Chart Manipulation - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

ffudnebbuh
level 8

Gender: Male
Location: Boston

I think that you are right.

Freddie55

Gender: Male
Location: Toronto, ON

I'm in favour of a 10 increment scale.

I also think that ranking scores attributed to albums for appearing in charts should also be reviewed. For example: if someone has a Greatest 10 Albums chart and places an album at 5/10 it receives 50 ranking points. An album which is ranked by 10 members at an average 48/50 on 10 separate charts only receives a total 40 ranking points. I would argue that the opinion of the 10 members who invested the effort to rate 50 albums in their charts should weigh much more heavily than the opinion of one member who only rates 10 albums in their chart. This type of calculation is having a significant impact on the rankings of the Best Albums of 2010. Just something to think about?

cartoken
The Seer

Gender: Male
Age: 39
Location: Paris

20 different ratings is just fine !!

don't agree about your proposition Freddie, some people (the majority) only have in mind their 10 or less favorite albums, which doesn't mean that their N°1 is less important than a N°1 of some one who has a 50 albums chart!

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Whilst I understand and respect the point of view, I don't fully buy the argument that a chart with 50 entries should be more authoritative than a smaller chart. Not every big chart is compiled with the same skill, knowledge or intent. We have some people on this site who have a vast amount of knowledge and experience, but we also have some others who might not have the advantage of many years of listening but who want to fill their charts up with music frem the only decade that they have lived through. We have other people who just use their 50 albums to show off some jokes e.g. Rick Astley, David Hasselhof etc...

There is a case, I think, for a chart with a higher member rating having more authority (where the members decide which are the best charts). However, until the current issue with ratings is put to bed, we should not try and change too many things at once.

Overall, I think the current system strikes a fair balance. It is transparent, simple to understand, and whilst not perfect, does a reasonable job of highlighting the best albums.

Freddie55

Gender: Male
Location: Toronto, ON

cartoken wrote:

20 different ratings is just fine !!

don't agree about your proposition Freddie, some people (the majority) only have in mind their 10 or less favorite albums, which doesn't mean that their N°1 is less important than a N°1 of some one who has a 50 albums chart!

I don't think that their single opinion is less important than any one other one person. Maybe if they rank 10 albums instead of 50 they should get 20% of the points divided among the 10 instead of 100% of the points. Why should someone who ranks only 3 albums have far more impact than you do when you rank 50 albums?

ffudnebbuh
level 8

Gender: Male
Location: Boston

albummaster wrote:

We need to remove the possibility of the system being gamed by anybody else. Data integrity is central to the whole point of the site.

If you look at some other music sites, it is fairly common to just have a ten point sliding scale (usually increments of half a star). BEA are the exception at the moment as we currently allow quarter stars and this is a point of difference with some other sites. Let me say here though, we'd never go down to a straight five point system (for me, that is purely the domain of shopping sites).

A ten point scale might strike the right balance of allowing most people to accurately grade an album without comprimising too much accuracy. Together with a Bayesian average, data should be much more protected and every vote still counts. We are not discarding anyone's vote (unlike some systems where the scores can be topped and tailed to get to an average).

There are just too many steps from best to worst at the moment and it is now proven that one person can unintentionally cause mayhem (over 500 ratings by one person at less than 10/100). If we don't put anything in place to stop this, it is inevitably going to happen again.

I think that this is a good idea for a system.

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Freddie55 wrote:

I don't think that their single opinion is less important than any one other one person. Maybe if they rank 10 albums instead of 50 they should get 20% of the points divided among the 10 instead of 100% of the points. Why should someone who ranks only 3 albums have far more impact than you do when you rank 50 albums?

I don't think a 3 album chart is anywhere near as influential as a 50 album chart in terms of its overall contribution.

If you have 50 albums in your chart, you are effectively allocating 2,550 rank points. If you have 3 albums, you are only allocating 200 points.

The only thing that is equal is the top-ranked album has 100 points in both charts. The second ranked album in a 50 album chart will contribute more points than the second album in a three album chart (98 vs 66) (and so will the 3rd ranked album - 96 vs. 33.)

Granted, the lower ranked albums in a 50 album chart won't contribute as many points as the higher ranked albums (but that's because they are ranked lower).

ffudnebbuh
level 8

Gender: Male
Location: Boston

I know that this would never happen, but I would like a 75 or 100 album chart.. there are too many albums from 60 years of pop(Defined as anything other than jazz or classical) music to narrow it down to 50..My first ten are definitely in a specific order, but after that the albums in my chart are separately by angstroms and I am constantly pulling albums out and putting others in...A bigger chart would better express my favorites, just thought I would throw that in.

RFNAPLES
Level 8

Gender: Male
Age: 75
Location: Durham, NC, USA

100 album charts!
_________________
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by RFNAPLES
Bubbling Under The Top 100 Greatest Mus...y RFNAPLES

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

In a different thread, we've sort of said that rather than go for bigger lists, we'd allow multiple and different types of lists so that members can publish their best 50 of the decade, year, genre etc. There are a few things that we need to do first to allow the BEA platform to handle this. I'd rather not go too far off topic on this thread, but please see the other thread where this is discussed and respond there if you´d like to debate this further.