Okay so let me get this straight, Featured artist songs can't use osu! as the source field unless they were made exclusively for osu!. Okay. But unofficial custom user created content can have osu! as the source?
For the rest of the suggestions I have one big question. We have been teaching mappers for nearly a decade now how metadata should be organized, why should we throw all that away on a whim? We are going to have giant inconsistencies between currently ranked content and newly ranked content.
Suggestion 1:websites can be used as source such as Newgrounds (think "x is a Newgrounds Artist") and potentially even Soundcloud, Youtube, etc.On the issue of including websites in the source, there is going to be massive issues of abuse and inconsistencies. People often upload their songs to multiple websites: Youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud, Itunes, Facebook. Which website should be used as the source? I see there being two options and both have major consequences.
Option 1: Whatever the mapper feels like. If the mapper sees the song uploaded on youtube, they can decide to put it in the source field. There is going to be hundreds of discussions on whether or not the youtube upload is official or the "main" uploaded source. What if the mapper themselves uploads the content to a website under the artist's name so they can change the source.
Option 2: Whatever website the content was uploaded on first. I'd consider this option slightly better than option 1 but it still has drawbacks. Not all websites include exact hours:minutes:seconds for content upload date so determining the original/first upload may be impractical or impossible. What if the content is uploaded at same-day 2:00PM UTC-0 across multiple websites? Which website would be the source?
Now some of the major drawbacks to including websites in the source regardless of which option would be decided upon: Nearly every single map uploaded will have a video/music hosting platform as their source. The source field will hold no value anymore. What similarities do 1 Youtube map have from another? And that is if they are uploaded on Youtube. What if the content's main upload was on an explicit website? Do we really want explicit websites in the source field? I don't think so.
Suggestion 2:BMS can be allowed as a source. I believe that there are major problems with this proposal. The main and glaring issue is that
BMS is a file format, not a source of content. Anything could have the source as BMS if it was uploaded in that format. What if a rhythm game uses BMS as their underlying chart file format? What would be the Source field for a beatmap of a song in that game be? BMS or the rhythm game? Are we going to start having SM (Stepmania Files), BEMUSE (bemuse BMS packs), and other rhythm game file formats as sources too? That just opens a huge can of worms that needs an entire discussion of its own.
Suggestion 3:Album name disallowed as source is removedSo what are albums? Wikipedia says "An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium". Albums could contain any number of media, but how does the name of the album help determine the songs source? What if a song is uploaded as a single, and then years later organized into an album by the creator? The name of an album doesn't determine where the song originated from, its just an collection of songs.
Suggestion 4osu! as source can be used for custom songs for osu tournaments, for example oopartsI have many questions about this, first though I am going to examine the example given. ooparts. So this is a featured artist song by the artist camellia, and was used in the capacity of an official osu! tournament. There is one massive problem with this though. In
camellia's featured artist listing page, ooparts doesn't have an osu! symbol next to it. This instantly disqualifies it from having osu! in the source due to the new rule
osu! can not longer be used as a source for featured artist tracks unless they are marked with an osu! icon on the FA listing, this is not up for discussion..
I personally think that this makes ooparts a poor example to be used, since having osu! in the source field would contradict our rules. But onto the rest of the suggestion.
What does osu tournaments mean? Does this mean any community tournament, or only official tournaments. If it is only official tournaments, in what capacity does it need to be official? Does it need to be one of the 4/5 world-cups held every year? OWC OTWC OCWC OM4KWC OM7KWC? Or does official tournaments mean tournaments with badges or osu!staff provided rewards. More clarification is needed on this topic.
What does custom songs mean? Does this mean songs created for the sole purpose of the "osu tournament" or songs that have no other applicable source? What if an artist uploads their song, and then 2 months later it is approved by the artist for use in a tournament. Would that song be custom for the tournament?
Why should we limit osu! as the source only to tournaments?Shouldn't any content created solely for the purpose of osu! have the ability for osu! to be in the source field? If we are going by suggestion 1 and suggestion 2, the content was originally uploaded to the
https://osu.ppy.sh website and the file format was .OSU. When the "A labour of love" contest was finished, weren't the beatmaps created for that contest permitted to have osu! in the source? Shouldn't any similar song creation contest, whether community driven or official be given that right? When people create original content for the osu! platform, shouldn't they be permitted to show it? I believe the answer is yes.
Closing thoughtsI have a question for all of you. If all of these suggestions are pushed to the ranking criteria as is, what would the source field of newly ranked beatmaps be? Lets say an artist creates an original song and schedules an upload of an album including that song to Soundcloud and Youtube simultaneously. They then create a BMS chart of that song and upload it to their personal website.
We now have 5 conflicting potential source fields. Could the source field be either Youtube or Soundcloud? They were uploaded at the exact same time. Maybe the source field will be the album the song is a part of. Or maybe the source field will be BMS since the creator made a BMS chart. Or maybe the source field should be the Website the BMS file was uploaded to.
Do you want to design the exact precedence and order that these sources should take? Because they can't all be weighted equally. Only one source is allowed in the source field
(and please do NOT change that) I personally am not looking forward to the day that I have to read a flow-chart on what I should put in the source field of my beatmaps.