OK, it's probably a little early to be starting this, but this is the place for everyone's final lists.

By the time December rolls around, people will start posting their final lists, and I'll calculate the top albums according to Metaforum members, much like The Furnace is Fiery did last year. Please remember that once you've posted your final list here, you cannot edit it. Well, you can, I suppose, but it will not count towards the final tally.

I haven't yet decided what the scoring system will be. I'm thinking of awarding more points to the top 3 albums. So maybe it'll go something like 30-25-20-17-16-15-14-13....1. If there are any suggestions, let me know.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RavingLunatic,

I'm also thinking of imposing a posting requirement for lists to count. I think last year, everyone's list was counted, but I'd rather just count the lists of people who are actually members of these forums instead of random passersby who toss off a list and never return. I'm thinking a requirement of maybe 25 posts or so. Again, suggestions please.

It's never too early to satart thinking of year end lists!!!

I like the idea of limiting the voters to people with some history of posting and of interest in music. I don't like the idea of some one-time visitor being able to skew the results with his list of death metal CDs. Not that I have anything against death metal. Well, actually, I do...

Re the voting system, I don't think you, as moderator, should assign points yourself. My number 1 and 2 may be very close together or very far apart. You can't know that, and so I don't think you should arbitrarily assign points that may not reflect the voter's actual assessments.

I like the Village Voice Pazz & Jop system. You list your top ten and then you have 100 points which you can parcel out among them as you see fit -- but no album can get more than 25 points, and each album must be given at least one point. That way, no one can skew the list too much by giving his or her personal favourite 91 points and all the rest 1 point. Some people don't like to decide rankings within the list, so they can just give each album 10 points. Others may give their top five 15 points each and their bottom five 3 points each. Bascially, each person gets to decide, within certain parameters, what weight to give each album on their list.

Then the list you as moderator compile can contain a ranking based both on number of votes and on total point score, which gives an interesting double perspective. You can see what albums had the widest appeal (most votes), what albums inspired the most passionate reactions (most points on average per vote), etc.

I like Peewee's idea, but that's going to make it more difficult to compile the results. I'm not sure if anyone on the forums really wants to put that kind of time into it. I guess it's up to whoever wants to take part in the number compiling.

I think rather than go by post count, you should go by their registered date. Some people have been around awhile, but just don't post that often. Or you could say "25 posts, or 1 month".

We also discussed the weighting issue last year, and most people were split on it. I sort of like it, since I typically like my top few albums a lot more than anything else in my top 20. As I said last year, I didn't see a whole lot of difference in quality between #10 and #20, and on any given day, I might enjoy #20 more than #10. However, the top 3-5 are usually pretty solid. My top 3 from last year were CYHSY, Spoon, and Wolf Parade, and I'd still stand by that today.

I can see both sides of the weighting issue though. If you do weight the albums, it's possible for an album to sneak onto the list that a few people loved, but most people may have not even liked. On the other hand, with the non-weighted system, you end up with albums that a lot of people put on their list, but maybe no one really loved.

And I agree that the pazz n jop method would be a pain in the ass for anyone (RL, I'm assuming) who had to compile the results. Unless, I'm wrong and RL has plenty of time on his hands, then by all means....

quote:

Originally posted by less_success:
I like Peewee's idea, but that's going to make it more difficult to compile the results. I'm not sure if anyone on the forums really wants to put that kind of time into it. I guess it's up to whoever wants to take part in the number compiling.

The moderator's self-styled moniker is Raving Lunatic. I'm assuming he has a LOT of time to tinker with these lists, in between random axe murders and plotting world domination.

I don't think the weighting proposal really adds much time to the moderator's functions. When you make a record of someone having voted for an album, you also add in the points they gave it. At years end, you just have to type out two lists, but it's not that much extra work.

Well, the ideas are swelling already!!! lol
I'm glad RL has taken this on a bit earlier than I did, as some of these questions came late last year and dealt with as spur-of-the-moment. I like RL's idea on the point scheme. Peewee's idea may be good for a top 10 list, BUT this is a TOP 20 list. RL may become Head Spokesperson for Tylenol come January.

I also agree(and most people did last year) that there should be NO TINKERING of Lists. If you don't have your list the way you want it, then wait until January to post it. Don't post Dec 1st then switch rankings on Jan 1st. Going back and deducting/adding points is just, well, silly!

My list will be in aprrox 150 days from now.

To me, the divvy it up yourself seems like overkill. I'd say that the simple 30-25-20 etc. system would work fine. If you really have no seperation between two, then say they're tied and the compiler can split their combined points.

As far as posts go, I'd say at least a month or 50 posts... something like that.

quote:

Originally posted by Peewee:
The moderator's self-styled moniker is Raving Lunatic. I'm assuming he has a LOT of time to tinker with these lists, in between random axe murders and plotting world domination.

An astute observation.

No matter what kind of scoring system we do, it won't be as hard as doing my fantasy baseball league's monthly stats, which I did last year. Do you know how long it can take to figure ERA's and batting averages for the fourth month of the season? Especially for the couple months where I forgot to update the stats on the day the month ended and I had to go back to the past few days and subtract each team's stats of the past few days from their season total. I could go on longer, but I'm gonna stop now.

Seriously, though, I'm pretty quick at doing this sort of thing, so whatever system people think will be most accurate I'm willing to go with. The Pazznjop system does sound pretty appealing to me, but I can see how some people would find that too demanding.

(If we go with the Pazznjop system, the question becomes how many points we should allot each person. 100? 200? 150? 200 would probably be most in line with the Pazznjop, since that means an average of 10 points per entry. Since we're doing a top 20 instead of top 10 though, maybe we should change the maximum score to 30 or 40 points, assuming 200 total points.)

I don't really think we need to go above a 25-post requirement. If someone's posted 25 times, they're not just some random guy passing by. And it's not too hard to get 25 posts. Post twice a day on 'What Are You Listening To Now?' and 'Song Tag' for 6 days and you're in. I also like the idea of counting people who've been around for a certain period of time. Does one month sound right to everyone? I don't want to make this thing too exclusive, but to some extent, exclusivity is the whole point. I'd like to see our list to have some quirkiness, and if we got too many people, our list would probably duplicate Pitchfork's.

Thanks for the feedback folks. Keep it coming.

Its August for heavens sake.

I only mention this as by the time december rolls around this thread will be 10 pages long, and not very user friendly.

Well then the less said until december the better, eh?

By the way, the pazznjop system sounds good to me. Any naysayers?

quote:

Originally posted by Backcountry:
Its August for heavens sake.

I only mention this as by the time december rolls around this thread will be 10 pages long, and not very user friendly.

There could always be a new thread started for the actual posting, and we could use this one for figuring out how to organize the whole thing. I think it's a good idea to get this organized early. Besides, if we set up a good system then we can use for the following years as well.

It seems to me like there are only a couple of things that need to be set:
- Point system: Can points be divided by the poster or is it a set point for a spot, i.e. #1 is 30 points
- Which people should be allowed to post? Some random guy who just signed up shouldn't be able to sway the results, but where should the cut off be?
- How many records can one person lists? Seems like top 20 is the consensus so far
- Should people be allowed to modify their list once it's posted?
- When is the due date?

Perhaps we should set up some kind of voting method for deciding how these questions should be handled. Anyone else agree?

Yeah. RL can open new thread once the end of NOV hits and lists will be posted separately.That's a given. This'll just get things started and people interested...

My only input is with the points system. I would rather have as assigned points distribution rather than trying to figure it out myself. I kinda like the Pazz system personally, but it's going to be tough enough sorting through 100 albums to find and rank 20. To then determine how points are distributed among those is too much for me.

quote:

Originally posted by Backcountry:
Its August for heavens sake.

I only mention this as by the time december rolls around this thread will be 10 pages long, and not very user friendly.

Then don't add to the length by posting here, dude!

Personally, I think we should go for a top 10 list, with 100 points. I think it is overkill to have everyone posting 20 0r 25 albums. If people wanna post their top 25, that is fine, but only the top ten should be counted for the purposes of the poll. That's just my view.

quote:

Originally posted by less_success:

quote:

Originally posted by Backcountry:
Its August for heavens sake.

I only mention this as by the time december rolls around this thread will be 10 pages long, and not very user friendly.

There could always be a new thread started for the actual posting, and we could use this one for figuring out how to organize the whole thing. I think it's a good idea to get this organized early. Besides, if we set up a good system then we can use for the following years as well.

It seems to me like there are only a couple of things that need to be set:
- Point system: Can points be divided by the poster or is it a set point for a spot, i.e. #1 is 30 points
- Which people should be allowed to post? Some random guy who just signed up shouldn't be able to sway the results, but where should the cut off be?
- How many records can one person lists? Seems like top 20 is the consensus so far
- Should people be allowed to modify their list once it's posted?
- When is the due date?

Perhaps we should set up some kind of voting method for deciding how these questions should be handled. Anyone else agree?

These should be voted on only if RavingLunatic thinks so... it's his thread.

In response to the questions, I'd say set point values, 25/1 month, top 20 (but someone can submit less, say minimum of 5 maybe), no modifying, and due date of mid-january or so

I think Spence is about right on things. Though I like the Pazznjop method, I'm starting to think it will simplify things a lot for everybody if we use set point values. I'm thinking 30-25-20-17-16-15....3-2-1. My logic for that is that it's fairly likely that the #1 album will be a lot better than the #2, or #2 higher than #3, but it's pretty unlikely that #9 is going to be a lot better than #10. The farther you go down a list, the more likely the albums are to be close together in terms of quality.

I still like the 25-post or 1 month requirement. As far as due date, I think it depends on if there are any albums set to come out in December. Last year the only one I can think of was Ryan Adams's 29, which no one seemed to care for anyway. If that's the case again, I'm in favor of a Jan 1st due date. If there are contenders coming out in December, though, we can move it back.

Modifying lists is absolutely out of the question. That would get ridiculous and possibly manipulative. I like 20 albums, minimum of 10. If someone's only got 5 albums they like from this year, I'm not sure they've heard enough albums for their opinion to mean much. It'd be like me listing my favorite albums of, say, 1974. I'd probably have 5, but my list would be worthless considering how few albums I've heard from that year.

So that's the plan for now. If anyone has any strong objections, just say so. I'll change the format to fit whatever the forum consensus is.

Sounds fine to me, RavingLunatic.

I have a strong objection! (partly I'm just having fun discussing this).

If we are going to change the system and assign point values to people's rankings, then to me it makes no sense at all to dictate what those point rankings might be. I think the person who votes should be the one to assign his or her own point rankings. I can think of years where my no. 1 album was head and shoulders above any other album for me, a true masterpiece, and it would bother me that the system automatically assigns it a point-value that does not reflect my personal assessment of its merit relatively to the number 2 album. There are other years where I can't really decide which is the best and the top three are neck and neck, and I wouldn't want to see my number one album necessarily get assigned more points than my number 2 or 3. Inevitably, the subjective nature of the voting, which is after all what the system is all about, gets undermined.

I think we should either (a) stay with the current system, where there is no point value for the votes (since it is arguably impossible to really define point values with any reliability or accuracy), or (b) if we have point values ,it should be the voter who determines them, within whatever parameters we set for total overall points and point maximums per album.

I think the worst option is to have point values but to disctate what they should be.

And if we must dictate what the point values are, and if we accept as a fact that this will not, in fact, reflect the voter's own personal views, then why have a complicated system where no. 1 gets 30, no. 2 gets 25, etc? If this is the system we go for, I would suggest that in a list of 25, the point values should simply be 25-24-23-22-21 etc.

But I love making my year end list, and I'll abide by whatever rules Lunatic wants.