[Loremaster]

Just as an aside ---

I remember occasionally watching Siskel (RIP) and Ebert and found that if they both turned it down, I should go see it.

Well.. often enough. Though I can appreciate films from a critical standpoint ( I actually took a college course on the subject ), I recognize that I also happen to enjoy movies for pure, mindless, don't-have-to-think-about-it action and special effects.

I have a deeper appreciation of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" than my first viewing, where I was primarily thrilled by the choreographed fight scenes and the location shots. After taking that class I mentioned, I have seen the film three more times; I have a better understanding of the story, the use of the soundtrack, the use of camera angles, lighting and so on to enhance the telling. The kinds of things professional critics look at when rating films.

I have to tell you, though, that I prefer my simple "Did I enjoy it" method of review.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (Loremaster @ Feb. 18 2003,23:01) Just as an aside --- I remember occasionally watching Siskel (RIP) and Ebert and found that if they both turned it down, I should go see it. Well.. often enough.  Though I can appreciate films from a critical standpoint ( I actually took a college course on the subject ), I recognize that I also happen to enjoy movies for pure, mindless, don't-have-to-think-about-it  action and special effects. I have a deeper appreciation of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" than my first viewing, where I was primarily thrilled by the choreographed fight scenes and the location shots.  After taking that class I mentioned, I have seen the film three more times; I have a better understanding of the story, the use of the soundtrack, the use of camera angles, lighting and so on to enhance the telling.  The kinds of things professional critics look at when rating films. I have to tell you, though, that I prefer my simple "Did I enjoy it" method of review.

Siskel sucked (not to slam on a dead guy). Ebert is a true film lover though. His tv shows are not particularly good. Read his website (www.suntimes.com/ebert). He's a true film lover, without being a complete snob like A.O. Scott of the NY Times was or is (not sure if he still writes for them). He's got a very high appreciation for pure "fun" movies. He even gave the last Harry Potter movie 3 stars (not my thing, but I can understand why he did).

I think my best friend and I are the only film lovers on earth that didn't like Crouching Panda, Leaping Ferret. I swear, after the raves it got at Toronto, I was expecting the greatest film ever made.

--matt

[Xerihae]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ Feb. 19 2003,04:11) I think my best friend and I are the only film lovers on earth that didn't like Crouching Panda, Leaping Ferret. I swear, after the raves it got at Toronto, I was expecting the greatest film ever made. --matt

I've never watched it. No offense to the fans of it, but fighting in the treetops and the ridiculous overuse of wires just puts me off from ever seeing the thing.

[Stilton]

I was trying to figure out how to respond to your question about how my claim led to attempts to data-mine the voting for information that really isn't there, and the exchange between you (the_logos) and Loremaster helped a lot:

Originally Posted by >Driving the most traffic to TMS is not irrelevant; it is the >model TMS operates with.  Muds with the most traffic get >the 'premium' positions. Sure, of course.   >Casual observers and those new to the site reasonably think >top means 'best' in terms of popularity, quality, fun, etc.

Someone who wanders up to the site expects to see the 'Best' muds (ignoring for a second that this is a meaningless phrase).

When people see how the system works, they generally seem to have one of two reactions:

1) Oh, ok, the voting is a marketing scheme for the topmudsites.com website. Ho, hum.

2) Hey, the muds near the top aren't there because of any measure of quality, it's just votes by their players!  We've got to fix this to make sure the results really show the Best muds on top!

People with reaction number 2 will then, with their desire for the rankings to better reflect what they WANT the rankings to reflect as motivation, do all sorts of strange things.  

Try to extract weakly correlated data from the results because it's what they think the voting SHOULD measure, complain about the ways votes can be gained, etc.

Hope I'm clearer now?

___
Stilton

[Enzo]

Personally, I feel that the voting should be more of a quality thing. There is no way to have it so that people could. My idea that I was having:

Elect delegates who have no immortalship on any MUD or have some kind of adminstration job on Top Mud Sites, Mud Connector, or any web site like that. The delegates go around, try out a MUD for a bit, and report back their findings and vote for the MUDs they looked at (rate 1-10). Players can still vote like they do now, but that way it would even out the votes a little bit based on quality.

[Brody]

Enzo,

This isn't a bad idea. Ideally, I think the rankings should reflect quality too. But no system is going to be perfect, and *any* system ruled by humans will be tainted to some degree by the biases of the humans.

It's something that might be worth experimenting with, though. I doubt Synozeer wants to revamp the entire system (or maybe he does - he'd have to tell you for sure), but maybe he'd be willing to set up a part of this site where only a select group of non-admins/non-mods selected by Synozeer could work on this kind of thing.

Just ask him. He's PM-able, and e-mailable.

Good luck!