Anybody want to help me try out a new feature?

[mark]

Back in the early days of this site, I used to have a feature where I invited fans to email me with their Top 10 favorite Bacharach compositions of all time. I'd run their responses and then, in theory, I'd compile their choices, giving their top pick 10 points, their 2nd favorite 9 points, their third 8 points and so on. My goal was to get an accurate picture of fans favorite Bacharach songs, which I thought would be inaccurate if just let people pick one song. Well that proved to be too much of a burden for me to keep up, so I replaced it with a free Votations.com poll that let's people pick from a menu of 50 well known Bacharach songs. "The Look of Love" is currently No. 1.

Since I moved the site to a new server, I have access to a number of new scripts. I'm trying to find one that automatically compiles votes and generates them on a dynamic Web page. I'm not there yet, but here's a survey I was fooling around with. This one lets you rank the (subjective) list of Bacharach compositions on a scale of 1 to 10. Feel free to check it out. I don't think you have to rank every song so if you just rank your personal Top 10 it should work. And if I left your favorite off the list, I'm sorry.

http://www.bacharachonline.com/survey/index.php?sid=2

[ron hertel]

After perusing your list of 100+ songs - it appears many of my favorites are included. It's always difficult for me to rank these since most of my favorites tend to fall into the "hidden gems" category. On the other hand - I also like most of the commercially successful songs; however, they rank lower in my book because of the casual (almost cast-off) treatment they have received being part of "greatest hits" medleys for so many years.

If it will not skew the results you are seeking I plan to rank most of them.
Mark - let me know if you would prefer limiting it to the "top ten"

[mark]

Thanks for the input, Ron. Your problem is the exact one that makes this a difficult feature to implement. To automatize the collection and compilations of data, I almost have to include every single song Burt has written to accommodate the serious fans who love particular obscurities, but that makes the input mechanism awfully unwieldy. Most casual fans probably don't want to scroll through 500 songs to find "I Say A Little Prayer."

So I'm back to the option of just letting people type in their favorites, which makes compiling and publishing the data difficult.

This is just a test so don't spend too much time agonizing over it. I'm really just interested in seeing how it works. If and when I eventually add something like this, I'll probably start over.

[ron hertel]

Mark! Something you may wish to consider that would be of interest would be to tabulate the average score of each song no matter how many people scored it. Ranking will almost always result in the old familiars (most often heard) greatest hits songs taking the top ten spots.
The same holds true regarding the songs that both Burt and Dionne must include in their concert repertoire in order for their concert tours to be commercially successful. Imagine the negative reviews if these concerts were not a "walk down memory lane" and included obscurities such as "The Beginning of Loneliness" or "Looking with My Eyes". Average scores for each song would provide some indication as to how our fellow "serious followers" feel about those songs that never made it to the "top 40"

[rasputin]

Hi Mark,

Call me stupid, but I'm ready to take your poll, and I'm not 100% sure whether, on your continuum, a "10" means the Best or the Worst.



I'll fill out the poll on the assumption that a "10" is like a Dudley Moore-rating-Bo Derek "10", OK?



DAVE