Best Ever Albums

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:20:54 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 06/16/2010 16:20

This thread is now locked.

From now on, please could people start a new thread for each new suggestion.

It will be much easier for everybody to see what has already been suggested with a separate suggestion on each thread and much easier for us to track the ideas through to completion.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:14:55 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 06/16/2010 16:14

good spot RFNAPLES, now fixed.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:34:46 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 06/16/2010 14:34

Like the new rating system but Average Rating is not shown properly under most commented stats.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Tue, 8 Jun 2010 02:16:15 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 06/08/2010 06:16

The other recognised lists on this site are from sources like VH1, Rolling Stone, NME etc. After listening to RFNAPLES comment, I'm not sure this list is of the same authority. So, in the end, unfortunately we didn't publish it.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

thomas697 — Mon, 7 Jun 2010 10:27:33 GMT

Author: thomas697

Posted: 06/07/2010 14:27

Did Digital Dream Doors chart go up .. or did RFNAPLES have a good argument?

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Sun, 30 May 2010 16:48:44 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/30/2010 20:48

Thanks, that's really very useful feedback. Regarding the pagination, we´ll see what we can do here to make this more user friendly. You can appreciate that we can't always show everything on one page as the site wouldn't scale very well if we did this, but we could certainly look at making the page 'numbering' more intuitive so it's a bit more friendly for browsing.

Alphabetizing is more complicated. You might notice that The Beatles is listed under 'B' for Beatles and not 'T' (for 'The'!) Not all groups/artists use somebody's name as the group name so it's particularly tricky to get this right (some people might expect an entry in either place). It does get quite complicated once you start getting into the detail e.g. how would you list an album that was performed by three separate solo artists e.g. Friday Night In San Francisco by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin & Paco De Lucia. ...

As an example, the HMV (UK music store) A-Z index is pretty similar to here (with all of its shortcomings!) Multiple pages for each individual letter and not sorted by artist's last name. Listed under 'A' is Amy McDonald...

RYM is the same as here with the way that the pagination works (page numbers once you click on an individual letter). Admittedly, for solo artists they list
by surname/firstname (but not always consistently).

A lot other sites simply don't bother with an A to Z (notably Last.fm, Amazon). I think these sites more encourge people to browse by genre/tag. This is definitely a direction that we will be moving in once the genre update is live.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Sun, 30 May 2010 14:47:12 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/30/2010 18:47

It takes longer to page through an alpha list than it does to scroll, even if you attempt to guess on which page the artist is located. You guess wrong you go forward or backwards until finally you have the right page. With a scroll you can easily stop right on the artist in question.

Having more artists on each page helps but it further speeds it up if they were all there. Alternatively you could breakdown the longer alpha categories, e.g., A-Am, An-Az, etc.

That brings me to the alphabetizing method the site uses. Artists are ordered by first name rather than surname. Most libraries sort by surname. I know for instance its Davies but do I want Ray or Dave? With a surname sort family names are together. I know it was Williams, but what was his first name? Bill, William, Richard, Dick, Robert, Bob, etc.

An A to Z list is good, especially if you don't know exactly how to spell the name or if you are just roaming to see what is available.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Sun, 30 May 2010 14:12:06 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/30/2010 18:12

Hi RFNAPLES, ok I understand what you mean by that now. I'm interested in trying to understand why you think it is frustrating/slow. Are you using the list to locate a specific artist, or are you just browsing the list looking for ideas? Maybe the 'A to Z' is surplus to requirements and we should just have a search page.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Sun, 30 May 2010 09:28:09 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/30/2010 13:28

For examples of a dropdown scrollable lists see Favorites in IE8 or see acclaimedmusic.com. Both use a scroll bar, both will accept other mouse/pad scroll inputs.

Email notifications were hours behind. May have improved lately.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Sun, 30 May 2010 07:49:51 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/30/2010 11:49

Site stats now on a six hour schedule. We´ve been doing some background work on average ratings and this is why we skipped a couple of stat refreshes.

Not sure why the email would be delayed. No changes have been made here for quite some time. Its possible there is an issue with our hosting provider. I´ll investigate this and maybe we can switch mail servers. Typically, how long is the delay that you are experiencing here?

Your last point regarding A to Z, I don´t really understand what you are meaning by dropdown scrollable alphas (dropdown and scrollable are two different things to my mind). If you could give a little more description to help me understand, or point me at a URL on another site I´ll gladly give your idea some consideration (I know it´s not perfect at the moment).

EDIT: we've now doubled the number of bands on each page of the A to Z index from 20 to 40 (means half the number of clicks you are now making).

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Sat, 29 May 2010 07:54:37 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/29/2010 11:54

A to Z search would be a lot faster and less frustrating if there were dropdown scrollable alphas rather than paged alphas.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Fri, 28 May 2010 23:30:33 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/29/2010 03:30

Email topic reply notifications and comment reply notifications are extremely delayed lately. Site statistics also don't appear to be updated twice daily anymore. Please correct.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:24:56 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/24/2010 19:24

"The chart is from a well-regarded or widely-recognised source." Is it?

Chart appears to be the work of one man "Rob." Will any chart published on a .com site qualify?

DigitalDreamDoor.com is a website that is completely operated, designed, maintained, and controlled by one person in Boca Raton, Florida, U.S.A.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:02:57 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/24/2010 19:02

Hi thomas697, yes it looks a good list and seems to meet the eligibility criteria. We'll add it to the site (it might take a day or so to appear)

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

thomas697 — Sun, 23 May 2010 10:44:12 GMT

Author: thomas697

Posted: 05/23/2010 14:44

Have you got the digital dream door greatest albums list on here ?

They update the list at the end of every year, I went on the site alot when I was younger to gain more knowledge about music until I found this site .. Its incredibly authentic and not tainted with a lot of crap some lists can be .. Just wanted to put my 2 cents in .. I've also got the link below if you want to have a look

http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/pages/best_albumsddd.html

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Sun, 23 May 2010 10:32:19 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/23/2010 14:32

No, it doesn't show on that page yet but it will do as soon as the stats have been refreshed.

We chose the 2000 version because it was the latest available chart by that source (no logo, but contains the word 'Virgin' in the title and was published by Virgin Books). I didn't realize it was out of print, but so is the magazine Melody Maker which also has a chart on this site.

When the site started in 2005, we seeded the intial data from a number of sources and Mojo was one of them. There are only three charts on here compiled before the year 2000 (Guardian, Mojo & Q), but there are over 1,500 member charts compiled after 2005.

The reason the Q charts only have one scoring version is that each BEA member gets one vote. Rather like a member revising their own chart multiple times, the older Q version is replaced by their newset selections.

Yes, there is undoubtedly an age bias because the longer the site exists, older albums will gain more and more votes making it more difficult for a newer album to break through (although In Rainbows and others have done so despite this). On the other hand, newer albums are likely to be more in the consciousness of most people and so may be favoured on newer lists. This is particularly true for a lot of our members who are younger than twenty and did not grow up with The Beatles (or anything from the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s) and so will favour the music they grew up with (i.e. 1990s and 2000s).

At some point, it might be appropriate for us to introduce something to ignore charts older than x years, but I'm not sure if we have reached that stage yet. I'd personally rather wait until we have a larger pool of member charts and then we could maybe look at ignoring member charts not updated in the last year (or such-like). Recognised lists are rarer and more difficult to find, if we had an age rule here, our pool of recognised charts would be tiny or non-existent.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Sun, 23 May 2010 05:32:39 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/23/2010 09:32

Noticed that the Virgin chart is not shown as a recognized chart yet (see customize overall chart). Also questioning the authenticity of the 2000 chart (vs. the 1998). Perhaps it shouldn't be recognized after all--2000 paperback cover doesn't bare Virgin trademark and is out-of-print while the 1998 book is still in print.

Question on recognized charts. By definition they must be all-time charts without genre qualifiers. I believe some charts were excluded because they eliminated some recent years. What is the difference between a chart published in 2010 showing the greatest albums from 1950 to 2000 and an all-time chart published in 2000? They both eliminate the last 10 years; one by publication date, the other by design.

This also begs the question, how long should a chart be "recognized?" We have already eliminated the older versions of the Q chart but how current should the recognized charts be? For instance, MOJO chart was published in 1995. Surely not too current and missing at least the last 15 years producing a bias towards the older "classics."

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

albummaster — Sun, 23 May 2010 03:50:59 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/23/2010 07:50

thanks - this has now been added: http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=1990

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:17:42 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/22/2010 21:17

Looks like we should have another recognized chart (mentioned in another forum topic).

Virgin All-Time Top 1000 Albums by Colin Larkin (1998) ISBN-10: 0753502585

The world's most authorive guide to the perfect record collection based on over 100,000 votes from the fans, the experts, and the critics.

Re: We welcome any feedback on this web site

RFNAPLES — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:39:43 GMT

Author: RFNAPLES

Posted: 05/14/2010 11:39

Thanks!