Dot Sez:
I've set up a poll just so we can have a completely unscientific way of finding out how people who bother to read the poll feel about having a request free day. Vote early, vote often.
Also, I've been reading the ideas with some fascination. Some very good points have been flung from both sides of the fence, and I figured it's a good time for me to chime in and set some expectations as to what Dotty can and can not do with the station software as of this day and time.
Rick's idea of monitoring for abuse (Yes - Sherwood/Squire/ABWH, Kaipa - FK or RQing a 4 second song so one isn't subjected to a 10 minute song, that sort of thing) is a good one. That's the good news. The bad news is that it ranges in technical feasability from damn tough to downright impossible, since there's no way that I'VE found in the software to generate and follow the tree between groups. There's no facility that I can find that would, in any way, tie Yes to ABWH, even though you and I know well that they are, for all intents and purposes, the same group (minus Squire, of course).
Don't let that discourage you from suggesting ideas, however. Anyone. Let ME worry about technical feasability. You just keep coming up with ideas and I'll make them work, if possible and feasable.
Vax's idea of a gentle reminder of overrequesting might be doable. I'm quite sure that the people (and there are definitely more than one) that are requesting FK over and over may well not be aware how annoying it is to the regulars (and, if the graphs are any indication, the non-regulars as well). Maybe a popup (eek!) whenever a particular substring is entered in the request box, or whenever a song has reached a certain number of requests per month/week/given fixed number of days might help. That, while it would be more taxing on the system (minimum of two additional database calls per query), it might well prove to be well worth the effort.
The only other alternative that strikes me in the forehead at the moment is to take a lot of the horribly overrequested tracks by FK/whoever and place them on a week or two vacation.
I, for one, would like to do this as a VERY last resort. It would add a level of subjectivity and overhead to our workload, and it would be unneccessarily draconian.
Again, my opinion is my own, and may or may not reflect that of the management, or, occasionally, even the author.
Roger -Dot- Lee, who really needs to learn how to write shorter posts.