[icecast] a new directory service

[Jack Moffitt]

> All of these need to be adressed - I'm all for what you are proposing Jack, 
> and am thrilled that such a discussion has been created on the topic..  But 
> these aren't little questions, and I think that finding an alternate solution 
> for the specific issue of popularity-at-a-glance is a worthy subject rather 
> than pursuing the notion that a measure of popularity or listener count can 
> be somehow replaced or ignored..

yes, this discussion is important, and these questions are good ones.

Now, acknowledging that a quick 'what's cool' glance is desired and/or a
'what's popular' metric, is there a way to do this outside of pure
listener counts?

I think there is.  And I think there are a few ways to do these...

- reviews/ratings.  you can make this so a quick glance is possible.
you can certainly have 'charts' as you described without using listener
count.  and the charts you refer to are not done by listener counts
always.  

- volunteer organization.  someone can manually make charts.  this is
probably not a practical idea, but it's worth discussing.  it may be
possible to code enough of it to make it practical.  human filtering is
the best kind. :)

- some metric based on clicks through to the stream.  we can measure
this from the directory server.  we can't measure this well unless we're
the primary interface, which i'm going to assume we won't be.  but
surely there's some implied information we can glean from logs and user
habits.

I think any of these things would result in a better system than one
based on listener counts.

Most of the impetus for internet radio and peer broadcasting is choice
and selection and getting away from listening to top-40 radio or what 8
songs are cool in the whiney-bitch-rock genre this month.

jack.

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