this is an excellent thread
 

but my head is too stuffy to give a really coherent post...lot's of great ideas (roger you've picked up the best of them) and i agree with rick&Yspaz on the trickery idea (Yes they are in agreement!).

just do what cha gotta do jim, roger, unter...etc.

some listerns will just have to learn the hard way. it's obvious to me the guilty parties should now know the reason the songs are no longer on the list. they must come to the homepage to request...perhaps they will actually read the homepage and discontinue the abuse....i was shocked at the statistics roger 300 request and only a listing of about 20 songs! O...M...G! what a misuse the vast catalogue of music here.

anywho, i'm taking my stuffy head and retreating back under the covers
great thread!

poda

Re: this is an excellent thread
 

Not necessarily. I have the frame-less request page on my favorites list. I frequently am somewhere else on the web, pull it down, make a request, and go back. Never see the homepage. If you make a desk-top short-cut, even easier to miss the page.

Re: this is an excellent thread
 

Not necessarily. I have the frame-less request page on my favorites list. I frequently am somewhere else on the web, pull it down, make a request, and go back. Never see the homepage. If you make a desk-top short-cut, even easier to miss the page.

None. Except we're not subjected to the 5th playing of a given song that week.


Only the person who's been overrequesting gets this treatment. The rest of the folk get what they've bargained for.

You owe me a new keyboard. You'll be getting the bill. :D

In all honesty, I was never seriously considering making those types of modifications to the station (well, not VERY seriously, anyway). They'd be far too difficult to implement correctly and without bugs, and it would be a real bear to police. I have the feeling that I'd trap far more of the good guys with this than the bad guys.

It just wouldn't be worth the hassle and problems that it would create.

I am, however, still actively pursuing the option of request blocking. I've narrowed it down to about three different options, one of which will block access to the station entirely and the other two just blocking request functionality.

Roger -Dot- Lee, you realize, Rick, that this is like the third time this week. You trying to set a precedent or something? or maybe some kind of record?

Yeah. Blocking is better than bait-and-switch. Go Dotty Go.

Re: My Approach to Making Requests
 

Actually, it's much more than partially programmatic. In our licensing agreement terms thing, as I understand, we have to put in a minimum delay of a certain amount for requests due to copyright/piracy issues. That is my understanding of why we do it. The configuration and decisions predate me, and, while I like to rock the boat on occasion, this isn't one of those times. :)

And, for the record, our delay is minimum of 1 hour. I say minimum, because after that delay, the request gets placed at the bottom of the queue. Any remaining delay depends on what's in the queue. If there's only two songs, then yours will be on deck shortly. If there's a whole bunch, then your wait will be longer. Also note that only the two songs that are waiting to play are listed. There may be others -- many others -- waiting to play.

Something else you'll want to consider is if there's a show running at the time. I see by your information that you're from Good Olde Silly Con Valley (I made my escape from Sunnyvale in 1996 -- used to live right off Central Expressway and Lawrence Expwy). Anyway, our shows tend to co-incide to your morning/afternoon hours. When a show is running, everything gets pushed back. Tuesdays, from 8am to noon your time are when we do the Gagliarchives replay. Four hours right there. And the requests back up fairly heavily during those times.

So you'll want to keep that in mind when you're making requests.



Not a problem. We have no problem at all with this nature of requesting.

See, the difference from the way YOU request and those that we have problems with are:

• while you may request one or two songs repeatedly, once you get a handle on things, you MOVE ON. This, in our opinion, is a valid use of the resources.
• when you have requested (at least from the IP address from which you posted this note), you may hit a duplicate, or you may do two or three songs off of a given album. But that's it. You move on. Again, we have no problem with this. You don't continue to request the same song week after week. THAT is where we have the problems.
• You've come in here to help try to solve the problem instead of just opening Winamp/iTunes/whatever they happen to be listening to.

I could go on, but I think everyone gets the point.



I'm hip. Although attempting to judge a song by it's title is identical to judging a book by it's cover. I can't count the number of gems I've discovered because I had a jumpy mouse at HP.



oy, if we only had a bunch more like you instead of the two or three that request the same blasted songs daily.



Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's this type of use that we encourage. If everyone used the system this way, we wouldn't have these problems.



Which one? If you could give me a name, I'll see if it's being overrequested and yank it if necessary. Who knows, you might even get a round of applause from the regulars! :D

Yeah, unfortunately we can't do much about that and still be within the good graces of the recording industry. Although you might have better luck with the additional information in the above post...

Roger -Dot- Lee
Second in Command
Professional Spewster

Re: Re: My Approach to Making Requests
 

Also, there is a 3 hour delay between plays of the same artist. So, if you request a newly added Mogwai track, and at the time the third song in the queue is a different Mogwai song, you'll have the same delays Roger.Lee mentioned + 3 hours. Keeps it from being a Mogwai marathon.

Re: Re: Re: My Approach to Making Requests
 

That's a VERY good point.

There's also an additional limitation -- that the same song, once played, can not be played again for another 8 hours.

Roger -Dot- Lee

.
.
I am not a programmer and know next to nothing about programming so if this sounds stupid, I'm sorry.

Is there a way that you can force people to logon to AM in order to request any songs and then once requested, the requested song will be grayed out to that user ID for say 14 days rendering it un-selectable for the 14 days by that user ID? On day 15 it will become active again. Kind of like spam guard that a lot of forums have but for a longer period of time.
.
.

.
.
Sorry, I posted that before I logged on. I am registered.
.
.

It doesn't sound stupid. Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer either (in spite of what my boss thinks). So what you're suggesting, while possible (and in fact likely feasable), I'm not quite sure where I'd start in implementing it.

It's not a half bad idea, though it'd likely be a tad rough on the database.

Let me mull it about and see what I might be able to come up with.

Roger -Dot- Lee, another good idea...

Holy crap that's the best idea ever.

I've seen some stations where the song is blacked out for 10 days even after one person has requested it. This is one of my favorite readio station websites They have very sophisticated database management - I've used them as much as possible for great ideas. We're still talking a lot of programming and testing, though.

Avian

wish I'd said it... "holy crap", I did.
 

I suggest that one would need to be registered and logged in to request quite some time ago.

... and nothing is impossible when programming code!

Re: wish I'd said it... "holy crap", I did.
 

Did I hear a ... VOLUNTEER?!?!?

Roger -Dot- Lee, you can stop laughing now, VM. :p :D

While I like Straymoose's idea, I don't like this one. I don't think my requesting of Awaken at 10pm should inhibit KW's hearing of Awaken. He'd be asleep when it played. But Straymoose's idea stops abuse by one person.

yeah, penalize the over requester,
not the song.

An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

Notice: this message is directed at one person, and one person only. If you did not send an email to Avian at or around 2:45 pm (14:45 hrs) Mountain Daylight Time on September 22, 2004, with the subject heading of "What's Up?", requesting why your requests were removed and demanding to know why we were editing requests (even going so far as to ask why you were "being singled out here"), this message is not directed at you.

If you DID, in fact, send such a message to Avian (avian@auralmoon.com), then I'd suggest you pay very close attention to what I'm saying. It will likely have a significant impact on whether or not you can continue to tune in to our station.


Well, that came one step closer to reality this morning.

We finally received a whiney quit-pickin'-on-me email from our favorite overrequester this morning. I saw it first thing in the morning, and my initial response was to send it off to Jim. Had I actually sent off the response that I would likely have, it would have likely scorched the wires between here and there, leaving a sizable crater where it landed.

But let's make it official, shall we (in the odd event that our favorite overrequester actually visits the forums (as Jim suggested in his response)):

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Any further overrequesting from you will lead to one of four results:

1. You will be removed from making requests on a permanent basis.
2. You will be removed from access to the web site, partially or totally, on a permanent basis.
3. You will be permanently blocked from access to the streams that provide the substance that is Aural Moon.
4. any combination of the above three, including and not limited to, all three.

Now since I can already imagine you opening your mail client or hitting the reply button, let me save you the effort.

The official definition, subject to change with or without notice and at the sole discression of the management of Aural Moon, of the practice we call "overrequesting" contains, but is not limited to:

• requesting the same song more than three times by the same person or location within 1 week
• requesting the same song more than six times by the same person or location within 2 weeks
• any series of requests by the same person that the management deems to be overrequesting.

The management reserves the right to remove any content at any time for any reason.

The management reserves the right to refuse access to the station as a whole or any parts of the station to anyone at any time for any reason with or without consent or warning.

In his response to you, dear overrequester, Jim indicated that it was not his intention to drive you off or alienate you. I do not feel such constraint. Whether you listen to Aural Moon or not is a matter of monumental indifference to me. Listen or don't, I don't care. But the amount of effort I and the rest of the staff at Aural Moon is expending because of your action far exceeds any benefit being derived by your presence, and I, for one, am growing VERY weary of having to monitor your activity. I have many other things I can be doing that are much more pleasant. Thus, if I have to block you, I will, without hesitation or remorse.

And if I have to do this, I can assure you that it will be permanent.

I'd be lying if I said that I was sorry if you felt that this missive was threatening. I've invested a great deal of time in this station, the bulk of it over the last few months being as a direct result of your activities. And I am getting well and truly SICK of it. Consider it a warning -- far more than I personally believe you deserve.

You have been warned.

Roger -Dot- Lee, becoming VERY fed up with this nonsense.

Re: An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

You might as well add these for good measure.

• requesting the same song more than nine times by the same person or location within 3 weeks
• requesting the same song more than twelve times by the same person or location within 4 weeks

Re: Re: An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

Probably a good idea.

However, it is now no longer necessary.

Instead of admitting they were wrong and agreeing to play nice in the future, they took the defensive, attempted to guilt us into believing it was all in our heads (in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary), and said, and I quote: "don't worry about blocking me, because I'll be blocking you".

The laughability of this particular statement not withstanding, this person is being removed, permanently, from the station. Their access (and the access of their entire organization) is being removed.

Once I have reasonable assurances that this has occured, I will be replacing all of the removed songs, since the problem has been permanently rectified.

I'll also be posting their whiney temper tantrums for the amusement of whoever cares to read them.

Roger -Dot- Lee, finishing up and getting on with life.

Re: Re: An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

Do I detect a little irony there Bob?

I wish this whole episode would go away very soon. It's leaving a very nasty taste. :(

Re: Re: Re: An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

From someone who is indirectly affected by all of this

(this M!O!R!O!N! is spreading Mr. Lee too thin and I need him to get me up on the Moon correctly)

I could not agree with your statement more!

Re: Re: Re: An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

How do you think I feel about this?

Roger -Dot- Lee, wishing for a permanent and irreversable failure of the internet to certain parts of the country.

Re: Re: Re: An Open Letter to the Overrequester
 

Excellent.

It's finally over.
 

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, and anyone that I happened to leave out unintentionally: it's finally over.

After struggling with web servers and other such nonsense in an attempt to put a halt to this while giving our favorite overrequester the opportunity to visit the rest of the site, I finally called out the Cavalry. With the help of our very own VAXMan, Our Favorite Overrequester has been permanently banned from the site. They can still tune into the station all they wish, but attempting to connect to the station (or, for that matter, send email to the station) will be met with an eerie silence.

(Email blocking is a regrettable side effect of the effort to put a stop to the overrequesting).

WARNING: HEAVY GEEK FACTOR BELOW. For the feint of heart, those with supressed constitutions or weak bladders, or anyone else who doesn't want to read it, move on. Nothing to see here.

You've been warned.

BEGIN HEAVY GEEK FACTOR

The suggestion given by VM was that we block them at the routing level. This has the effect of taking the packets that arrive from their network to be routed to a non-existent location. Thus, they can't connect. At all. Nada. None. This goes for port 80 (HTTP), port 25 (SMTP) and whatever else they may wish to try (that's not already handled by our firewall). Unbeknownst to me, they slipped in a 'reject' parameter into the routing tables. I was not aware that this existed in Linux (our host OS for the web site). I thought this was limited to SGI, Sun Solaris, and anything else that descended from the SVr4 code base. Score another one for Linux. You can't do that on Windows.

END HEAVY GEEK FACTOR. Thank you for your patience.

Anyway, one simple command to the routing interface by Yr. 'umble Narrator has left Our Favorite Overrequester unable to request. I have taken steps to assure that the new routing tables will survive a reboot.

I will, over the next few days, take the opportunity to return all of the songs I was forced to remove due to said overrequester to the station request rotation.

Thank you for your patience in this matter. Hopefully we will never have to endure another situation like this again.

Roger -Dot- Lee

PS: I was going to post the email thread between Our Favorite Overrequester and Jim, but the idea no longer amuses me. In fact, this entire episode sickens me. If someone is interested, they can either shoot me an email or post a request here. If I get a request or two, then I might post 'em. Otherwise, I think I'm going to let this die like the pox ridden cow it's become.

Re: It's finally over.
 

Let's move on. It's over. And I am profoundly sorry that this was one of the first things to happen after Davin handed Aural Moon over to me. I promise that Aural Moon will continue to be a POSITIVE place in the future - that's what brought me here in the first place, and what inspired loyalty in me.

Jim

After reading this entire thread I was exhaused....I just wanted to express my appreciation for all that jim and roger do to make this the best radio station on the net.

What is dedication but a sense of urgency....

Re: Re: It's finally over.
 

Amen to that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now let's look into getting back the people who can no longer participate in the day to day banter because of the demise of The Shout Box. For example jnighting, artboy, the spanish lads and Steady Stan and Artemis.

I know that there is a Bandwidth issue here but I'm wondering if this might not be as bad as it seems. The Black Box was taken away immediately after the 5th anniversary party during which it was, understandably, HAMMERED. The way I see it and the way people who have been affected by this have explained it to me (Yes, it's true...people do talk to me :) ) the problem arises in that the Chat Room is Too obtrusive for when they are in the office. It can get VERY busy and it's difficult to concentrate on work with all that activity going on. What they need is an area that they can look at occasionally and comment from time to time should they wish to do so.

If that area was away from the Home page and refreshed every 5-10 minutes (or some other convenient time period) and not every time someone posted, would that have a less harmful effect on the Bandwidth issue? I'm guessing that the code for the original Shout Box is still in the system somewhere and perhaps with a bit of tweaking from someone in the know could be adapted to work in a way that will suit both our beloved and much missed moonies and the Hosts.

As a matter of interest.............the "other chat room" that appears on the left hand side of the Home page has a lot of the attributes that are required here. Could THAT be adapted? It is less obtrusive, gives people the ability to say whether they're working, lurking, away from desk etc. I remember that there were issues with it but maybe a bit of tweaking could resolve those.

OK Boys and Girls, fire away with the "Dork" comments. :D I make no apology for posting this as I know it's something that people out there would like to see.

Re: Re: Re: It's finally over.
 

Dr. Dot rolls up his sleeves...

If I didn't make it clear, I'd like to now: this hasn't been one of my more pleasurable experiences with Aural Moon. I'm glad it's over. Now let us address Keithie's concern's regarding Shout:



A worthwhile task indeed...certainly more enjoyable than cleaning up after the subject of the recent ire around here.



Well, I personally don't KNOW precisely how much of an impact the shoutbox will have on our bandwidth usage, but I suspect it'll be fairly significant. Exactly HOW significant has yet to be seen.



(Emphasis changed to conform with quoting style sheet)

Yes, it would likely have a beneficial effect on bandwidth usage if we were to move it to a lighter page. However, I'm afraid that doing that will have a serious negative impact on the viability of the shoutbox. Part of the draw of the shoutbox is that it's there when you go to the main site. You can keep the site up, still keep in contact, and not have the SPChat window popping up on top of what you're trying to do. Updating it every 5-10 minutes might not be a bad idea, however...although it's mighty tough to keep even the most extended of real-time conversations going with that sort of delay.

It's a balancing act that would impress even the Flying Wallendas.



It's on our plate. It had to be pushed aside, however, due to more ... pressing matters.

Now I wouldn't do that. The only people that receive that sort of invective from me are maturational children that have a sense of entitlement that exceed the standard norms of civil society.

Roger -Dot- Lee

Oh, and one more thing...

All of the Flower Kings and Grendel by Marillion have been restored to the playlist. Subject to removal, as usual.

If I'm missing anything, let me know.

Roger -Dot- Lee, compassion toward my fellow man not covered by this statement.

Blue Shift - Rome
The Appleseed Cast - Blind Man's Arrow/Flower Falling From Dying Hands

I knew I could count on you, Spaz.

Restored.

Roger -Dot- Lee

The restoration of the Black Box is a very positive move and can only benefit the Aural Moon movement and postive vibes.

Thansk for Jim and Dot for that.

I don't think it's possible for me to agree more with that statement, Rogor. It CAN only benefit the Moon.

I just need to tune the system a little bit to adjust for the extra load.

Roger -Dot- Lee, one thing at a time...

The return of the shoutbox
 

gladdens my heart and reconnects me with my dear friends. The beauty of the shout is the short history it saves, allowing you to sense the day's vibe. It also allows the "theme of the day" request idea to work, if we're so inclined. Personally, the themes were one of my favorite aspects of the station, as it allowed the collective creativity of the listeners to shine. It also prompted people to pick unfamiliar songs, just to fit the theme.

Thank you Roger & Vax for using the simplest & most effective way of combatting the over-requesting situation (i.e., ban the problem child). It seemed to start on the heels of the 5th Anniversary party. I often wondered if it was a jealous competitor that was the guilty party. No evidence, just a thought.

See everyone in the shout! :) :cool: :p

Re: The return of the shoutbox
 

;) Pays to have a geek or two around once in a while.

Re: Re: The return of the shoutbox
 

This is most assuradly true.

And ya know...

For our efforts, we should get at LEAST TWO gripe free geek-out sessions.

It's the least they could do. :p

Roger -Dot- Lee, like that's ever stopped us...

black box
 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart dotman, and KW for asking the question. It is glorious to have the BB back, for all the reasons mentioned above. I think it's the largest part of what makes AM 'family'; let's us all stay in touch, kinda like grooming in apes :)

your bugs....
 

taste better than mine!

Coming into the discussion late...
 

Just like to say THANKS to Roger for taking the time to address this issue. Lots of good ideas are floating around. Here's hoping whichever solution eventually chosen (if any) is easily implemented.
For myself, I will be happy when the AM station folks are happy.
With over 12000 songs to hear, and normally roughly an hour or so after requesting until it plays, I can't imagine wasting a request on one that's already known to me...
Go figure.