The Top 100 Albums

Sorry guys, but I still don't get it... I honestly agree that the key to Progressive music is variety and it's incredible to find such a vast amount of information in this site. However, I disagree in the way the All Time Top 100 are chosen. To me, the focus should be on Score and Popularity. Simple. We shouldn't discriminate just because we consider Neo Prog to  be cheesy, we shouldn't complicate the algorithm until all of our favourite albums are there. I've made a simple exercise of multiplying the average score times the number of reviews and then I simply sorted the list in a descending order. And logic prevailed!! Close to the Edge is the best album (to me that honour belongs to the Court of the Crimson King), Hybris is way better than Depois do Fim, Metropolis Pt.2 is within the top 10, and I don't worry anymore about purchasing Memento Z by SBB, or Arbeit... by Area. Next time I want to expand my horizons I'll look at that number first.

Fight Club wrote: I also think the rating system is somewhat flawed. In my opinion the ratings of prog reviewers and collaborators is weighed too heavily. I think ratings with reviews (200 characters or more maybe?) should count a little bit more than ratings without reviews, but it's just ridiculous how much of a difference everything is. Are the opinions of prog reviewers/collaborators really that much more important than those of us who haven't acquired a title yet? I believe some weight should be applied to ratings accompanied by reviews, but not nearly as heavily as it is. And prog reviewers/collaborators ratings shouldn't count nearly as much as they do. After fixing this we might get a more accurate top 100.

Harkonnen wrote: I've made a simple exercise of multiplying the average score times the number of reviews and then I simply sorted the list in a descending order.

With this calculation Dream Theater - Train of Thought gets a rank of 1490.23, Anglagard - Hybris gets 999.04.

I don't think that simple multiplication results in a list which represents the best albums ... it is emphasizing the number of reviews too much. But of course it would be interesting to have such a list on a separate page, just to show people what it would look like.

Could you expand on this bit "We shouldn't discriminate just because we consider Neo Prog to  be cheesy, we shouldn't complicate the algorithm until all of our favourite albums are there. " Our algorithm doesn't do that.

one good thing I saw changed on the first page is that we are talking about
the top 100 most popular albums on this site and not the best
this indeed makes sense, because popularity derives both from the av.rating and the
number of reviews

The algorithm was changed recently. Before that CTTE was number one and there were still lots of threads moaning about it. It's subjective so it will never please everyone.

I know it doesn't seem fair to weigh Collab and reviewer ratings higher, but there are reasons for this. First of all, it helps balance out some of the fanboy/hater activity. Many people have come here just to juice their favorite band, or undercut something they don't like. It is hoped that those with titles offer more objectivity. The other thing is, it's a perk. We work here for free, so this is at least some type of reward.

If you really want to balance out the fanboy/hater activity, eliminate all non-review ratings. Make everybody at least prove they listened to the album.

Fight Club wrote: Yeah, just a short review of the main points would be fine. I didn't specifically mean 200 characters, just an example. 3 to 1 is probably fair and maybe a 5 to 3 for the reviewers/collabs. I don't think there ratings should count more than double that of a regular member, but should count a little more. Not all of us have the time to sit and write 10 reviews every day. As for myself I can write a decent review every once in a while, but it takes a huge chunk of time. When I write a review I listen to the album in full and try to organize my thoughts about it. This can take up to 2 hours for me. It's a long process!

I think it's perfectly fair to make prog reviewer / collabs reviews count more in the computation of the ranking. They not only commit more of their time to writing reviews, but their reviews were also examined by the admins and other collabs at one point to decide whether they're worthy of the title of prog reviewer or collab.

Of course the other reviews might be as good or even better ... so if you think you've written some pretty good reviews you can always apply to become a prog reviewer and make them count more!

limeyrob wrote: Can't see why there is all this fuss. Does it matter if an album is 19th or 39th. Would that stop you from looking into it.  There will always be wonderment at why certain albums reached certain heights. What I'm not sure of is giving extra stars due to the progginess of an album. After all this is a prog site! But what the heck - back to my first comment

It doesn't matter to those of us who have been browsing the site for some time now, but say for example someone discovers this site for the first time through one of their favorite bands. They've just discovered this fabulous form of music and want to take in all the best examples possible as quickly as they can. The first thing this person is going to do is see the Top 100 and list and jump right to that and either download or buy the first 10 or 20 albums at the top. If there's not an accurate rating method that person might miss out on see pretty key albums (Brain Salad Surgery or Metropolis Pt. 2 for example). Of course it all depends on what the person is looking for and stuff like that, but we all want visitors coming back for more right? It's really not that big of a deal, but why not just make that little improvement for the "newbies".

I know this is pretty much what I did when I first discovered the site. I went down the Top 100 list and grabbed everything I could find in the first 20. I've been a fan every since, but I feel a good deal of key albums that left me eager to hear more are missing from the list (such as Metropolis). Long fans of the genre won't have as much of a problem considering it should be much easier for them to accept albums such as Hybris. As for those who are new to prog, the list may make it harder for them with more obscure and less accessible albums towards the top. I know it took me ages to get into Hybris, and surprisingly a while for Genesis, but now Hybris is one of my favorite albums of all time and Genesis one of my favorite bands.

Like you said, it's really not THAT big of a deal, but I think it will affect the new proggers more and not as positively as it could.