellent, and it would be a waste letting them all go to oblivion. This thread, this project, tries to do something about it. Namely, collect and backup sheets from forgotten arrangement threads, with the goal of preserving the effort that went into creating them, and - if we get the consent of the arranger - maybe finally get them on site one day, or pass them on to people who can finish the job started long ago.

The previous Abandoned Arrangements thread uncovered one important fact: We can't simply submit sheets without people's permission. Unless the arranger has specifically given consent, we wouldn't be legally allowed to put the sheets on site (and while we're in a legal gray zone as it is, the people we'd be offending would be our own comrades - people who've dedicated time and effort to help NSM - it would be immoral of us to upload their work behind their backs). However, I think we're free to catalogize and backup the files here on the forums.

So at first, the project would concentrate on mapping the extent of the problem. Finding sheets with active links from old submission threads, making backups if necessary (I downloaded all I could find in GreekGeek's thread), gathering them in one place and maybe trying to get in touch with the arrangers.

I think some discussion could also be in order before we get started, to really find out and agree on what to do. Here are some proposed points of discussion:

• What counts as "consent" of the arranger? Would files under the header "sheets for submission" count as a permission to upload? Personally, I think we should differ between sheets only needing formatting work, and sheets needing larger corrections. The former would be okay to polish and submit under the widest definition of permission, while the latter would require approval from the original arranger.
• What constitutes an abandoned thread? Should we start at threads that haven't seen activity in six months? One year? Two years? Never?
• How much are we allowed to do without the consent of the arranger? Would simply the gathering of links, or re-hosting them entirely, count as piracy? Some might object to the idea of their old, embarrassing work being dragged out of their dying thread and put in a .zip-file in an active thread for all of NSM to see.
• Any other viewpoints?

Also, coincidentally, the only arranger to actively permit the old project to use his files was Bespinben, who left for Mormonism almost to the day two years ago. If he keeps his old promises, he'll be back next week, probably a little disappointed that the project went nowhere. Let's hope we can get something started for real this time, overcoming the obstacle of "unintended piracy".

Any thoughts or ideas?

By the way, has the uploading process been sped up since "the old days"? I seem to recall the uploaders having trouble finding time to actually do the uploads, because it was a time-consuming task. Is that being updated too now? A "click-and-it's-up" system would be ideal, but I suppose there are other ways to do it too. Especially since we have a tradition of announcing all site updates, listing off the uploads as they are being done (which is a smart move, since it makes every update very visible).

However, that tradition has a downside too. As far as I've understood, part of the reason why updates are so rare is that they are being done in one big process, with loads of uploads, then an announcement in one sitting. Splitting it up, such as already was being done with approvals and uploads, might ease the load on the uploaders a little.

For instance, and I'm hypothesizing here, a way of "hiding" uploaded arrangements, a sort of "limbo" to put uploaded files in so that big updates can be done in small batches. An uploader may upload, say, one single arrangement (or even just a single file) if he has ten minutes to spare, and it'll be put on site but not visible for regular users. After a while, across all uploaders and their ten-minute commitments to The Cause, there would have been enough files uploaded-but-not-visible for it to warrant a real annoumement. At that point, somebody could write the update text, make a new topic, and so on and so forth, then click on the "unhide" button and everything appears visible in an instant as the announcement is published. No need to do it all in one sitting, the uploading could be done in one big batch or sporadically across a few weeks, depending on how busy the uploaders are. It would also allow for sheets to be approved and instantly uploaded, guaranteeing a well-made sheet a spot in the next big update. Having a "backlog" of approved and uploaded sheets would also make an incentive to make updates at higher frequencies (at least we should push for 0.25 microhertz or more).

http://forum.ninsheetm.us/index.php?topic=4781.0

There was that thread, but I thought perhaps there was another thread?

I'm not really sure how to do it. Many of the mediafire links have disappeared thanks to their over-enthusiastic deletion of files. If you make the topic in the Arrangements & Submissions board I'll sticky it for you.

Ahh, there it was, thanks for finding it!

Seems like I'd forgot the copyright issue, though. As NasiDe and Olimar pointed out in that thread, simply grabbing files from old arrangement threads and submitting them will be considered copyright infringement. Guess we'll have to make some sort of policy on that before we get the project rolling. I'll make the thread anyway, as that would be the most appropriate place to discuss it. But given what time it is here now, I think I'll wait until tomorrow...

It seems like the forum has been restructured a bit since I was last active, and I cant remember where I put that thread.

Oh well, might as well make an entirely new one. I didn't rehost any of the old sheets, and I guess the various links have all expired by now. Any suggestions as to how to do it?

Now this looks like great news. There are, unfortunately, many examples of great sheets having been lost in long-since-deserted submission threads out there. The reviewing/uploading process has always been the great bottleneck of NSM, so I hope this speeds it up a bit.

I think I made a "reviving the sheets" project waaaaaay back when, trying to gather the remaining lost sheets in a single place for fix-ups and submitting. As far as I recall, it faded into obscurity after a while, though. Maybe a revival is in order?