wigglestrue wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:wigglestrue wrote:Thank you for the explanation. As someone who helped do the very first (IIRC) big RealGM Top [insert number, but it was 50 then, on the General Board], I take this kind of list probably too seriously, but is it not one of the more prominent artifacts we're leaving behind on this forum, a kind of monument to how well-reasoned this board is, etc. I'm not all that unhappy about the first 50 here, but the second 50 is a mess. It reflects meh-ly on all of us collectively, not just on the particular voters. This board deserves a better Top 100 stickied. Not that the voters didn't give their best effort. This format is probably just not the best. Too clock-sensitive, too many rounds, not enough of an incentive as a fantasy draft has to keep people on schedule. Hmmm. Not one to criticize like this without trying to offer a solution, so: Has there ever been a survey-type Top 100? Meaning, uh...lemme think...
Select 100 of the best posters ever here, roughly balanced team-and-player-bias-wise, and have each (on their own clock, but by a certain day on the calendar) painstakingly construct an individual Top 100. To ensure a degree of investment, in order to avoid people just throwing a bunch of names together and vaguely sorting it into a plausible order, we should require there to be exactly 10 out of the 100 selections where a listmaker addends a 100-word-or-more explanation under the player chosen. Could be 10 in a row, the first ten, the last ten, every tenth player, totally random, or whatever. I suggest using each to explain an unorthodox placement, unusually high or unusually low. But, that's just my idea of how to use them. And maybe it should only be 5 explanations required, or maybe it should be 20. Anyway, you'd also have to request no talking, lol, no contaminating the process until all ballots submitted. So, what you should ideally wind up with is 100 of the best minds here being able to create a list without any interference, at their own pace, without any risk of fatigue setting in, or any pressure to "make up for" any suboptimal selections. Then you just average those 100 ballots, weigh them, whatever, and -- voila -- you have the best Top 100 ever created together by internet strangers. The commentary-requirement would then allow for a really cool way to wrap it all up in a bow at the end. All at once, on one page, all 100 crowdsourced picks, with ALL of the explanations submitted per player chosen for that. And...a full listing of the left-out remainders, and each ballot-maker should be responsible for explaining at least 1 total omission with another 100 words at the end. Perhaps this would be a perfectly legit reason for doing that PC Board Top 100 Poster thing, as opposed to just-for-s***s-and-giggles, lol.
So...great idea, right?
(Have you all done it before, and I'm just late to the party? :| )
So first off, you wouldn't have the list from the first Top X handy would you? I saved the 2006 one, and have a Google doc with 2006, 2008 and 2011, but it appears the 2003 one is lost.
Good news: Yes. Bad news, it's somewhere in an old computer that died years ago and is sitting in the basement in case I ever feel like paying somebody to repair it, recover files, whatever. I didn't think it was possible for something to be "lost" on the internet, given all the wayback machines and whatnot. Surely someone at RealGM has a text-only backup of everything ever posted here, right? If not, how about the NSA, lol?As for a different method, I'm all for trying something in addition to the tried & true method, but I don't like the idea of replacing it. I think this has worked probably better than we have any right to expect something like this to work, and I also like the idea of keeping methods roughly constant so that we can see how opinions changed over time.
Of course you might say: Yeah, but look at those picks toward the end, do those truly give a snapshot of the board, or are they more random? Agree, they are too random for my taste.
My expectation is that I won't be the one running the next Top 100, which I hope will be this summer, so it's certainly not like I'll have final say on what we do, but given that we've waited 3 years from the last of these projects, I'd like to basically do the same thing again before we try to new method.
Not much changes in three years, Doc. Or rather, not much should change, if the process has been accurate. A player here, a spot or two there. If you're getting sizable swings every three years, then the method is problematic. But yes, keep up the every-three-years traditional version, too. Just maybe, like, let an entirely new batch of posters handle that one. Have the, uh..."preeminent"...posters all do the ballot version, instead, to make it as awesome as possible.If discussion were to come up though, I wouldn't be opposed to planning to change methods as the project goes along. If we can do something to reduce the effort it takes for people to maintain their focus, then the last picks won't be as dominated by a few survivors.
To specifically address what you've proposed:
-100 of the best posters making individual lists. Unrealistic. In general we're fortunate to have 30 people be involved at vote #1 which takes much less commitment. Perhaps we could get 10 to commit to this, although to be honest when I make individual lists I find it ceases to be very meaningful well before 100.
For real? Okay, but let's imagine that this composite/commentary/ballot Top 100 were to become, say, the signature product of this board because all the best of the old-timers and the new blood put their best effort into it and so it turned out to be the most accurate and informative and entertaining Top 100 list ever made. Let's say we all knew that's what would happen in advance if we got everyone involved with full enthusiasm...then a whole lot of people would want to have been part of it, right? There's gotta be at least 50 out of the Top 100 of us here who would be all about this once informed. Again, too: No clock, just a calendar. Dramatically alters the commitment required, no?-Having some picks which are required to give an explanation. I would agree with this. To me there's a real problem if people just give a list. First and foremost it basically takes the educational aspect out of the project, and while that might sound corny, it's my belief that the actual debate in the projects we've run on this board has everything to do with the building of community and the refinement of opinions.
Right, but sometimes the community can become swept up in a fad, overtaken by an powerful but inaccurate rhetorical argument. There are a few downsides to real-time debate, in addition to the numerous upsides. There would still be an instantaneous debate of sorts, once all the comments are sorted and compiled underneath each player who got commentary added (not all will, which is interesting in itself).Of course by that same token, the idea of "no contaminating" is something I don't believe in as part of an initial project, but what I could see is a secondary project. Basically, after we put together our induction-style Top 100, everyone who has then made their Top 100 list then submits it into list-style Top 100. It would be interesting to see the difference in the two results, and we might decide the second list is more worthy than the first.
Why not do the novel thing first, and see how it changes the thing you've been doing the same way?
By contaminating, I just meant, like, no colluding to get Your Binkie into This Echelon, lol. And I also suspect that an involved pre-game thread anticipating the balloting might serve the same function as collusion, even if unintentional. That's all. Not "no talking", haha, that was bad wording on my part.
RE: an '03 list wayback doesn't go back that far but it does contain (parts of) the 2006 list thread in which you allude part of a prior list
but there's only bits of that threadThat was from a few years ago.
And even then, #14 isn't that low.
#9 Shaquille O'Neal
#10 Julius Erving
#11 Moses Malone
#12 Elgin Baylor
#13 Karl Malone
Personally I think Hakeem is top 10.
But you could make a plausible case for any of those 5 being greater.
I am not saying advanced metrics should be your only holy grail here but what in the world does 81 points, 12 3's in a game and some all-team recognition based off of reputation have to do with how he actually played the game?
Maybe he should be in the top 100 now. 
