A question about what you like best about ILM EOY/or other big email type polls

I guess I like both. I will say, though, that while I'm very curious about the rankings (which are fun to speculate about and ponder upon), I rarely root for favorites or get riled up about a placement.

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk210/antojos/mz_6266073_bodyshot_300x400-5.gif

very helpful

some people don't like chat I guess and prefer to ruin any debate with pointless gifs and zings. Sad really.

I would have put a third option:

I am interested in discovering albums I haven't heard yet.

jaymc you're definitely in the minority re your last part of your post.

fastnbulbous i just wanted to see what ilxors preferred out of those 2 options. I do wonder if everyone gets something different out of these polls though.
Doesn't the chat about albums make people interested in hearing albums more than just a high ranking? . It's kinda comparable to reading a review or just looking at the number out of 10.

yeah i don't see how this makes any sense as an either/or.

that said, if you look at the early ILM polls from the first 5 or so yeas of the board, the results threads are basically just the results being rolled out and very minimal commentary, which is pretty boring, so obviously the chat is (and has become) a big part of the appeal of why we do so many of these now, for better or worse.

i like it when they don't exist

^^^^^

One thing I always likes - and missed last year, IIRC - was the inclusion of great quotes from ILXors on threads-gone-by regarding the album or song in question.

i can testify that it's a great hassle even without searching the archives. What with spotify links, some youtubes. It really needs someone else to help do it. (I know you're not gonna look at the metal poll but I'm sure its the same with jf , seandalai and j0rdan who does the images)

if/when I read a thread like that it's only to read what people are saying about music; I don't care about how things rank. Which is partly why I don't participate in send-in-your-ballot polls.

ranking things gives them meaning

I am a petty little man and complaining about omissions from music lists is one of my last sources of pleasure. There's little like the righteous indignation of "No Artist/Song X, No Credibility.

stay away from drugs

i do see where you're coming from smithy. I love reading about music/discussing it. It's why I'm here for...shit.. 11 years now. But I obv do like lists though im not that bothered about the actual rankings. I just like presenting a list of say 100 albums that are great ,that have been voted for by ilxors, and discussing it. Yes it can be fun seeing reactions when something places high or low. But the best thing is the fact people are discussing these albums.

And phil,smithy etc i respect your decisions not to vote and that you don't like rankings,but i'd really LOVE it if you guys joined in the comments and discuss the albums. Give us your opinions on the albums! Check out some of the stuff you don't know. I'm envious of all you guys who have writing abilities who can turn others onto music. I don't have those skills, all I can do is mention band names/albums or do polls then let others do the real stuff. So help me!

That goes out to tim,the lex or anyone who isn't up on metal. Check stuff out, if you find one album you like then that's a great thing for me. Remember last year lex said he liked SWANS? that was my fave thing about last year.

so if you aren't keen on polls, try to improve them rather than lazy zings or whatever. Lets make them about discussing the albums or tracks.

i have no idea what you're trying to get across here. more people should listen to metal? zing culture is bad? poll participation could be higher?

see im crap at expressing things :(

i'll stick to running polls I think

lol sorry

hmmmmmm

no worries Al. I just like people checking out stuff from the polls that they might not have known about. i also like reading what people have to say about those albums and i feel that if others,like smithy for instance, post their thoughts it might tempt others into checking it out. Like when i read a lex post and he makes me want to hear something that usually is outwith my comfort zone.

One of my favourite poll experiences was the 'all-time metal' poll. I'm not a metaller, I never had a teenage metal spell, but I put in my false-metal ballot and listened to all of the results, posting my reactions. The real metal community were so welcoming to me it was awesome, the vast majority of them didn't mind my ignorance, because it was done in the right spirit. I think that's what AG means here, that there is and should be that possibility.

In the bigger polls I do like cheering on things for placements, though I know I'm enough of an outlier that I'll never get that much that high, but it adds to the fun. Ultimately the chat is the thing.

(And sarahel, that was a really mean post and you should probably apologise.)

yeah as a false metal lifer who will always have zero engagement w/ most of the threads/polls about contemporary metal i enjoyed the all-time metal poll a lot

I showed my ass in the all-time metal poll, so needless to say it doesn't bring back pleasant memories. :P

lol metal

― "biggest asshole on ILX" (history mayne)

I still think there's a few things you might like though. Have you heard the uncle acid and the deadbeats album? And Mastodon make heavy rock now not metal. The whole poll is quite varied usually. It's not all screaming grunting headbanging music (which some wish it was!)

emil.y on the alltime poll was awesome to read. It was fun reading comments by those who aren't really into metal. I wish it happened all the time. Seeing people get into something they don't know is great for me. And if you do just like lists or rundowns you can still enjoy the poll too.
Poll rollouts do bring a lot of ilx together and can be great fun even if you dont like all the results.

Dont be scared to post on the metal poll, each and everyone of you is welcome to participate. We're a welcoming bunch, honestly!

xp to some dude obviously

j3ff might convince some of you to listen to broadway showtune metal by crazy finns (or maybe not)

lol i'm not meeting anyone halfway with mastadon, fuck them

haha anyway this isn't just about metal poll, it's any of the big email polls.

The 50s poll was fun as I got to hear a lot of music I had never heard and the most fun I ever had was on the jazz poll.

I don't have those skills
this simply isn't true! you're an a+ recommender of things people (people like me!) would like based on the other things they like. that's a skill, and i really appreciate that it doesn't take you 800 words to do it.

mostly the whole poll process is more time consuming than i would like, but i do enjoy the results (learning about new things) and the resulting jibjab/chat.

(and i agree, sarahel's post was needlessly mean/pointless)

I think the '50s poll had a lot of what I was talking about with regard to all-time metal, except for the fact that *almost everyone* there was a bit of an outsider. We had people who knew a fair amount, people who had their own specific genres they were enthusiastic about (me, for one), and people who used it as a way to get into stuff they'd never heard off at all. I guess End of Year is different, but it should never be *that* different.

sarahel, after a pretty good detente w/you i feel compelled to say that wrt to your post here, you are a jerk.

i feel compelled to say that wrt to your post here, you are a jerk.

yep, yer right

(And sarahel, that was a really mean post and you should probably apologise.)

yer right too

(and i agree, sarahel's post was needlessly mean/pointless)

yep

thanks for being the conscience(s) i lack. sorry for the mean gif-posting.

i like both of these options, both are why i love ILM EOY polls, and they couldn't coexist w/o each other.

i like them for discovering new stuff, but often it'll be folks here turning me on to stuff that's hiding in plain sight, just as much as it will be the uncovering of some amazing obscurity.

Conversations are good too though, especially when it comes to teasing out some of the hidden themes of the given period, plotting the course of how things change from one year to the next, making connections between diverse things etc. Much more than just a fucking list.

I'm with Lex in that both couldn't exist without the other, but the discussion, discovering new music and most of the times great fun that is had in those polls is what's most important. I don't care if record X is 40th or 1st tbh.

(and ugh, can't a mod just get rid of that fucking gif sarahel posted?)

i know people are like 'lol ranking what a tedious statistical exercise, we're just here to discuss things' but honestly since SO MANY of the conversations we have here kind of head into brick walls of difference of opinion that a lot of time hinge on popular opinion or conventional wisdom, even just among people that post here, that polls and especially EOY polls really do i think end up serving a useful role in that regard, just by taking some of the speculation and guesswork out of those conversations that are constantly happening.

ranking things gives them meaning

lol w/e mr. age of enlightenment

Heh I thought he was just trolling you there

I think yr right I just felt like if I didn't make a great chain of being ref in response my street rep would suffer

Well I for one think it is very philanthropic of you to not leave the trolling unanswered

it's true, I did it for humanity

Smithy if an album you really really dug but was under the radar of everyone on ilx , but then it placed really high on a poll, wouldn't you be quite happy to know that so many others dug it? and not only that, others then will go check it out.

I'm here for the celebrities. You never know who's lurking, JT, JB, CW.

But really, the average intelligence here is much higher than any other music discussion out there. And someone can be earnest like Jimmy Riddle and generally if one person is too much of a dick about it, people actually say something. That's so rare.

To me rankings do matter in that it's nice to know when say, an album may have only been mentioned once on Rolling Metal, and only the poll can reveal that people actually cared about it enough to vote it into the top hundred. When you're trying to find recommendations among the thousands of albums out there, that's damn useful.

Yeah p much everybody otm here. The traxx poll last year was unbelievably fun, mostly because of chat. That being said, I value rankings because a) I use the polls to fill in the gaps of my listening, and b) they are what makes ILX's polls distinct from all the other EoY lists. Proud day in ILx when they managed to get Blaqkout, Electrik Red,and Taylor Swift in the top 10 along w most of GAPDYX and Fever. Ray...or that time Paavoharju and Lau Nau made the countdown...

Same thing with the Zep poll: Zeppelin was a band I've liked for a long time but mostly interacted with in a sort of "classic rock radio format" kind of way. The poll completely changed the way I looked at and listened to tat band, and the rankings drastically revised what I had considered as their "canon" up to that point...

The rankings mainly serve to kickstart discussion, at least for me. I got past being too invested in results when Double Nickels didn't win 80s albums or whatever and the world didn't end. If the campaigning and reveal are fun, results don't matter.

the great ilx food war threads prove that it's not about the ranking (though that is fun, RIP peaches) but the exuberant shit talking that goes along with it

not exactly the same for music but clearly chat is part of why we're here? i don't really care who likes hot dogs over tacos.

eggs ackley

Tacos

See, that wasn't very interesting because you didn't even bother to explain your preference for tacos.

Let's try that with music.

Barn Owl

...

(that clearly wasn't fun was it)

im enlightened by it

I got past being too invested in results when Double Nickels didn't win 80s album

It got my #1. Double Nickels wuz robbed.

You know who always gets robbed in these polls? The Time.

But on topic, the conversation is what I care about most. The placing is important to me only in that it can help spur or frame a discussion. On occasion even a cry of too low or too high has actually ended with coherent arguments for and against.

but you never join the chat until the polls are in the later stages

dude what the hell you keep track of who chimes in and when? c'mon man whaaaaaat is that.

I always read back through those later, and often discover interesting stuff, but honestly the discussion about lower placed albums or tracks isn't as interesting. Less people felt strongly enough to vote for it, less people have probably heard it, and thus less engagement from a broad number of voters and viewpoints.

I used to say it spoiled surprises for the top (which it no doubt does), but after several polls done with longer rollouts it's the lack of conversation that kills it the most for me.

If the albums I voted for place at all, (ha), they're going to be waaaaaay low, but I will happily chat about them so that everyone has to scroll past my yakety yak to get to "the good stuff"

Please do! You're yakety yak will definitely get me to check something out later.

smithy, ez and i discuss this all the time. Whether it be on here,by email, chatz or outloud. It's a bit of a poll tradition now.

and then i email him telling him when the top 50 is to begin

I'm a fan of ILM polls, especially the EOY variety - and the fact that I enjoy lists is only a small part of the reason. The first poll I experienced was the alternative 90s poll and the enjoyment I got from that played a role in my decision to stick around.

They're fun: People are happy to discuss the merits or otherwise of the countdown in a (mostly) good-humoured way, reactions to hearing things for the first time can be hilarious and/or insightful.

They're comprehensive: I don't keep up with what's happening in e.g. hip-hop or metal but I figure that anything that makes the top 77 is something I need to check out.

They're community-building: Polls also put the emphasis on shared experiences, big and small. Pretty much the whole spectrum of ILM gets together on the EOY threads to see what's been happening over the past year; they're probably the most inclusive threads we have. On a smaller level, there's also the pleasure in realising that a bunch of other posters checked out that album/track you were repping for, and liked it enough to put it on their ballot ("hey, these guys have good taste!"). Every society needs its ritual calendar, and this is part of ours.

it always feels like the ILM EOY poll is competing against the P&J poll that comes out at the same time. It feels like the climax of poll season. ILM FA Cup Final vs P&J Europa League Final ;)

kinda wish the ILM poll came out before P&J, will be kinda polled out by the time ours get rolled out

when does P&J hit?

this wednesday i believe

ahh shit. That's metal poll thread fucked for comments then :(

the peanut gallery is on call, don't fret

P&J is a one-day rollout, though. People may still be discussing it for a few days after, but its impact on our EOY poll is minimal. Also, I don't vote in P&J anymore, so I don't give two shits about it. ;)

i'm not talking about 'overlap,' i'm talking about suspense/surprise element is a bit deflated after P&J

really? i dont remember the ilm eoy results hewing that closely to the p+j ones...

i'm anticipating the ILM EOY so much more than P&J

oh wait i just remembered destroyer. actually i'm not

In general I don't really care about general type lists or polls prefer things that don't try be multiple things

But w ILX its the opposite I like the generality because its not like its trying to cover a wide or narrow sphere, its just whatever it is - due to a comparatively wide userbase

also I have a thing where I'll only vote for things I didn't nominate myself not sure if this is a good thing

FWIW, I've been more excited for ILM poll results the past couple years than the Voice P&J. I like to read the essays, but usually just get annoyed with them, and the results are predictable. I do like to look up ballots of writers I follow, but it's not that exciting. ILM has more interesting and surprising results.

Since I'm obviously not a vote in P&J I'm far more interested in the ILM poll(s), but P&J really isn't a big thing outside the US is it? Do they ever get mentioned on say Guardian articles ? I would assume a Q or NME eoy poll has a bigger impact here.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i really should have included It's not the Pazz & Jop poll

what happened to the artist polls? Will they be resuming?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ok, cool.