Photo by Trent Erwin
Loyal Berean Test viewers,
Since January 1, 2019, the number of monthly visitors increased by about 150% and monthly pageviews approaching 200%. I am ecstatic to see so much interest in my work and praise God that He can use me to make a difference in your lives. I sincerely hope that my content helped you to analyze Christian music.
With this increased growth comes an increase in song submissions that appear on the Upcoming Reviews page. As of this writing, I am 76 songs deep, which includes the polling deck and Hillsong holding cell, but not Christmas submissions.
The song submission queue is growing at a rate faster than I can poll songs, increasing wait time from submission to release. I’ve been mulling over how to address this issue and came up with some solutions. Below are my intended plans for 2020 polls:
- Continue to poll using eight songs per poll; However, accept only the top two. In the event of a tie, the earliest submitted song(s) will appear on the schedule.
- Discontinue saving songs that do not pass polling, leaving the current list as “additional songs when Vince has extra time”. Songs that do not pass future polls can be resubmitted.
What do you think of this proposal? Do you have any ideas on how I can balance user submission and wait time? I am open to suggestions.
Comments
nealcruco
I appreciate your work, but I know that you can never review more than a small fraction of Christian music. Picking only the top two songs from each poll does bias the reviews even more in favor of popular artists than now, but I really don’t know what else can be done about that. You’re already treating Hillsong music specially. I don’t know that increasing or decreasing the number of songs in each poll would help.
Thank you for all the time you put into this website!
Vince Wright
Neal,
Thank you for your thoughts! I thought about that issue as well and am unsure how to address it. I already pluck out the Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, and Rap requests to balance with other genres, and yes, Hillsong is a special case given the high volume I receive for their music. The move to two songs is to empty out the queue, but I agree: it places a heightened bias to popular songs.
Keeping the “extra songs if I have time” list was a way to address it, but it might be better to clear my current list and pick a random song that was previously requested when I have, well, extra time. That might work better. What do you think?
You are most welcome!
-Vince Wright
Neal Cruco
This is a bit late, but yes, your plan sounds good to me! I’m glad you’re taking the time to improve your review process to be as fair as possible.
Vince Wright
Neal,
Thanks! I appreciate that.
-Vince Wright
Alex Reinhard
I think that works great for the top two out of eight in each poll get reviewed! You can’t have time to do every single request that people want reviewed. Appreciate your work, it really helps a lot when I’m overwhelmed by the vast amount of possibilities of songs to introduce to my church! Thanks so much for what you do!
Vince Wright
Alex,
Thank you, I appreciate your kind words! I am considering doing the top song only, if the top two insufficiently brings down the submission queue.
-Vince Wright
-Vince Wright