Development/Summer of Code/2017/CritiqueBrainz

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Ideas

Direct access to the MusicBrainz database

Proposed mentor: Gentlecat
Languages/skills: Python, Flask, SQL, Docker, Consul

So far, the biggest cause for slowdown in CritiqueBrainz are requests to MusicBrainz web service. It's not that MusicBrainz WS is slow, it's just that some pages on CritiqueBrainz require a lot of MusicBrainz data, which might take a very long time to retrieve. This can be caused by the complexity of a request, or by a number of them (when showing multiple items, since there's no way to do batch-requests).

New infrastructure allows us to easily read data directly from the MusicBrainz database. Doing this in CritiqueBrainz will probably be a significant speedup.

See https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/CB-231.

Book reviews

Proposed mentor: Gentlecat
Languages/skills: Python, Flask, SQL, JavaScript

Currently people can review release groups, events, and places. We'd like to expand that list by allowing people to publish reviews for books. Metadata about books can be retrieved from the BookBrainz project (by accessing the web API or its database directly). This project would require (1) extension of CritiqueBrainz back-end to support book reviews, and (2) changes to the web interface.

See https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/CB-240.

Review aggregation

Proposed mentor: Gentlecat
Languages/skills: Python, Flask, SQL, JavaScript

One way we could make CritiqueBrainz more useful and interesting is by providing reviews for music, places, and other things is by aggregating reviews from other sources. This is a nice way to provide access to different perspectives from different authors, in addition to reviews that we have already. Even better when we don't have any reviews of our own.

This is useful particularly in cases when we can't "import" reviews (like we've done with BBC Music ones), because they are not distributed under an open (CC) license. But what we can do is provide a link (perhaps with additional info). So something like Google News, but for reviews (of music or something else).

See https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/CB-243.

Rating system for reviews

Proposed mentor: Gentlecat
Languages/skills: Python, Flask, SQL, JavaScript

The idea is to implement a rating system for CritiqueBrainz reviews. It would be a great addition to existing review system.

It's important to keep in mind potential issues that might come up in the future. If you are interested in this idea, check the associated ticket and, if necessary, discuss your ideas with members of the MetaBrainz community.

See https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/CB-244.