ILM Ballot Polls for 2014 and beyond -- order, timing, "I would have voted if I'd known about it," etc

Ghost of Polls Past: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VR2ndExR8gM

I guess I'll start the Italo one in about a week or so. It is my first ILM Ballot poll so If someone can share some guidance on how to do run things (timelines, vote counting, scoring) I'd appreciate that.
(totalpop AT gmail DOT com).

Genre polls should definitely have an extended voting period. Like, no less than 3 weeks. Ballot size and scoring should be based on how much you're comfortable tabulating. 100 track ballots, unless you want to spend A LOT of time putting together final results, are probably over the top for a first time pollrunner.

Agreed. My disco poll had 50 track ballots, and even those were a whole lot of work to tally. Presumably the Italo poll will have less voters, but still...

You might also consider doing a nomination thread first, because even with a relatively narrow genre like Italo, you could end up with a ridiculously large xls list if you let people vote freely without a predefined list. Also, before you start the nomination/voting thread, you need to a good definition of "Italo", so people won't start arguing what track is eligible and what's not. Is "Italo" defined by having been produced in Italy, or by a specific sound? Limiting the voting to tracks released in a specific period of time might be a good idea too, to stop people from nominating questionable entries. (My disco poll was limited to the years 1972 - 1984 so that people wouldn't nom stuff like proto-disco or house music.)

Thanks JF and Tuomas. I think I'll follow the nominations suggestion. I've given some thought to it and feel like it's too hard to put time and geographical constraints on Italo though (I want more recent acts like Italove or Sally Shapiro to be eligible), so I'm just gonna go with whatever people think is Italo and let think sort themselves out. Also I think I'll do 40 track ballots.

*let things

Hey Paul, Hey Paul, Hey Paul, let's have a POLL: ILM Artist Poll #69 • Pixies (results!)

Recommend not starting too soon lest you step on the P-Funk poll turnout. Starting a new poll while the previous one's results are being rolled out is cool and recommended, but two open voting periods going at the same time seems like it could cut into the turnout for both. Also, if you're going to accept everybody's definitions of Italo, no need for a nominations thread, right? One thread for voting/campaigning/kibitzing, then a thread for results.

can i cut in line since Johnny Fever got to cut in front of me

like, idgi, you know how to get in touch with me, it seems really shitty for people to jump ahead in the queue when some of us have been waiting for 2 fucking years

that was the whole point of doing things this way

i'll start it tonight since it's a free-for-all

plz to see upthread where the next two polls were abandoned and moved to the end of the line and others were being delayed by their runners, so it seemed like a good time to try and fill a vacuum. Check the thread more often.

I was waiting for my turn like a respectable human being!

I apologize for not emailing you, crüt. I should have checked with everyone in the 61-68 range before I said go ahead.

thanks Wm. sorry for throwing a tantrum.

Even though I've taken part in a few of these polls, I don't understand the point of the nominations threads.

xp -- no worries, that's a legit gripe. PS, there are a ton of polls coming up that I don't care about, but I'm stoked for the CCR listening party.

me too

Nominations threads remind people (especially people with bad memories, like me) of things that are available to vote for. I don't believe in nominations without write-ins. Theoretically lobbying threads could/should perform the function of the nominations threads, but in practice they never do. My theory as to why is that people only concentrate on their own absolute favourites in lobbying threads, and worry that over-lobbying dilutes the effect.

And I guess that nominations threads also allow us to hash out ground rules?

for what it's worth, I intend to open the P-Funk poll noms thread tomorrow. I find most nominations threads pointless but with this gargantuan catalog I expect it to be a little more useful than normal. Will probably let it run for a week or two.

noms thread = voting thread?

Well yeah

for what it's worth, I intend to open the P-Funk poll noms thread tomorrow. I find most nominations threads pointless but with this gargantuan catalog I expect it to be a little more useful than normal. Will probably let it run for a week or two.

Yes it's going to be hard work this!

I don't know about others, but when I've ran polls, I've used the nomination threads to ease my job a bit. If you let people vote freely, you might end up with a list with thousands of entries, all of which you have to write down, check the correct spelling, check if they're eligible, and mark the points given to them, even though the majority of them will get just 1 or 2 votes. With a nomination process, the list will be much more manageable, and once the voting starts you just have to write down the points.

Obviously this applies to open-ended genre polls only, if the pool of entries is definite to begin with (such as one band's output), nominations aren't needed.

What list?

The list of tracks that received votes.

Elvis T, if you look at this thread, what's the status of Spacemen 3?

They split up donkey's years ago

Actually just came into the thread to post that I'm finally ready to roll on SP3.

daavid's ready to go with Italo, too -- will you two hash out who's going to go next? thx

I'll go after daavid then.

Er, Elvis, would you mind going first? I was planning to wait an extra week or two anyway (at least after the P-Funk voting period was over as JF suggested) which was convenient cause It's kind of a busy time for me.

> Agreed. My disco poll had 50 track ballots, and even those were a whole lot of work to tally.

54 ballots would have been so much more apt....

What is going on with the Yo La Tengo poll?

next canada day

clemenza claimed them, but only has a tiny window every year to run a poll, and this year's window snuck past everybody -- i.e., me and clemenza.

I can do it in the second of half november, if you guys don't mind.

That'll be clemenza's call.

There's also the EOY voting hiatus -- crap, have we been doing these things long enough to call it the "traditional" hiatus?

stoked for the italo poll.

I'm looking forward to it for the education -- I have no idea what the hell italo is.

VHS: I was kind of looking forward to using a specific idea I had for Yo La Tengo images...mookieproof was going to help. If you really want to do it and there's no one able to do anything else, I guess you could take it over, but check with mookieproof first. I'll send you my image idea--it's something I know you'd get.

Got the images, that's a very good idea, you guys should do it!

Suggestion: you and mookieproof run the poll whenever you can jump in there. Ballots, tabulation, threads, etc. I can do all the images in the next 2-3 weeks, leaving space for the song titles to be added later. Once you have results, I could fill in the titles in a night.

For what it's worth: getting the images ready is a lot easier than I expected--knocked off four in about 15 minutes. So if you guys are okay with me handling that end of it, quite happy to end the rest over whenever there's an opening.

YLT's catalogue is rather huge, should we get nominations? That's my only question now, I can handle the thread and counting process, clem has the images (can mookie can lend a hand?).

Don't see why there should be nominations -- their discography is their discography is their discography. The pollrunner can decide whether to include Dump, Condo Fucks, the album w/Jad Fair, etc... everybody else can get on board or shut up, right?

Ok that is what I thought, it's just that they have other, what 250 songs? I was afraid some people would ask for nominations because of that. I'm the asking type.

I wasn't going to bother with nominations, for the same reason WC gives; their discography is pretty straightforward and easily searchable online. I was going to include side projects, but you and mookie decide. I vote for them anyway whenever I want to--I'd have a couple of Dump songs for sure--it doesn't really matter to me whether those votes means anything or not. (In almost all cases, they won't.)