The Official Rap Genius Suggestions Thread (Back to the forum)

Any suggestions to improve the site? Post them here.

I’ll start: Almighty Tom! Moderators at least (editors as well? it’s up to you) should be able to edit auto-blog posts.

i’m thinking music video’s for the lyrics.. i don’t like going to youtube to watch the video when it could be right there next to the lyrics.

Make me supreme dictator

I think it should be more clear on how to indicate sounds that are not actually rapping in the lyrics, or how to indicate that something is a sample — maybe a more in-depth format system. And is there a way to search for the video explanations?

let it be a little of chat indea n some pal adding and whole album sample of aspecifik song searchd u knw a mean

Messaging. No one checks their email

Remove the “Hot songs” list below.Just because alot of people listen to them doesn’t make them how.

@oxner362 What exactly do you mean? Can you elaborate a little?

@Griffinmahon The format system is all done by the editors. We can put anything into the lyrics of a song, so thanks for the suggestion! If it calls for it, I’m sure we can incorporate something of that sort.

@Slimnatey I check my email :P

@Void I’m pretty sure the definition of “hot” is that the most people listen to the songs. The Hot Songs list is ordered based on the number of pageviews and likes, so I think it’s a pretty useful thing to have on the site.

I think there should be a way to make certain lyrics “unexplainable” in instances where lyrics are self-explanatory and are explained and re-explained in a redundant way, for the sole purpose of bumping up their IQ.

“I’m going to the club” really doesn’t need to be explained unless there is some additional significance added onto the line by context.

Saccharin that is actually a really good idea.

LOCK lyrics, like wiki. Like for example some people keep on suggesting stuff to lyrics that are already explained. Ofcourse they could still comment below or email an editor or post here, just make it so that they can’t suggest on lines.

I also had some other suggestions that I emailed to Maboo a long time ago, I’ll dig ‘em up and post 'em.

I would like to second the “Lock in those lyrics!” suggestion.

In a song where we add the youtube link, there should be a “save” button or something. It takes forever to update the youtube link and plenty of times I have to reload the page and redo it.

Another thing, is there a link to the forum on the homepage?

@griffinmahon I believe it doesn’t show up until you have 500 Rap IQ™. How did you get to it?

@CashewXD I only have 410 of now but I’ve been going on the site forever, but I saw a link on the Facebook page a couple of days ago and saw that the URL just added “forum” at the end so I just typed that in. Maybe you guys should set up a feature where it only allows you in if you actually have 500, instead of circumventing it like I did. I guess I’m preaching for something that will keep me from participating, so I’ll go explain some songs.

That’s interesting I wasn’t aware that you actually could view it without 500 IQ. We’ll probably get that fixed. Thanks for bringing it up though!

To see WHY we’ve just earned some IQ would be a great idea. I was at 0 IQ points, explained some songs, and now I’m at 570. I probably get some “great” explanations, but which ones ?

I believe (someone correct me if I’m wrong), the “great explanation” is defined by how many thumbs up you get. I think if you get any thumbs you get extra IQ.

Good shit ballers. Some comments:

• Chat is coming
• Private messaging is coming (we’ll see how chat works first)
• More info on how you earned Rap IQ™ is coming (along with an overall profile page revamp)
• I’ll add a save button for the YouTube link
• “Lock out future explanations” is tricky; we don’t want to discourage good suggestions. Soon you’ll lose more Rap IQ™ for rejected explanations, which should help a bit. Also, there is the 500 Rap IQ™ minimum for published songs, which serves as a “global lockout”.
• We’re releasing the forum to everyone on Monday

Here are some mockups of the new features if you’re really bored:

• New profile pages
• Private messaging
• Front page activity stream

Hit me up with questions

I really appreciate all the work you do for us Tom. Thanks a ton bruh.

P.S. Those new features look pretty damn nice fam.

That new profile page looks baller. The activity page would also be crazy helpful for knowing when someone’s messing with your great explanations.

Hey also, the forum should have a limit for the number of posts per page (not sure if it does or not, but that’s definitely a good think).

I’m like half asleep so that probably sounded really stupid, but you get the idea.

I like the material that LEMON just shared, sounds pretty viable. Great to see the site taking strides.

Make a separate underground section, so people can post their own stuff and have it looked at without mixing it in with more widely known rappers

That would be good too, to have a section specifically for underground rappers.

Notifications like Facebook would be cool to, but it’d have to be thought out on what you’d be notified on

I think there is a problem i added youtube links to arab money and back like that, but when i check it doesn’t play on my comp and i don’t if it just me or the site having problems.

Caliph, this has been addressed. Tom is working on putting in a button for saving youtube links, that way you don’t have to reload the page to make sure they work.

Also make sure the youtube video works on youtube. If it doesn’t then the bar with it will show up on Rap Genius, but the song won’t play.

Caliph, this has been addressed. Tom is working on putting in a button for saving youtube links, that way you don’t have to reload the page to make sure they work

I actually added the button last night, but now I’m worried that it’s not clear that you need to click it!

Haha I actually didn’t see that yet! But good point, I don’t think a whole lot of people would have figured that out.

HEY EVERYONE!!! PUSH THE BUTTON!!!!

Not question your site won’t it be more reliable to upload mp3 files instead
Also there is got to be a way to correct the links/file with a better one if the other one wasn’t good enough

Thanks for the suggestion, but there are several problems with that.

• First of all, we have a lot of songs on here that aren’t available for free download. If we upload mp3’s, as the site gets bigger legal aspects will become involved, and if we want to stay alive and flourishing, we can’t have that.

• Second of all, mp3’s aren’t as easy to stream. Having tons and tons of btyes of music on the site to go along with every song will slow down the site drastically, whereas it’s very easy to embed a player for youtube videos at the bottom of the page.

Good question! Hope I helped clear that up a little.

I don’t think you should lose RapIQ for rejecting suggestions/comments. Then bad suggestions/comments would stay up but I’m glad to see the site expanding. This is following the advancement of Facebook in The Social Network haha

How about adding album covers and general info (Release date, Recording year, Length, Label,Writer(s)…) to the songs/albums?
– it could look like this: [IMG]http://i52.tinypic.com/2myoqao.jpg[/IMG]

Messaging would be very nice…

@SlimNatey I definitely agree, we shouldn’t lose Rap IQ for rejecting explanations. I think that would undoubtedly be counterproductive to the site.

Out of curiosity, when was that suggested/a possibility?

By @LEMON. There should be friends things because me and friend like chilling and RGing stuff

Also, it makes it easier for mods to keep up with up-and-coming explainers. There are so many times when I want to be able to add people so I can follow what they do, in order to give them editor privileges (if they deserve it).

@August

That’s exactly how we want it. With something about the song as well.

This is more of a structure (Tom) thing…

I know that the “albums” addition has recently been added, but I would like to see a lot more done with it.

I had an idea: maybe create an “Albums” tab right next to “Add New Song” or something. All we has so far is this (at least from what I know); and of course the good ol' “find the song and then click on the link to the album” option. But I think it’d be some legit shit if we could get some easier access to an album.
Imagine having to find the Straight Outta Compton album…

I’d suggest something like the top bar of AZ-Lyrics or something of that nature…

Another thing that I’d like to strongly urge, is pages for the forum and the rest of the site.

As in, instead of having “More” for example, at the bottom of the blog, we should institute page numbers so that you don’t have to scroll down FOREVER to get to an old blog post. (I know you can search, but page numbers I think would be a good thing).

This could be instated for the forum, the artist/album/song lists, and plenty of other things.

Perhaps autolinking topical blog posts (say, the recent J. Cole foray) to artist pages would be interesting.

Bring back the contributors page! Or at least make it easier to access. I always liked showing it to my friends and bragging about my Rap IQ, and then being called a “nerd” and other less nice names… But anyways, yeah, bring it back, also because it helped me out when I started contributing to this site so I could use the explanations from the top contributors as good examples of how to make explanations.

Option to lower the volume of music on the website.

Forum sections for different topics!

I would like a way for moderators to see a song’s ranking — in terms of pageviews — as well as the total number of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” on a song. This would allow us to see which songs need editing desperately.

That would be very helpful.

I had this idea for polls. Everyone loves them… and it will get an idea of what regulars on RG think about certain topics.

We can make a separate page for them, with the newest poll being on the main page. Maboo/Tom (or moderators) can update them every couple of days/every week/whatever… kinda like the latest blog entry RG already has…

They’d probably be “Yes/No/Indifferent” or “Which do you prefer?” type questions where the answers are limited, rather than questions like, “Who’s the greatest rapper of all time?” (those are for the forum, of course).