Thread for coordinating the order and timing of ILM ballot polls

# of songs + release length, crossing musical genres, doesn't seem like an interesting enough hook for a poll. Lots of apples/oranges wrangling, no useful consensus. Why not poll "best song longer than 5:41 but shorter than 6:03"?

it was just a thought,never mind

Not saying no, just offering my opinion.

Why not poll "best song longer than 5:41 but shorter than 6:03"?

Maybe that's a little to specific, but I could see some fun being had with a "best songs less than 3 mins" poll. I don't want to run it, but I think that's a good idea.

under 2 minutes would be specific enough to be fun imo

i don't feel like it would be that hard to decide what's an EP and what isn't. most of them are clearly marked or marketed as EPs, or follow Johnny's guidelines.

are ppl writing their own voting rules /standards or have we standardized them at all? can someone point me to a good poll to borrow rules/language from?

ex: if a record has one song on the a-side and one or more on the b-side, it's a single. if a record has more than one song on both of its sides, it's an ep (until it becomes an lp based on total time).

if it's too long to fit on a 7" at 45rpm, but will at 33rpm, it's an EP.

For Zep, I borrowed the OP language and the scoring system from one (several) of the previous polls, but pulled the scoring system for albums/least faves out a hat. The 40/36/33/30/etc scoring for a 20-song ballot has been pretty well standardized by this point. Here's Billy Dods' PSB poll: Revelation - Official ILX Pet Shop Boys tracks poll results

Also, should I wait for The Who results to finish b4 starting my poll? Will someone give me the go ahead or

Go for it! We've had a bit of overlap the last few polls and it helps keep things moving right along.

It's up btw - ILXers Get Out Your Polls And I'll Put On Some Joni Mitchell Voting and Nominations #26

Also, I'm jumping the gun a little but how do people do those nice results jpegs? Do they resize images they find elsewhere? Is there a really easy way to do it w/out having particularly sharp photoshop skillz?

If you have MS Paint, you can resize images easily.

Or download GIMP, which is free and more powerful.

Gimp is terrific, it's basically a free photoshop. And you don't need to worry about resizing, ilx does it for you.

I did Neil Young on Microsoft Paint--very easy. (I resized all images on the Microsoft Picture viewer first.) I'd forgotten I had Gimp, though, which is good too.

could someone please send me that spreadsheet for calculating the results? i heard there's a super easy one to use.

Sent, to the poll address.

Thanks!

WmC, could you add the Italo one at the end of the list? thx

Can mods edit individual posts? So that the first post can have a link to the spreadsheet?

daavid, thanks for the reminder -- I've edited Italo onto the end of the updated list a few posts upthread.

Leee, the spreadsheet has been uploaded to various fileshare sites several times, but the DL links eventually expire, so I've just been emailing the .xls to folks as needed. I don't have a domain where I can park it permanently. Would Dropbox work for a permanent hosting spot? I see it used for images.

google docs?

Hmm, yeah, why not.

Here's Finefinemusic's spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmhW_PgsyKKodGZkUi14NV9mYUZ2bUhyV29QU3hBV3c

I made it visible to anyone with the link, but not editable. I think whoever is doing a poll can Make A Copy/Save As and their copy would be editable.

I might edit the link into the OP after I've had more coffee.

56. US Indie Singles of the 1980s - NickB

I don't know quite what I was thinking of when I proposed this, but it's a daft idea, especially with those other 80s polls going on right now, so please can you delete me from the list WmC? Thanks!

Awwwww, I'm sorry Nick! By the time it comes round everyone will have forgotten the 80s poll.

with a bit of luck

:(

No matter what he thinks it's going to be a good poll and I hope you all enjoy it. and I hope nick changes his mind too.

nick you're still on for wang chung at 78 though, right?

I too think the 'under two minutes' poll would be great fun

I'm a little confused about the best way to use this spreadsheet. Do I just add each ballot manually when it comes in?

nick you're still on for wang chung at 78 though, right?

Now you're talking! My personal ranking:

Dance Hall Days >>>>>>> To Live and Die in L.A. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Let's Go > Everybody Have Fun Tonight

Here's how I did it (and advanced users please don't laugh at me too hard if any of it sounds dumb). Go to the Vote Weight tab (see there at the bottom) and select/copy the ranks 1-20 in column A. Go back to the Tracks tab and paste that 1-20 into column C, Rank, a bunch of times, as many times as you think you'll have ballots. You can always add more later. So you'll have a repeating list of 1 to 20 down as far as you need it.

As ballots come in, copy the ballot, go to the Song column (column B) and paste at the next available #1 ranking. The song will automatically be assigned a number of points (in column D, Points) based on its rank in column C. The best ballots are the ones that come in without numbers next to them, because what you want is just a list of song titles. If you get a ballot without a full 20 (hi clemenza!), just delete the rows between the last song on the ballot and the next #1.

You have to make sure you order by song name regularly to avoid vote splitting due to spelling/punctuation errors.

^^^ yes yes

Once all the ballots are in and entered, sort by song to see your total number of points. I never figured out how to use a pivot table, so at that point I transferred the song list to a new spreadsheet that included Album and Year columns, which would be the spreadsheet that everybody got a link to post-voting for datamining and such. Once that was all set up, sort by Points and there's your winning order.

Has there been a Smiths poll? Can anyone point me to it. Thanks.

"How soon is now" won, okthxbye

Would anyone be up for a Talking Heads + associated acts poll?

And you don't need to worry about resizing, ilx does it for you.

Depends on the stylesheet you're using. I use kenan_style.css and it doesn't seem to resize anything.

Hm, in that case sorry.

Would anyone be up for a Talking Heads + associated acts poll?

i was going to do Talking Heads but decided to do The Boo Radleys instead. i know less people will vote for in it but should be a blast to do...

I would vote in Talking Heads if anyone ran it. IMO it would be more interesting if it included solo albums, Tom Tom Club, etc.

On another matter at hand, Mordy's inclination (as best I can divine it) in the Joni Mitchell poll was for results not to roll out until approximately Oct. 10th. Any objection to getting the Neptunes poll rolling to run concurrently, if V79's schedule permits?

yeah if Talking Heads can play "Genius Of Love" and The Catherine Wheel songs in their concerts then that stuff might as well be eligible in a TH poll. we could even ::stifles smile:: make room for No Talking, Just Head ::loses composure, bursts into laughter::

I've been on a mini-PJH kick lately, very advanced prep-work for the poll, it seems!

Talking Heads has to happen sooner or later. I kind of assume it'll run itself somehow even if nobody volunteers.

There can't be too much overlap between Joni and The Neptunes, I'd guess they'd be fine to run concurrently.

Just to remind anyone who may be interested that voting closes for 1980'S ROCK POLL ALBUMS/TRACKS VOTING THREAD. (Voting closes September 20) (all welcome to vote inc Lurkers) on THURSDAY.

Thanks.

I've emailed V79 about the Neptunes poll, but his last ILX post was the one upthread a month ago, so I dunno.

does anyone want to do a YMO one??

I'm struggling a little bit to get the spreadsheet working. I'm able to input all the titles and everything, but I'm using Numbers (not Office) and can't figure out how to sort the columns alphabetically. Does anyone know how to do that in Numbers?