Archive for November, 2009

Finally the second in a series of many updates is complete.  Since there hasn’t been a ton of votes cast for the Best 100 Children’s Books List thusfar, only the top 15 are currently listed on the initial list.

Some authors like Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein seemed to dominate the first run of this list, but I think that was to be expected to an extent.  The list is topped by an old classic that nearly everyone has read at some point or another, and many can recite word for word, Green Eggs and Ham.  Dr. Seuss makes the list 2 other times as well with The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

To check out what other children’s books made the cut please visit The Best 100 Children’s Books.

Remember to also continue to check back all this month as updates to all 13 lists will be completed in the next two weeks.

I finally got around to building the database for the best 100 works of art list.  Unfortunately the list only shows the top ten right now but I suspect to get up to at least 50 on the next update of this list.  As expected most of the list is dominated bo the old masters like Da Vinci and Michelangelo (artists that have ninja turtles named after them).  I suspect that after the entire list is build things will get much more interesting.

The list is topped by Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the entire list can be seen at The Best 100 Works of Art.

Stand by for updated lists to come out all this week and next as this is the first update of 12 that are coming this month.

Stay Tuned!!

While we appreciate all of the votes that we get for all of our best 100 lists, there are a few guidelines that would save us (and you) a lot of time and effort.  To better understand why I ask for votes in a certian format its probably best to explain how votes are counted.

Since there are a lot of spelling errors, format variations (last name, first and last), and other factors, I have found it very difficult to automate the vote counting process.  Since there are virtually infinate novels, authors, actors, ect. to choose from, I have not created structured polls where you can only vote for certian things or people.  I think that this process renders the best results but it is time consuming to say the least.  That means every so often I take all of the votes for a particular list, alphabetize them, and add them to our database.  This means that I actually enter every single vote by hand.

With that said here are a few guidelines to make things easier:

1. Please do not vote for the same person or thing ten times in a row.  Your submission will be deleted and you wasted your time and mine.
2. Please try to follow the format laid out in each voting form. ie. novel title – author, song title – artist, ect
3. Please do not vote for yourself and a bunch of your friends (unless you actually believe that they are the best athletes, authors, ect.)   While these votes will get counted, there will never be enough votes to actually make any of the lists.
4. Please try to remember what list you are voting for.   There are times when I get a list of iPhone apps filled into the best 100 novels form and it just doesn’t make any sense.  Most of these situations are caught and moved to the proper list but again it takes extra time.

Thank you for all of your votes thus far and please keep them coming.  Stay tuned for updates to the lists later on next week.

Its that time again and tens of thousands of votes have come in over the past months.  With the volume of votes that have been cast no new updated lists will likely post this week as I will be entering all of the new votes into the databases and that takes a lot of time.  Beginning next week though I expect to start posting updated versions of all of our best 100 lists.  This will include initial lists of the polls that do not have any list at all posted yet.

Check back all next week for new lists as they will be posted here as they go up

Thank you to everyone who has voted up to this point and to everyone who has left comments or reviews of anyone or anything on any of our best 100 lists.

Stay Tuned!!