PA Album of the Year Discussion thread

Lewian wrote: Logan wrote: Sorry, I moved those to this thread.

Yes, a cleaner list topic is much better. It did take a long time, but was worth the effort. Glad you recommended a change.

Logan wrote: Sorry, I moved those to this thread.

Sorry, I moved those to this thread. I was rushing to write that and spent ages moving posts to this new topic for discussion of issue and leaving the other topic for lists. That said, I think that message serves its purpose which arises from a concern that people may join up just to prop up an album. Maybe I should not have said active members, but it was meant as a general alert. By active members I also mean has not been suspended. Of course an account must be active to post a list, but if that person gets suspended then I don't think the list should count. And if that member has been suspended before and come here under another account, I don't think that person should be counted. I wanted to be a little ambiguous and leave us some space for action and it did not occur to me that could be seen as an issue by regulars. Anyway, I have not slept for two days so hard to think. Won't try to change the wording now, but that has no effect on most of us.

EDIT: I will edit out the word active from the opening post I wrote yesterday in the topic intended for lists.

Edited by Logan - January 10 2024 at 17:18

I think possibly one important rule has been forgotten as per Logan's OP :

Edited by richardh - January 10 2024 at 16:09

Rules are important, they make this process easier and more effective. As we have changed this from Collab of the Year to including all members, and this is the official pre-results topic, and Mike will be looking at the post copying over form his site, I do ask people to do one that has up to 20 albums that are listed at this link: https://awesomeprog.com/aoty-poll It's fun and easy to add, and great if many members factor into the official PA album of the year results.

Usually we do a discussion thread and a list one separately, but thought we could maybe combine them if it is not confusing for Mike. Will came up with this topic too which can be used informally. That was intended for non-collabs, but it had not yet been announced that we decided to be open to members be they collab or not (I always preferred that idea if workable, to be honest). Here is Will's topic whcih I hope people support as well. https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=132142 And perhaps that can include lists in other formats methinks and be less formal in that way.

Note: this was an early post of mine in the older AOTY thread that I linked to on page one here, which is now intended for lists specifically, but after exporting I overwrote my message for the topic and used this new post space to save it.

Edited by Logan - January 09 2024 at 16:04

First, I would like to say I appreciate the tool Mike has developed and having this poll open for non-collaborators introduced me to some albums I may not have listened to.

Second, a suggestion for Mike. I was looking at the ratings output and I think the numbering needs to account for ties so the next number skips. For example, if two albums are ranked #4, the next album should be #6, not #5. That way if you get to the number 50 album there are 49 albums ranked above it.

^ I could add manual lists to the chart, but it has been pointed out to me (in another forum) that doing something like that infringes on the rights of the person (to control where/how their data is being used). 

Logan wrote: ^ Well, we have to be flexible if issues come up, of course. I just don't know that having it unranked has great utility for an album of the year endeavour (almost 3 am here, up since 5 am yesterday, words not coming out right) -- unless later they choose to order the list or partially order it. Or what difference would using it make to this endeavour rather than just posting an unranked list if that is all one does? Maybe all get a point if they input their lists at your site, but that would just complicate things. I do see utility in that feature, and I still would rather see unranked lists than no lists at all.

^ I just wanted to get in the unranked option, as this was something that was keeping a few users from participating. I will continue to improve the usability and tweak how the results are displayed, but we can declare a feature freeze until the Aoty 2023 is done 

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 09 2024 at 03:35

I too had to be encouraged to take part in the AOTY, in my case by Avestin. He had lots of recommendations that he thought I would like, and he was right. Aranis was a particularly memorable one for me, and Rational Diet, Far Corner....

I had hoped that this would have attracted a wider userbase, and that more would be enthusiastic about taking part, but I am very pleased to see various people whom I have had plenty of good times sharing music with form the Interactive Poll series taking part. For me having people like Lewian, Suitkees, and Nickie take part is great. But we're all used to lists, finding and sharing music. This attracts a certain kind of person. One person who has had a significant influence on my tastes opted not to take part, and that's fine too. I still would like to read people's unranked lists if they feel uncomfortable ranking them.

It could be intimidating to some and some might not understand the process. For instance that one need not list 20, and that one need not start with a finalised list. In past AOTY polls, sometimes I would start with just a few (I have not participated in all since I became a collab). I would love to see more lists, more recommendations. and maybe some will have albums that few of us have heard of and turn some of us onto them though this thread.

I like it at 20 for this. I would like to see another list later that calculates, say, based on the top 40, and indeed many more. Number one choice getting 40 points and so on. And I do want to see this list for the year as something that continues to grow and be tallied even past the date of when the official album of the year is announced.

Oh, and right now I am listening to the album Distorted Rooms by Radian (released in September) due to a post in an interactive poll topic. I actually had checked out some music from it before that, but the track posted in the topic really caught my interest.