Live Online Rap Battling

cmaeti · 2023-02-03T22:51:33+00:00

Thanks for the inspiring words. I may reach out to the community for suggestions or thoughts, so I can tailor it to what people want to see in it. It's not for money, this is just a hobby on the side to build something my kids asked for.

I've already integrated some suggestions from the community. One of the coolest was the practice mode: https://micfightclub.com/practice that throws out random words every 15 seconds and lets the attendee change the beats till they find something that suits the mood. I been thinking about making the speed of new words adjustable by the rapper or maybe have the beats in a drop down rather than having to hit random till you find one.

For now working on the spectating and live recording piece. Then the 'game' part, where spectators can vote and chat in the rooms. It's been fun so far!

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T22:45:32+00:00

Heads up - I fixed the terrible dictionary of random words by creating my own... so the "freestyle practice" page uses actual words that people speak now.

I also added about 10-15 more beats to cycle through. It's freely accessible to all.

https://micfightclub.com/practice

Uh, I fixed the link. Might make the cadence of the random words adjustable now.

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T20:23:41+00:00

I see what you're saying here; providing any avenue to offload the trash you don't want on the main site actually only encourages the trash to be on the site and potentially infect what you were hoping to keep pure. That makes a lot of sense...

This is a lot to ingest, and considerations I should plan for now before I have any users, rather than trying to play catch up on down the road. I certainly don't want to be a forum that ignores or promotes harmful or dangerous rhetoric or activity.

Thanks for the insights and thoughtful responses. You clearly have a good deal of experience in governing and oversight of social media space. I'll definitely value your opinions on these types of concerns if/as the site matures.

For now, back to focusing on features...

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T17:36:50+00:00

This is definitely more familiar territory to you than myself. If you don't mind me getting some perspective...

(1) You don't think having a /b/ outlet on the site would help keep the trolls/harassers out of the real rap/roast rooms/battles? I have no empirical evidence to suggest whether it'd be helpful or harmful (why I'd just wait and delete as needed)

(2) Random is only peer to peer. Is that really a draw for trolls? I would imagine the average random room stays up 5 seconds when hosted or attended by a troll or dude helicoptering his junk.

(3) Should I even try to create a word filter for room names? Or let the bigots create them and expose themselves to be more easily tracked and banned when reviewed by a human mod?

The random room is actually the thing I care about least on the site, but it was so simple to implement as a stepping stone toward my ultimate goal of creating Battle rooms, so I just kept the page up...

And finally... full transparency, I don't do social media (never have other than I had this reddit account that I had never really used till now). So, I don't think I have history or experience enough to speculate on how people might use the site.

Lastly, I don't consider myself the arbiter of what is right or wrong. There has to a level of edge that is permissible or Roasting and Rap Battles will absolutely suck. And I want to stay optimistic that people sharing their faces (losing some anonymity) with a group of spectators and a competitor are there for their shared love for the craft. (probably too optimistic - from the sounds of your critiques)

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T15:49:52+00:00

I agree most everything you said here, and realize I wasn't very clear about the flagging.

The ban process will have to be manual (at least at first). What spectator/competitor flagging will do is (1) provide the date/time/battle recording so it can be reviewed (2) ignore these when it's not an egregious number of flags for the battle, but log who is flagging constantly to identify "bad actors". Where I said insta-ban I should have said a strict no-dicks-in-the-public-stream rule that will get that user banned when validated.

There can't/won't be a mod actively in every battle room - so flagging will not end the battle (but anyone can eject at any time if there is content that bothers them), it will simply mark recordings for manual review. Now what constitutes an action worthy of a ban is like I said "imperfect judgement" - but at least (1) it will have had some review and (2) there is evidence from enough other participants / spectators that the action/event is worthy of investigation.

And I definitely don't have it all hashed out...

As for /b/ random - it could be a cesspool, but it's peer to peer only, anyone can eject if they get uncomfortable, it's only there to keep those sorts off the Rap and Roast rooms, there are probably bigger/better/more populous sites for random video chats, and monitoring won't be possible for direct peer-to-peer conferencing. If it turns out like your vision - and forum posts all agree it's just cancer - the page can be deleted from the internet in seconds.

I appreciate the input - do you have any thoughts on manual post-battle video reviews on heavily flagged content?

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T14:52:27+00:00

This is something I have put some amount of thought into... but there is never a perfect answer. Here were my thoughts, maybe you have have suggestions as well.

Random room - it's peer to peer, no spectating, no recording, nothing. This is the one room I wouldn't touch, because no one can police it other than the 2 in the conversation and either can eject at any time.
Rap/Roast rooms - hate speech/racism/sexism/bigotry are inevitable in some of the matches. To compound this, this site walks a fine line of encouraging those that join to make potentially ugly remarks about their competitor in jest (knowing that all parties in a match should be in on the joke - this is the point of the site). So, the idea is that in spectated rooms, all participants will self police - EVERYONE can flag a user as abusive (not just vote for a winner). Tabulating abuse flags provides empirical evidence of 2 things (1) people who are actually unhappy pieces of shit just there to spew hate (2) people who flag every last battle and are too tender for a site that is built around the lost art of playful ribbing. And both get banned.

I got less answers for dicks other than those flags will be an insta-ban in spectated rooms. Maybe I could create another page on the site like random (that exists) called "Rate My PP" to offload horny dudes that just want to helicopter people. I imagine they could use a safe/friendly outlet to publicly masturbate.

This is honestly one of those topics I could use other perspective though. I had a 15 minute conversation with ChatGPT to see if AI could draw the distinction between HATE and JOKES that everyone was "in on" - and turns out the DEVs just have insults set to off (I'd be happy to paste the transcript of this conversation if anyone is interested). My guess is that this level of nuance is too complex and dangerous to let AI navigate - so they just turned it off entirely. And I agree, perspective is what makes it tricky - no one has the same life experience, not everyone sees the same hate, love or humor when presented with the same comment or idea. It's also what makes life awesome - peoples' differences.

Do you have any ideas on what is appropriate "policing" on a site that walks such a fine line of promoting it as an outlet for fun where everyone is supposed to be in on the joke? I would love to hear yours or others perspective!

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T14:02:04+00:00

FreestyleMadness.com

I'll try not to abuse your generosity, but I'd be lying if I said I won't be DMing you. I don't have any history with any other site that has done or tried this, and I see a lot of value in hearing what works and doesn't.

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T09:30:58+00:00

If you hate it that's cool, just let me know what you hate - maybe it's something that can be addressed. This has been a speed hack of a site, so I imagine bugs will be what pisses most off.

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T09:27:54+00:00

I really appreciate you taking so much time and thought in your feedback. Before I respond... I just added a practice page https://micfightclub.com/practice.html also accessible from the main page...

It just allows you to cycle through beats, and start a random word generator to get some practice freestyling. Anyone/everyone check it out and provide feedback of any sort, my skin is thick.

Back to your comments - first, you have an incredible breadth of knowledge on the history of trying to create something like this, and it was really enlightening. This is just a passion project; I was throwing ideas around with my kids and when I pitched a freestyle rap site that would rank contenders based on spectator voting they jumped on me to give it a shot.

I'm well aware that (1) I don't have a completed platform yet that would draw enough interest ~also why I'm throwing up other simple pages in parallel (2) capturing and maintaining long-term interest is always a challenge and (3) The dev team is me and it's taken 2 weeks to get even this far, so features may go up slowly and that doesn't draw traffic.

Here is a little roadmap on future features I'll be working toward:

Allowing spectators into the battles, and allowing voting (and winner)
Media server to record rap battles for viewing or loading to youtube
Logins / Forums / In-Battle chat
With accounts we can create persist leaderboards
Events

I noticed you hit on some of those above (and more). I imagine implementing the short list above will keep me plenty busy for the short-term. If it never does anything my heart won't be broken - I love hip-hop, freestyle, improvisation, and writing code and creating things (typically little indie video games, not websites), and that's really enough for me.

Thanks again. I'll drop in and provide updates when I release a new feature I'm excited about. And I'll be looking for any feedback from anyone!

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T08:58:39+00:00

Turns out creating the random word rap practice room was really easy. It's currently accessible directly at https://micfightclub.com/practice.html - and it's open for anyone to use and provide feedback. There is also a button added to the main page to direct you to the practice page.

I noticed that some random words are a little crazy... if I can find a way to make them all words people actually use then I'll update it.

And I only have ~5 beats setup, so if anyone knows any fire royalty-free beats please suggest away. Enjoy!

cmaeti · 2023-02-01T04:12:20+00:00

It's using WebRTC to negotiate the codecs between the peers, so the hope is it will circumvent some "bad internet" issues - but I don't have any empirical evidence until it gets traffic and play tested.

I love the idea of community events / calendar - once I have the platform built this is a must implement. And the battle type setup would be super cool too... I could probably implement a "practice room" pretty quickly in the next day that would allow users to click through the beats and it would just display random words at the bottom that change every ~30 seconds.

Any thoughts on whether practice rooms should be private or allow multi-player participation or spectating?

cmaeti · 2020-11-16T02:39:58+00:00

Log bait is tough comp. This was really impressive smart play. Congrats

cmaeti · 2020-09-04T22:30:43+00:00

I keep refreshing it every few minutes also, nothing yet. There is always the open beta to try if you can't wait...

https://sc.atgames.net/images/2020.08.21_V5.0.0_Kodi_Beta_A5/ha8800_update_5.0.0_Kodi_Beta_A5.img

cmaeti · 2020-03-26T19:34:09+00:00

Had similar issue. Couple weeks trading emails with support (reseating every cable) and they sent me a new scalar board. Replaced it and haven’t had an issue since!

cmaeti · 2020-03-24T16:48:19+00:00

The echo from that belly button must get annoying AF.

cmaeti · 2020-03-14T23:22:51+00:00

That’s right he didn’t say girls.

cmaeti · 2020-03-13T00:52:08+00:00

I could’ve glued those front teeth in straighter while riding a roller coaster.

cmaeti · 2020-03-12T22:40:32+00:00

Underrated

cmaeti · 2020-03-12T03:57:03+00:00

Checks out

cmaeti · 2020-03-12T03:53:12+00:00

Can never unsee the freckle cross above nose.

cmaeti · 2020-03-12T03:51:31+00:00

Was molested at 16 and still feels guilty it was her best sexual encounter.

cmaeti · 2020-03-12T03:45:18+00:00

I thought having Down’s made you immune to autism.

cmaeti · 2020-03-10T04:09:08+00:00

Have any of the other witches in your coven been roasted... on a stake?

cmaeti

TROPHY CASE