TOP Albums List changes

Hi,

I am currently testing a new way to select TOP ALBUM using the weighted average rating of albums.

I now only display album with at least 25 ratings and average over 3.5.
http://www.progarchives.com/top-prog-albums.asp?year=2007


What do yo think ?

For some subgenres this limit is too "strict" (for instance ISP "top 100" now features only 45 albums)... IMO it would be better include albums with al least 10 reviews or ratings...

Maybe it would even be useful to specifically search for albums with few ratings or reviews. You could add a simple dropdown to the existing search form (albums with more than 20 reviews / albums with less than 20 reviews).

I think the remark about the number of 25 reviews being too hight is correct - but for a different argument than band discover.
This way of doing the top 100 will never be useful to unhide certain great, but less reviewed albums. A good example is the Hectic Watermelon album "The great american road trip", which is considered a great album my many members, yet only two have taken the time to review or even rate it.

Whatever algorithm applied, I think another means should be available to discover new bands. I suggested a random review / random album selector almost two years ago that could serve that purpose.
The demo page for that is still available: http://www.hulshout.nl/randomreview.html

Fandango: You can do that yourself, by selecting 2006 on the "Filter year" dropdown menu that you can find on any of the top list entries. Personally, I find it more useful with a 2008 than a 2006 entry on the front page, so I completely endorse that change

When it comes to the question of a 3,5 rating / 25 reviews filter, I have to say that I endorse the idea of a "recommended filter" that can give a notion of what albums should be considered a representative in a top list. However, I think this site should learn from www.gnosis2000.net whose top ratings lists are far more flexible. There, you can in addition to filter by the year, also filter by country, or by numbers of reviews - i.e. 1, 2, 3, ---, 10, 15, 20, 30, --- , 70. I find this to be very useful. (Then again, this site has a genre filter, which gnosis lacks.)

So, recommandation # 1: Make another dropdown menu where users can filter the top lists if they prefer another number of reviews than the recommended 25

And recommandation # 2: Make a dropdown menu where users can filter the top lists by country, so as to being able to follow their own national scene more closely. If needed to make this possible (it should really be necessary if the system's advanced enough), then change the nationality variable from being linked to bands to being linked to albums. A little job, but lots of fun.

I'll be happy to implement all the suggestions here on my own website ... of course you'd also have to fill it with ratings first.

Even it is meant for new proggers it is somehow a bit boring to always have the same albums listed. How about building in a random element? Take the top 100 or 200 and randomly pick 25 from them. Even new proggers will know the top 25 after a short while, so a random factor would really be helpful.

M@X wrote: Thanks for the suggestions guys. Remember that the TOP LIST is a tool for newbie to discover top albums. Not for Old-Proggers to discover unknown gems. The home page reviews (and the rss) is the best tool for that now. I am open to suggestion to generate dynamically a list of unknown gems. So the fonctionalities needed in the TOP LIST are: Ability to select the minimum # of reviews/ratings Abilitiy to select the year (1 or more) Old suggestion: ability to select 1 or more sub-genres Abilitiy to select the country (1 or more) May I recommed theses ?: Selecting collaborators ratings only Date Range of ratings  Let's continue the talk and I will work on the implementation of the recommendations, thanks Max

Insted of just being able to select a minimum # of ratings, how about simply adding two text fields for minimum # of ratings and maximum # of ratings? You could then simply add a default of 25 for minimum # of ratings, and users could change the range as they see fit.

Of course this list should be useful for newbies ... but there's no reason why it shouldn't also be useful for experienced users. Especially when you don't have the time to build many specialized pages it would make sense to simply add a few more inputs to tweak the results ... and most of them should be optional, in order not to make it too complicated.

Desoc wrote: Fandango: You can do that yourself, by selecting 2006 on the "Filter year" dropdown menu that you can find on any of the top list entries. Personally, I find it more useful with a 2008 than a 2006 entry on the front page, so I completely endorse that change When it comes to the question of a 3,5 rating / 25 reviews filter, I have to say that I endorse the idea of a "recommended filter" that can give a notion of what albums should be considered a representative in a top list. However, I think this site should learn from www.gnosis2000.net whose top ratings lists are far more flexible. There, you can in addition to filter by the year, also filter by country, or by numbers of reviews - i.e. 1, 2, 3, ---, 10, 15, 20, 30, --- , 70. I find this to be very useful. (Then again, this site has a genre filter, which gnosis lacks.) So, recommandation # 1: Make another dropdown menu where users can filter the top lists if they prefer another number of reviews than the recommended 25 And recommandation # 2: Make a dropdown menu where users can filter the top lists by country, so as to being able to follow their own national scene more closely. If needed to make this possible (it should really be necessary if the system's advanced enough), then change the nationality variable from being linked to bands to being linked to albums. A little job, but lots of fun.

Working on it ... now

thanks for the suggestions guys