Best Ever Albums

Re: Possible red flag

MadhattanJack — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 14:32:55 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 11/13/2023 19:32

hwex9000 wrote:

If dozens of people suddenly started adding and upvoting their own work, it would really make things odd here.

I've only been here 2 years, but I eventually learned there's a big difference between "adding" and "upvoting" here when it comes to your own album(s). There are actually quite a few examples of the former — the best place to start is this chart (compiled by videoheadcleaner) if you're curious — but like the old-timers here will all tell you, the ranking system is set up so that it doesn't really matter much as long as people don't put their own album into their all-time Top Ten or whatever. And even then, the best you'll probably do is Top 10,000, barely.

The fact is, I've listened to a few of those albums and most of them are pretty good, or at least plenty good enough to deserve inclusion here, if not an actual ranking. I'd say that in most cases they're either a little too weird for my tastes or not weird enough (if you know what I mean), and I've yet to come across any that have been "earth-shattering" (though maybe I will someday), but virtually all of them are a lot better than Iwrotehaikusaboutcannibalisminyouryearbook by I Wrote Haikus About Cannibalism In Your Yearbook — and that album is ranked #35,551 and is in the Top 1000 for 2010. So, there's that.

Of course, next thing you know someone is going to tell me the Cannibal Haikus album is a "BEA creation" too, which will be personally embarrassing, but ya know what? I don't care! These are musicians, and BEA members, and (mostly) adults, and as such they have to know that not every album is going to appeal to every person out there, even if every person happens to be me in some strange capacity. That's why they call it "music" — you have to follow your Muse, and that means your own Muse and not some other person's Muse, or the band Muse, whom I also feel is highly overrated.

Re: Possible red flag

hwex9000 — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 11:56:29 GMT

Author: hwex9000

Posted: 11/13/2023 16:56

albummaster wrote:

Personally believe (and stated above), it's against the spirit of the site, so it's 'frowned upon' in that respect, but unfortunately it makes no difference to the scores. ... Unfortunately, it would be impossible to enforce if we said people can't rate/rank your own albums (how do we know which band/artist an anonymous user is affiliated to?) .

I actually came across a blatant example of this, when looking up an album in the 6000-6500 range that I had never heard of before - a user, who has it at #1 on his chart, openly admits in the comments that it's his own album!

I'm not naming artist or album here, because he's rather sweetly upfront and semi-apologetic about it, and as AM notes it doesn't make much difference in the larger scheme of things. But it does violate the spirit of the site. If dozens of people suddenly started adding and upvoting their own work, it would really make things odd here.

Re: Possible red flag

albummaster — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 02:11:19 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/18/2023 06:11

MadhattanJack wrote:

...I wrongly assumed that this sort of thing was much more frowned-upon than it actually is — so I'm sorry for anything I've posted here in the past that suggested, by implication or otherwise, that this is necessarily a bad thing to do. (Maybe it would be if someone were doing it with several different accounts, or if someone were doing it to promote some really horrible "pornogrind" noisecore act, but if it's just one or two accounts it clearly doesn't have much of an effect on the site's credibility or anything like that.)

Personally believe (and stated above), it's against the spirit of the site, so it's 'frowned upon' in that respect, but unfortunately it makes no difference to the scores. If multiple people are coordinating their rankings (or same person using different accounts), then it turns into gaming. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to enforce if we said people can't rate/rank your own albums (how do we know which band/artist an anonymous user is affiliated to?)

The fact that one chart can have such a big difference is due to albums being clustered very closely together in the long tail. I've previously thought BEA shouldn't provide a rank at all for albums over a certain number (e.g. top 100,000) and this would also help scalability (reducing/capping the amount of processing needed on the back end). As you've alluded to, rankings are not meaningful after a certain point due to the number of charts that they typically appear in etc, but in the other camp, I also think people like seeing some kind of number to provide a rough gauge as to how high an album ranks versus another album (this is the current direction), but there is a strong case for having a capped maximum rank the bigger the database becomes.

Re: Possible red flag

MadhattanJack — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:54:23 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/17/2023 22:54

hwex9000 wrote:

Hey, I've just noticed that the James Walsh album has (finally) unceremoniously plummeted out of the top 10,000. What changed to make that happen?

Looks like jwalsh97 removed it from his all-time Top 100 last night, probably because we (or you, really) noticed. That would have lost it 99 ranking points, give or take, which is a lot of points. It would be like me suddenly deciding I don't like XTC's Go 2 anymore, since ATM I'm single-handedly providing it with more than twice as many ranking points as everyone else combined. (Which I suppose is yet another reason to just say "ehh, don't worry about it" for albums outside of the top 5,000.)

Also, this might be a good opportunity for me to apologize to fellow BEA members who have albums of their own listed here on the site, and who have (in some cases) ranked them highly. I've only been here for about two years, and I wrongly assumed that this sort of thing was much more frowned-upon than it actually is — so I'm sorry for anything I've posted here in the past that suggested, by implication or otherwise, that this is necessarily a bad thing to do. (Maybe it would be if someone were doing it with several different accounts, or if someone were doing it to promote some really horrible "pornogrind" noisecore act, but if it's just one or two accounts it clearly doesn't have much of an effect on the site's credibility or anything like that.)

Re: Possible red flag

hwex9000 — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 09:16:52 GMT

Author: hwex9000

Posted: 10/17/2023 13:16

Hey, I've just noticed that the James Walsh album has (finally) unceremoniously plummeted out of the top 10,000. What changed to make that happen?

Re: Possible red flag

albummaster — Wed, 9 Aug 2023 03:53:39 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 08/09/2023 07:53

The duplicate accounts have now been banned. It might take a few hours for updated stats to trickle through the site (banned user rankings do not contribute towards the totals).

Re: Possible red flag

MadhattanJack — Tue, 8 Aug 2023 15:51:52 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 08/08/2023 19:51

Patman360 wrote:

Unless I've missed some massive trend lately, there's definitely some suspicious activity going on with the below artist:

Darren Isaiah

Agreed — at the very least, landofdafallen, hiphophorray5, swegg105, and heartofahchamp are all the same guy, and those are just the BEA accounts that have Prince Freakazoid charted as the #1 album of all time. Still, I'm sure he's really nice if you meet him in person! 😄

On the plus side though, I did listen to a few of the tracks from the album and it's nowhere near as bad as you'd expect for music being promoted by sock puppet accounts. I might have even downloaded "Nurse Outfit (Dissimulated)," but apparently he's not on Bandcamp and it isn't even on his Soundcloud page. Probably a licensing issue of some sort.

Re: Possible red flag

Patman360 — Tue, 8 Aug 2023 10:44:50 GMT

Author: Patman360

Posted: 08/08/2023 14:44

Unless I've missed some massive trend lately, there's definitely some suspicious activity going on with the below artist:

Darren Isaiah

Re: Possible red flag

albummaster — Sat, 6 May 2023 03:30:12 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/06/2023 07:30

Not sure what the point is of rating your own album the best ever. Agree, not against the rules, but a bit against the spirit.

Re: Possible red flag

baystateoftheart — Fri, 5 May 2023 22:20:55 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 05/06/2023 02:20

It's not against site rules to rate your own album #1 in everything. The fact that almost all of the charts are from one user is a good sign that this probably isn't nefarious, as long as the fourth chart is friend/family and not a sockpuppet.

Re: Possible red flag

MadhattanJack — Fri, 5 May 2023 17:56:09 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 05/05/2023 21:56

hwcolum wrote:

Just noted a potential "Hackbarth" situation, regarding Sunshine and Rainbows, a 2017 album by a UK artist named James Walsh. The album has broken into the all-time chart via #1 rankings on four recently entered user charts. Three of those four charts are from user "jwalsh97." Nothing at all suspicious there, I'm sure...

Oh yeah, that's a pretty obvious one — pretty clearly an unmastered Garageband-quality recording, and when the record label is listed on Apple and Spotify as "753792 Records DK," that means it was uploaded to DistroKid, probably under the $22.99 per year plan. So it's not on Bandcamp or Discogs, FWIW... Still, it probably is his favorite album, what with him having done it himself and all.

Possible red flag

hwex9000 — Fri, 5 May 2023 10:57:37 GMT

Author: hwex9000

Posted: 05/05/2023 14:57

Just noted a potential "Hackbarth" situation, regarding Sunshine and Rainbows, a 2017 album by a UK artist named James Walsh. The album has broken into the all-time chart via #1 rankings on four recently entered user charts. Three of those four charts are from user "jwalsh97." Nothing at all suspicious there, I'm sure...