[asimpkins]

Hi, everyone.

I came across this site a few weeks ago, and I quickly got hooked. I've been using it daily to hunt down new music and I've been inspired to create my own lists to contribute to the rankings. This is a great site.

However, I found the flow of restrictions for new users to be somewhat frustrating. I apologize if this has been discussed to death and decided for good reasons I'm not aware of, but I thought I should offer my take.

It seems to me that low level users should first be allowed to create yearly lists and as their access increases they should be allowed to create decade and then all-time lists. Here's why:

1. Making a good list is a lot of work, and yearly lists are a natural starting point because it's easy to work from a smaller set of albums. Once yearly lists are finished for each year in a decade they then serve as a natural foundation for tackling a much more difficult decade list. In turn the decade lists prepare the process of making an all-time list. Starting with an all-time list as your first list is overwhelming.

2. Yearly lists count for the fewest points in the rankings, and it seems more natural that new users should start with less influence and slowly ramp up to more influence. Instead, by directing new users to start with heavily weighted all-time lists you open up the possibility for significant ranking manipulation by sloppily or lazily made lists, perhaps just containing a few pet bands or favorite albums.

That's how I experienced the process at least. I waited until I had the access to make yearly lists and I've started by working on them. Only after they were finished did I try to tackle a decade list. I haven't gotten close to attempting my all-time list yet. I was really motivated to be involved, so I stuck with it, but the site would have hooked me much better if it worked the other way around.

Thanks. I hope my input is helpful.

Andrew

[Error Finn]

It seems to me that low level users should first be allowed to create yearly lists and as their access increases they should be allowed to create decade and then all-time lists...

Welcome

Good attention to, by the way. When I made charts for decades (a couple of weeks ago), I wonder, first, for years, what have been the best. And, quite logically, was born in the decades lists. When I joined this site in August 2009, and I made my first (and only one) favorite chart, allowed only 50 albums.
Yes, making a good list is a lot of work...
_________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNGpsnTCUXM

[albummaster]

Hi, thanks for your feedback, I appreciate the thought behind your post, and I can see how compiling a lower level chart first would make compiling a higher level chart more easy, and the concern about 'lazy' charts is a valid one, but something that all sites would suffer from to a certain extent (BEA tries to mitigate this by limiting new users to 40 albums, and the site is closely monitored for people who create multiple accounts etc).

There is a bit of background as to why things are this way (greatest/decade/year rather than year/decade/greatest). Up to about a year ago, people could only create one type of chart (a greatest ever list), and more recently decade charts were added, and more recently still, year charts (only a couple of months ago). The idea behind this was to give people a bit more to do on the site after they'd posted their 'greatest ever' chart. The main reason people come here to start with is to see the greatest albums, and so those types of chart have a greater 'pull' for the first-time visitor and give people a compelling reason to register. The other types of chart (decade and year) were an add-on to what was already here. The site is ever-changing, and so you can never rule out things changing in the future.

albummaster

[asimpkins]

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense considering how the site evolved.

It's interesting to hear the decade and yearly lists described as bonus features, because they've been so central to my enjoyment of the site. I've browsed the all-time list a bit, but because of the time I've already invested exploring albums in the past there aren't many surprises there for me. It's the decade and yearly lists that I found really fascinating and that I've been compulsively digging through to discover new albums. If this site didn't have them I would have found it pretty interesting still, but I would never have become invested as deeply.

So I'm not sure how much of a priority growing the user base is, but I think decade and yearly lists will play an important role. I have friends who (unfortunately) don't know much about music before they grew up. So it's the 90's decade and yearly lists I showed them, not the all-time chart, to try to get them into the site. They would never attempt an all-time list, but they could get excited about a yearly list. Everyone can handle a yearly list. But it's locked behind a daunting 2,500 points right now.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that the site is still evolving. I hope my perspective as a new user is helpful.

(My other wish. I'm sure it's been suggested before, but a sister site with the same layout and features: besteverfilms)

[Xavygravy]

[asimpkins]

[albummaster]

It's nice to get a fresh angle on things from new members. The site has changed quite a lot over the past year with year and decade charts. I think only now we are starting to see the impact they have on the site. Those charts are deliberately weighted less than the overall lists, and hopefully they don't have too great an impact on the overall sequence, but they do add more depth to the site (the number of albums on the site has almost doubled over the past year).

Something that Xaxygravy alluded to is that, in the pipeline very soon, are 'fun' charts, which will allow people to create a chart based around any theme that a person wants, but these lists won't contribute to the overall scoring. I'm not against making the functionality available in a restricted way for newer users, so that's not a bad idea of allowing 1 chart.

'Tagging' is also planned for later in the year which will allow people to filter the best albums in a given genre, or around any theme that you like.

As an aside, I think BestEverBooks would be more likely to happen than BestEverMovies, but not until this site is more finished (it's still a bit of a work in progress) and I'd have to give up my day job to do that because I'd not have enough free time to create & run both sites otherwise. Tbh, even with just one site to look after, I've not been able to work on BEA as much I've wanted over the past month because my day job has taken too much time up.