Riverside ranked higher than ELP?

bluetailfly wrote: Hello to everyone, As many of you know, I am not the sort to stir up trouble and make rash statements designed to rile up my fellow prog afficianados. But again I must direct the forum's attention to the prog LP/CD rankings on our beloved home page. I realize that Fitzcarraldo and MikeEnregalia are smart, reasonable people, probably moreso than myself unless I really try hard, but the fact is, under no reasonable system would a work by Riverside be ranked higher than anything by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. We again need to revisit this ranking business and get at a reasonable approach that ranks these LPs in a manner that makes sense and comports with prog history as it is commonly understood. Otherwise the list is just an odd assortment of works that really is meaningless to all but the designers of the algorhythm. What do others think?

bluetailfly,

I don't want to get involved in a debate - I've discussed enough the Top 10/20/50/100 (it's appeared in various guises) in these forums over the last 18 months - but, just for the record, the current algorithm is all MikeEnregalia's own work and nothing to do with me (no implied criticism of Mike).

I suggested having a Top 10 on the Home Page back in May 2004 if I recall correctly, and the algorithm went through a number of changes - see the following thread for its history prior to the current algorithm by Mike (now No. 6?):

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4038

Because I wanted specifically to gauge equally the impact of the number of 'votes' for an album and the ratings for that album (popularity, if you will), my algorithm No. 5 was more interesting *to me* and, although I'm no fan of DREAM THEATER or other Prog Metal bands, *I* found the result to be probably a more telling representation of the likes of the site visitor population. However, it seems that many people just cannot stomach DT anywhere near the top of a list, and the results of algorithm No. 5 continued to generate a lot of discussion.

Having seen the list produced by algorithm No. 5 and been satisfied by it and my rationale (again, see the above-mentioned thread), I'm happy to see the results produced by Mike's algorithm, especially if it generates less polemic than the previous one. It generally produces the right sort of bands in roughly the right sort of places, so I'm not complaining. Having said that, I personally agree with you vis-à-vis ELP and RIVERSIDE, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. It's all just a bit of fun at the end of the day.

Actually, I sometimes wonder whether, when all the old fogies such as myself who were in their teens and twenties in the 1970s and 'into' Prog Rock are long gone, the big 1970 successes of the Prog Rock genre will still be considered good music. A lot of CD sales of the classic Prog Bands of the 1970s have been to older people, replacing LPs or revisiting the past (me, for example). When the likes of me are long gone, will people think that the music of YES, GENESIS, ELP, TULL etc. is good? I'd like to think so, but there's no guarantee. Perhaps in 50 years time, any 100 people would prefer the music of RIVERSIDE to that of ELP. Personally I would hope not, but who can say? Tastes change. Another hypothetical question for you: not knocking RIVERSIDE but, if they had been around in 1972, would they have been able to draw a crowd of 350,000? ELP were true showmen, weren't they?!

Don't know.. why don't you let them choose? (as I stated 10 times earlyer..) I mean, when they know the moody blues from whatever.. should they listen to dream theater? AND IF they want to try out dream theater.. should they pick #1 that is for example: metropolis part like I care because of the overload of 5/5 star reviews with " WOOAAAH THIS IS THE BEST ALBUM EVAAAH" , NO.. why NO top 100? because of the IRRELAVANCE..

and again... " WITH that a 5 star rating WOULD be usefull.. since it's EXPLAINED WHY.."

I don't care at all, some prog jewels (in my humble opinion) aren't even in the top 100, cound't care less. But what kind of addition DOES it make to make SUCH an generalisation? Huh the best albums ever are spice girls - totally spice and back street boys - happylords united.. It has to do with ratings you know. You're making an generalisation with KNOWN and LESSER KNOWN in the first place. Then the OVERRATED and HATED part comes. Then the plain BAD REVIEWS come. This all state that an top 100 DOESN'T make sence. THAT's why I bother.. NOT the place of an album..

Radioactive Toy wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Radioactive Toy wrote: the last or the first? what's the relevance of that? The newest progmetal review is also an 5/5 by the way..  don't you think that it's a little phony to use this one review to back up your theory? What about the 5 star review of Trespass? Nope.. it really sets its own example.. I can't get anything wiser from a review of a random dream theater album reviewed 5/5 " OMG this is teh pwnage lol" . Same as an random yes review 5/5 " this is a pure prog classic buy it" . I hope you can agree with that.. both is useless. Some stuff that really stimulates that (to get back on the topic) is the top100. Maybe an catogorisation of all sorts of things. All people have different interests; Instrumental for example; The snow goose is of the same value (maybe even less) as morte macabre's symphonic holocaust Dark prog Scandinavian prog (more people are talking about this, maybe this could be catogorised as an genre itself..) etc. etc.

quoting it just to let it be read..

Radioactive Toy wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: richardh wrote: Why on earth are ratings without an accompanying review counted? Indeed. But even if only ratings with reviews are counted, there would be no way to separate the "good" ones from the "bad" ones. YES there is! There are certain guidlines.. Those aren't used OFTEN!

Even within these guidelines it's entirely possible to rate a "typical" 5 star album 1 star and vice versa. There cannot be a system of guidelines that only permits "perfect" ratings, because we all are different.

 

MikeEnRegalia wrote: richardh wrote: Why on earth are ratings without an accompanying review counted? Indeed. But even if only ratings with reviews are counted, there would be no way to separate the "good" ones from the "bad" ones.

Well I've had oen or two e-mails from admin about some of my 'dodgy' reviews so I guess that someone must be monitoring them 

richardh wrote: Why on earth are ratings without an accompanying review counted?

Indeed. But even if only ratings with reviews are counted, there would be no way to separate the "good" ones from the "bad" ones.

Radioactive Toy wrote: the last or the first? what's the relevance of that? The newest progmetal review is also an 5/5 by the way..

 don't you think that it's a little phony to use this one review to back up your theory? What about the 5 star review of Trespass?

^ it makes no sense to continue discussion on this level ... based on the main page of the archives on November 30 2005. That's ridiculous. Maybe if you pick the last 20 prog rock reviews and compare them to the last 20 prog metal reviews ... then the results would BEGIN to have relevance.

Radioactive Toy wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ It's easy to pick two arbitrary reviews to make your point. I could also pick a -well, let's say "beginner review" of a classic album and compare it to a really good prog metal review (yes these exist - if all else fails there are always those that you yourself wrote). That's utterly true.. but there is something like an balance in this.. In progmetal these things more tend to 5pointers then reasonable reviews..

That's your opinion ... I disagree.