[ffudnebbuh]

you're right.

[albummaster]

yes, the main problem is not enough tracks have been rated yet, or have not had enough votes to appear in the top-rated chart (10 ratings per track needed).

I think the number of ratings is lower for tracks because we display tracks in less places than we display albums so there's probably less opportunity for people to vote. We also introduced track ratings onto the site at a later date than we did albums.

That being said, A Day in the Life is not *that* bad a choice at number one (not wanting to start a flame war!) and there are some great tracks listed in the top 100.

There is no manipulation of numbers here, so what you see is exactly how people have rated. So, if the chart is not how somebody likes, it is also because the collective opinion is different to people's individual tastes.

[ffudnebbuh]

"a day in the life" seems a perfect choice for #1 because I think that it reflects the taste of the membership....my point was I don't think that the best track chart represents the tastes of the BEA members yet..you have every song from "dookie" as Best Tracks which probably isn't accurate...as more people vote, it will reflect the BEA members taste. "Good vibrations" would seem to also fit the BEA members taste, since "pet sounds', is so popular with the membership, but because it is currently only on a less popular album, Smiley Smile, it doesn't get voted on.

[albummaster]

yes, you're right. The reason this happens is because tracks on the more popular albums get more ratings than tracks on the less-popular albums. So, something like Dookie has had a lot of visitors to its album page and, as a result, a lot of people vote on the track-listing and therefore a lot of tracks from Dookie would qualify for the top-rated list.

I also agree great tracks like Good Vibrations (to keep that as the example), appear on less popular albums and because of this, haven't received as many ratings (and therefore haven't reached the minimum threshold number of votes to appear in the top-rated list).

I'm not sure what we can do to increase the number of ratings for tracks on the less-popular albums. But, as RFNAPLES kind of said, over time, these tracks will start appearing, it just needs more time and more people to vote.

To get around this issue, we could add some type of filter where you could choose the minimum number of votes when viewing a top-rated chart. For example, a top-rated tracks chart using five as the minimum number of votes would look a lot different to the current list (but, whilst including more tracks, would be statistically less significant).

[ffudnebbuh]

Are individual votes from different sources for a track get aggregated? For example, would votes for "good vibrations" from "smiley smile" and "Endless summer" and other compilations get added up? Upon reflection, there would be no way of knowing if a track on different albums is exactly the same recording, so maybe that wouldn't work...
I know that this is an uninteresting topic of discussion for anyone who does not have a background in stats, so I will stop boring everyone..thanks for your answers to my questions, RFNAPLES and albummaster.