Pablo, I love this idea!
Pm a mod or manager of this area if you want to discuss setting up polls
Pablo, I love this idea!
Pm a mod or manager of this area if you want to discuss setting up polls
OH Brice , could we get a poll here please?
The answer is within
all matter is energy, all energy is GOD
Great idea! I'm definately on board.
Only the gentle are ever really strong.
I was actually just thinking, if it'd be best if a mod or Matt would create a separate sub-forum for the polls. Then we could do everything in four stages:
Stage 1: all first fourteen polls would be posted at once (each stage will be up for a week)
Stage 2: six polls with the semifinals for 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s
Stage 3: four polls with the finals of all four decades
Stage 4: the best book final poll
So, the entire thing will take four weeks to run. Also, I was thinking we start this on November 4th, to coincide with the Presidential Elections in the US, just for fun. So we would inaugurate King's Best Book on December 1, 2008
I doubt you'd get a sub forum, you could stagger it like Feev has done with the "Best movie of all time" polls in the Gem Theatre.
Basically, from the first fourteen you could do seven polls one week, seven the next - then so on to the next rounds. Ask Feev for details. It's been a pretty productive way of doing it
I just don't want to flood any one forum with this poll, that's all.
Darkthoughts, I took a look at the polls you mentioned, and I really like the idea of having more than one book advance out of each preliminary round, it seems more fair this way. So my initial polling structure could be amended to allow an additional quarterfinal that would pit the top two out of each of the first fourteen groups ("rounds" was a misnomer).
This is a GREAT idea, but it's gonna kill me to pick in some of those categories!! I had a really hard time just posting my 5 favoirte books on another thread. It'd almost be easier for me to pick which of my kids is my favorite.
Donna
"What can I tell you, baby? I've always been bad."--Spike
Hmm...I like this, but I think we should maybe take a bit of a different approach. I like the tiered system, because it will make it much more manageable. But if we do it in site polls we will only really have rankings based on what people thought was the best for that bracket. There is no objectivity there for the titles that didnt win the tier.
What I would propose is that instead of doing a poll, we still start a thread for each bracket and have people rank the books in the bracket instead. Give them a numeric ranking based on best to worst, then we can tally the numbers afterward and say that on average people found this book to be the worst and this to be the best, and so on. That way we can actually have accurate numbers to devise an overall ranking of the books, as opined by the members of thedarktower.org.
And I would even be willing to set up a temporary sub-forum for it if we do it this way, since we will be getting a much more accurate result, which we can then post on a site page.
Heng Dai
That sounds great Aaron. So if I understnd you, people would rate a group of books on a scale (probably 0-5, or 0-10) tally up the points, divided by votes and have an average score-with the highest score advancing. I presume the thread would be open for 1 week?
Would we be rating the books in relation to the other books in that category or against all of King's books? If I read it correctly, we'll be rating against the books just in the category, right?
John
Can I make one request? Start the poll a little later. Like maybe a week to coincide with Just After Sunset. You have JAS on the list but you want to start the poll before the book is even released. That doesn't seem fair to me. (Actually that isn't why I care, I'm going to be on vacation that entire week you want to start it. Going to meet the King baby!!)
Seriously though, you might want to rethink the timing of the poll if you want to include JAS and wait until people have a chance to read it.
Margaret Emmie Mackey Catoe, you are, have been, and always will be my soulmate, and I love you.
Con todo mi corazon, por todo de mis dias. And I always will, in this life and into the next.
August 2, 1947 - September 24, 2010
I like the idea of rating them, Aaron - nice refinement to pablo's great idea! And maybe somehow include choices of "Haven't read it yet" and "No desire to read it" so that we get a gauge on what our members still want/need to read? The stats we could get from this would be pretty cool.
IMO, I think we should rank the individual books based on the overall collective and not just the first round poll they end up in so that the proper ones make it to the final poll. If someone believes that two of his absolute best works are in the same first round poll, it could cause issues, no? Just a thought, but it might make it more difficult to manage this way.
And I agree with Sam on the delay, but only because I'll be away for the first two weeks of November!
This collecting stuff is a sickness! ~Patrick
I'm fine with the idea and I'm fine with a sub forum for it.What I would propose is that instead of doing a poll, we still start a thread for each bracket and have people rank the books in the bracket instead.
I think a poll could still be done in each of the threads for the books. Something like...
If the scale is
LOVE IT = 1
Not so much = 5
Just a 1 through 5 poll choice, might make it easier to add up the numbers.
As far as where to put it, I'm not sure.
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
That's fine with me, it was just an example.
5= good
1= bad
Works just as well.
We could make sure the poll was clearly labeled for the range.
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
Lets wait for Aaron to clarify. It all sounds good, but it also must be elegantly simple.
I'm almost sure that is what he means. My only goal was not to have someone go through and tally the "1's" and "5's" that people put in posts when that could be done for us by the board.
Also give us a total voted.
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
I think this is a brilliant idea, and clearly pablo put a TON of thought into it.
Can't wait to get this started!
"People, especially children, aren't measured by their IQ. What's important about them is whether they're good or bad, and these children are bad." ~ Alan Bernard
"You needn't die happy when your day comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from beginning to end and ka is always served." ~ Roland Deschain
All great ideas, folks. It's cool that you all embraced this idea. I've been nursing this for a few days now, trying to formulate it, but it looks like there's been lots of valuable input here as well that just made this idea a lot better. I really like Matt's idea of combining a poll with a ranking. I'm not sure how this would work, technically speaking, since I've never done a poll here myself, but it sounds pretty definitive.
I've modified my original poll structure. If we will have a poll in addition to a ranking, with the best two moving on, then we need an additional round.
It would look like this:
Well, pablo, the mixing of the poll and ranking would be more organizational. I'm going to start some test threads in the staff area and see what will work best.
Heng Dai
Aaron, did you try those tests yet? I'm eager to know what it all looks like. Is this just for the staff or can regular members try as well?
The tests (currently) are just for the staff I believe, pablo.
BTW: I am curious, if it is to be the best book what is your reason for not including the nonfiction. It's cool! I'm just wondering.
Well, it could be included, I guess. My reasoning was that they (Danse Macabre, Nightmares in the Sky, On Writing, Secret Windows, Faithful) probably would invariably end up at the bottom of any poll. But for completeness sake they could be squeezed into their respective groups, I don't see any problem with that at all.