Chart question re: Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet - Suggestions

hwex9000

Gender: Male
Location: Chicago

A question about something that's been nagging at me for quite a while: at the beginning of 2023, Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet was in the all-time top 3,000. By July of last year, it was hovering around #15,000, where it's remained ever since. I know the charts are fluid and there's always a lot of movement, but this drop happened extremely quickly and seems like a bizarre anomaly; it's the largest and fastest plummet I've ever seen here that wasn't a gaming-the-charts correction. Just wanted to ask about it.

(Also, while I'm here, I thought it worth noting that sometime before the January 1 update, somebody decided that they really, really liked Wishbone Ash, a whole lot. Not making any accusations at all, but it was odd to see them suddenly have so many albums on the list.)

Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

hwex9000 wrote:

A question about something that's been nagging at me for quite a while: at the beginning of 2023, Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet was in the all-time top 3,000. By July of last year, it was hovering around #15,000, where it's remained ever since. I know the charts are fluid and there's always a lot of movement, but this drop happened extremely quickly and seems like a bizarre anomaly; it's the largest and fastest plummet I've ever seen here that wasn't a gaming-the-charts correction. Just wanted to ask about it.

(Also, while I'm here, I thought it worth noting that sometime before the January 1 update, somebody decided that they really, really liked Wishbone Ash, a whole lot. Not making any accusations at all, but it was odd to see them suddenly have so many albums on the list.)

Not sure exactly why, but this I can see:

For 8 years, the album year was incorrect at 1959. Last May, it was corrected to 1960. This changes not only the ranking for the year, but also for the decade, which I'm sure changes the overall ranking. How much? I do not know. AM would have to answer that. But this brings to light a potentially bigger issue, and maybe the overall answer to your question:

AM: This album was changed from 1959 to 1960 in May of 2023. It is in 95 charts. Here's the problem: when the year change was made, it appears that none of the owners of the 1959 year charts or the 1950's decade charts were notified, and the album is still in those charts. I can't tell if those charts were flagged, but I'm guessing they were not. What we have now is that many of the charts this album is in are 1959 or 1950's...showing zero rank score. My guess, again, is because an album released in 1960 can't have a rank score in a 1959 chart. This may account for the dramatic change in the overall ranking for this album.

Also, I'm not sure what the user here is seeing with Wishbone Ash, but maybe you can better see if there's anything strange going on.

I'm also (doing a lot of) guessing that this is not the only album being affected by this. Does this happen every time a release year is changed? Understandable that the change would be more dramatic when that change also affects the decade (like this one).
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albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

hwex9000, thanks for identifying/noticing the issue. Romanelli is right, the change in year/decade is certainly behind this issue. Chart authors aren't currently notified of year/decade changes, this is something that could be added in the future by whatever mechanism e.g. in-situ/PM/email etc. There might be a slightly reduced impact of year changes if we did this, but wouldn't expect everyone to go through the effort of modifying their charts (no real way to automate without imposing chart placements etc).

(I'll also check into the Wishbone Ash issue, but we occasionally get people here who decide to add the entire discographies of their favourite artists).

hwex9000

Gender: Male
Location: Chicago

Romanelli and AM, thanks for the replies and the info. So, AM, is there any way to resolve the issue with the Miles Davis album and restore it to something resembling its rightful place?

As for Wishbone Ash, it was just a little startling to suddenly see fifteen of their albums in the top 10,000. Again, I don't believe this is any kind of gaming issue, just one or two enthusiastic fans pushing a favorite artist; it was just one of those noticeable changes (at least, noticeable to someone like me who watches the charts closely) that happens from time to time.

Patman360
Serenity Now

Gender: Male
Age: 31
Location: Cork, Ireland

Moderator

That Miles Davis album is a bit of a confusing one, would have generally been accepted to have been recorded in '56 but was then released somewhere between late '59 (I've seen both September and December '59 given as release dates) or into early '60 (the album definitely seems to have been fully out by the end of January, 1960).

Think something similar previously happened with House of the Blues by John Lee Hooker (an album with an equally confusing release schedule), causing it to plummet down the rankings.
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hwex9000

Gender: Male
Location: Chicago

Patman360 wrote:

Think something similar previously happened with House of the Blues by John Lee Hooker (an album with an equally confusing release schedule), causing it to plummet down the rankings.

Yes, I remember that happening with the Hooker album!

hwex9000

Gender: Male
Location: Chicago

hwex9000 wrote:

So, AM, is there any way to resolve the issue with the Miles Davis album and restore it to something resembling its rightful place?

Just following up re: whether a fix is possible for this.

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

hwex9000 wrote:

Just following up re: whether a fix is possible for this.

This is a difficult issue to resolve. Points can't really be awarded if an album is not in the associated year/decade chart for that album, without introducing all sorts of loopholes and precedent, and also this (or any) album can't unilaterally be added/inserted into a 'correct' year/decade user chart without imposing a chart position on the destination chart. Retaining the points that an album has already earned would create a difficult precedent to manage and cause complications when calculating points. Notifications, as suggested by Romanelli earlier in the thread, may help somewhat to reduce the impact of year changes and is probably the direction the site should take (but for older charts, some users may no longer be active so the impact of a year/decade change may not be fully redressed).

hwex9000

Gender: Male
Location: Chicago

Yeah, I was afraid that would be the case. Thanks for confirming, and I know how hard fixing something like this would be. I guess I'll give the album an honorary rank of #5001 in my head.