Best Ever Albums

Re: concerning statistics

badfaith — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:56:46 GMT

Author: badfaith

Posted: 01/21/2010 15:56

Ok thank you.

...It doesn't really matter I suppose, it's just that I thought that if you have an ongoing disussion between two or three people through the thread, it will accumulate views through page 'turns' more than another thread which is more 'popular' among a greater number of people but viewed only infrequently, in which case the amount of views it has could be misleading if you were looking for a popular thread (god knows why you'd do that, but hey...it might be important to someone).

Just being Anal. Apologetics in quantity.

Re: concerning statistics

albummaster — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:37:42 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 01/20/2010 15:37

I think the counter increments for each page view. You are probably right that this figure might be inflated if you are viewing multiple pages within the same topic. Not sure what other metric could be used to convey popularity other than page views? (the forum software is third party so we can't control this too much anyhow)

Re: concerning statistics

badfaith — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:13:27 GMT

Author: badfaith

Posted: 01/19/2010 15:13

Hello Albummaster, I have a question born of idle curiosity really... on the view counter for each thread, does this increase only each time you view it regardless of how many pages you look through, or for each page viewed?

because by reckoning if the last is true, as a thread accumulates pages, view counts will increase exponentially as people search for the latest page, having to get through maybe five or ten pages to find the last post they read. I just thought that seeing as this statistic is there, it is meant to convey something about the popularity of the thread, but may increasingly come to signify the quantity of pages searched, than the amount of times it has been viewed...Am I making any sense to anyone? Sorry if that seems bizzare.

...and sorry if I've butted in on a thread that wasn't meant for this purpose

Re: concerning statistics

1234567890 — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:28:14 GMT

Author: 1234567890

Posted: 01/16/2010 04:28

Sorry for the delay. I meant the google custom search in the top right. It appears to have improved since my post. I just meant all the pages wether for an album or forum seemed to have the same title in the search results. I'm not sure if you have any control over that, though.

Re: concerning statistics

albummaster — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:33:55 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 12/30/2009 21:33

hi 1234567890, which search results do you mean? The forum search results, or the search results from the main site?

Re: concerning statistics

1234567890 — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:14:02 GMT

Author: 1234567890

Posted: 12/30/2009 21:14

hey, I couldnt find a place for this. but i was looking at the sites search results and noticed most if not all have the same header. Perhaps some could have the forum topic as the header?

Re: concerning statistics

RFNAPLES — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:57:41 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 12/19/2009 16:57

Yes simplicity is good. Perhaps a few other statistical measures could be given. In addition to mean, these measures might be understood--median, mode, range, standard deviation, kurtosis, and skewness.

Re: concerning statistics

albummaster — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:16:35 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 12/19/2009 16:16

Yes, there's a whole host of ways we could decide to calculate this but I don't think there's a perfect answer. The more complicated we make it, the less people will understand what numbers they are looking at and the less meaningful the numbers will be. I think sometimes, keeping things simple is the best way to do things which is primarily why things have stayed as they are.

Re: concerning statistics

Charicature — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:16:43 GMT

Author: Charicature

Posted: 12/17/2009 16:16

albummaster wrote:

yes, we thought about doing a truncated mean but that means discarding some votes and how many do we discard? We could pick an arbitrary value but some albums have more votes than others, so it would end up being equally as [un]valid as what we are doing now, plus it has the possibility to annoy some members if *their* vote isn't counted.

Perhaps the tracks can be weighted by taking into account the number of charts that the albums on which they appear are referenced? The good old fashioned force multiplier? Or perhaps modify their ranking simply by the number of people that have actually rated them. The site must keep a statistic of total membership - perhaps that could be used as a "master" modifying variable, where rankings are a factor of the average rating multiplied by the percentage of the site's membership offering a rating.

For instance, say the site's membership is 1,000, and 10 people rate a certain album for an average rating of 80. The album would get a ranking score of just .8, as only 1% of the membership rated it at all. The same system could be applied just as easily to charts and tracks, I would imagine.

Granted a low rated album rated by a lot of people will possibly outrank a highly rated album that few have rated, but if it's really a good album then having more people rate it will cause it to surpass the album of lesser quality eventually anyway - otherwise, the album could be said to not have enough appeal to truly be considered "high quality" and the rankings are still legitimate.

Re: concerning statistics

albummaster — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:02:18 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 12/17/2009 12:02

yes, we thought about doing a truncated mean but that means discarding some votes and how many do we discard? We could pick an arbitrary value but some albums have more votes than others, so it would end up being equally as [un]valid as what we are doing now, plus it has the possibility to annoy some members if *their* vote isn't counted.

Re: concerning statistics

RFNAPLES — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:40:12 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 12/15/2009 18:40

Maybe you can use an Olympic system where they throw out the highest and lowest scores.

Re: concerning statistics

albummaster — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:36:52 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 12/15/2009 18:36

No, deleting the chart each time won't mess the system up and is probably the most sensible thing to do if your chart has more than a few tweaks.

I'm not sure we can do much about tit-for-tat ratings. They'll always exist and we cannot program around them. In truth, the 'mean' average is the simplest way of doing things and probably no worse than any other method (and particularly for items that have been rated a great number of times).

Re: concerning statistics

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:56:28 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 12/11/2009 05:56

I like the weighted idea, but there does need to be some way to weave out the "vindictiveness factor." Perhaps any rating could show up on a members chart page but, when calculating how to weight the chart, scores 10 or below are not counted and (this would be really tricky to program) scores below 50 which are the same as those given to the rating member are discounted (for example, many people will rate your chart a 40 if you rate their chart a 40, take a look at telefunkers page).

As a side note, because members often don't re-rate a chart when it is edited I've gotten into the habit of deleting my chart every time I edit it so members are rating my new selection of top albums. Tell me if this is messing up the system in any way or not preferred and I can stop.

thanks

Re: concerning statistics

RFNAPLES — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:20:59 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 12/10/2009 14:20

I am not a fan of the chart ratings. Often it appears only to be a popularity contest, or a vindictive rating system, with little thought and agreement on rating criteria. There also appears to be a bias against most "recognized" charts. Let the number/position of charts remain the criteria for ranking; forget the idea of weighting by rating.

Re: concerning statistics

albummaster — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:35:30 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 12/10/2009 12:35

I agree, I was just commenting on another thread that people are getting a bit smart with their ratings which is really affecting the average ratngs. The algorithm does need to be tweaked a little to stop people from gaming the system. At the moment, we offer member rating charts for albums, bands, charts and tracks. Albums and bands could. in theory, be rated taking into account their appearances in member charts, but tracks and charts themselves cannot. At the moment, we use the 'mean' average rating but perhaps something else would now be more appropriate.

Regarding the overall chart, one idea which we've been pondering is to calculate the overall chart taking into account the rating that a chart has received. If a chart has been rated with 90% it would have more weighting than a chart that only has a 60% rating. Personally, I think this would lead to a much higher quality overall chart (which would have the benefit of being 'peer reviewed' as part of its compilation)

concerning statistics

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:10:48 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 12/10/2009 05:10

I was thinking that statistics should be weighted in part from member ratings but mostly from points given to them from being favorited/in charts. This way, the statistics page for member "rated" stuff will be more representative of what the members actually enjoy, rather than what afew people have given them. For example, the top member rated album is an Elvis CD which only 8 people have favorited and the top meber rated song is from Arcade Fire's Funeral (which is a great album, but there are better songs). I know that there's a chart with albums based on points, perhaps this should be merged with member rated...

just some thoughts