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[invalid] [discussion] the minimum song length

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Topic Starter
quila
a number of songs are under 30 seconds long, but still feel "complete," according to others. looping these songs could feel wrong; you often don't want to listen to the same song twice in a row. extending them with something like a clap track + spinner or a slow fade out could feel pointless / detriment the experience. the third alternative, extending the map over silence, has been ranked in the past but still seems undesirable to many. in contrast, <30s maps ranked in the past have become iconic for their length and filled a niche (1, 2).

what's the rationale for this rule? if you prefer extended mp3s to those intended by the artists in these cases, why?
AJT
you could’ve linked examples where the song isn’t actually way longer than 30s and the map doesn’t just stop after the intro

i do think there are several songs under 30s that are complete enough but I can’t think of a way to set a new limit without either being arbitrary or letting in a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t realistically need a leaderboard
StarCastler
I feel like it's challenging to quantify this successfully, and the current rule does provide help in preventing "non-song content" from being ranked. However, I do understand that in some cases a song can have meaningful content despite a run time of <30s. First thing that comes to mind is video game tracks that end just shy of the 30s mark yet still have a musical progression within them.

I don't immediately see a way to change this without causing other issues, but I'm open to further discussion of how this could work properly.
Topic Starter
quila
you could’ve linked examples where the song isn’t actually way longer than 30s and the map doesn’t just stop after the intro
i would have, but those are the only two ranked <30s maps in the game afaik
Leviathan
idk its just that the sets you mentioned for being "below 30 seconds" do have fully mapped difficulties and i dont really think they count as <30s maps
Topic Starter
quila

AJT wrote:

I can’t think of a way to set a new limit without [...] letting in a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t realistically need a leaderboard.

StarCastler wrote:

I don't immediately see a way to change this without causing other issues.
it seems many proposals are shot down for this reason, where there are clear use cases, but where one can also imagine maps they don't think should be ranked becoming rankable. i think this calls for a more general change, like allowing exceptions to rules be made for certain maps after human review.

(one example system: bns can submit exception requests for maps they'd like to nominate, and those requests are then voted on, like a smaller scale version of the veto appeal system)

this would require time from willing bns/nats to go over occasional requests. however, the total time spent would be proportional to the amount of positive use cases being allowed under the new system. moreover, if exceptions for a given rule end up being commonly granted, that rule can be changed to decrease the time spent on this. personally, i anticipate that requests would be rare and dispersed.

i would appreciate if you or some other nat brought this up internally to discuss / thought about other ways to do this. or i could post this as another proposal.
Leviathan
looking back on this there is no reason for this change, 30 seconds is perfectly fine as is
Ryu Sei
A song that is barely 30 seconds doesn't give enough play experience. Heck, if this happens, that megamap with ET Blocko could've been rankable.

That's an easy bloat to ranked map listing due to how terribly short a song is.
Leviathan
okay looking back on this thread again two months later i see no reason

as much as i want to rank neko music it isnt happening and i dont see how a song being "complete" under 30 seconds can really change the song requirements
also if your song just barely doesnt meet the requirements for 30 seconds just put a spinner at the end like you said in that third alternative, it may be "undesirable" to many but it still works as a fix for those cases

anyway sorry for posting after two months but like i just had to
Hivie
will be archiving this for now as it didn't get much traction + general opinions are negative
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