On 2017-09-04, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <
sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/17 8:31 PM, Chris Buckley wrote:
>> On 2017-08-30, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <
sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Overall, I don't like the list in its long form. There are WAY too many
>>> repeated authors (OSC gets multiple entries just from the Ender series)
>>> and thus way too many non-represented authors who should be on any such
>>> list.
>>
>> What would be your suggestion?
>
> Absolute rule: only one per author. If you have such limited space,
> letting one person hog multiple slots reduces the utility of the list.
> If someone decides to try Author X's book because they see it on the
> list, they can find Author X's other books by author search, but if they
> don't learn about Author Y because Author X crowded him off the list by
> having five entries, they may never do so.
>
>>
>> I personally would put both _Ender's Game_ and _Speaker for the Dead_ on
>> my list of top 100 books. I don't care about the rest of OSC (well, perhaps
>> the collection), but who decides?
>
>
> Flip a coin if you can't decide which one's better. In this case, I'd
> say Ender's Game; it starts the series, without it the others don't make
> nearly so much of an impact (and I honestly feel they're vastly weaker
> than the original. The original novel isn't as punchy as the short story
> either but it makes of for that with detail and depth.
Your suggestion would destroy the attractiveness and utility of this
particular list, IMO.
I think it's very reasonable to have a single entry per author
requirement for "best" lists from a single source (reviewer or
whatever). Those lists will get dominated by biases of the source,
but the source still wants to present as wide of view of what they
think as they can. Indeed, I hesitate to post my list of favorites
since there would be an unreasonable number of entries from my
favorites like C.J. Cherryh (nearly 20 books - what can I say? I like
to re-read her!). I completely approve of James having such a
requirement for his lists - he wants to present as many alternatives
as possible.
But I think it's quite inappropriate for this list. The provider has
made a huge effort to avoid as many individual biases as possible, both
in the original selection of works (gathered from many different lists
of top works) and in the ongoing evolution of the list (limited voting
from many sources.)
The requirement of only one entry per author doesn't fit in at all with
those bias avoidance efforts. It's impossible to avoid the provider to
avoid bias when cutting the list down to one work for an author. Flipping
coins is not the answer. For instance, I know of folks who think _True Names_
is the best book by Vinge (they don't like the big complex books). Should
we have coin flips between 3 books by Vinge? Would you really regard the
result as non-biased?
And it's worse when you are asking people to vote on the resulting
list. They are no longer voting for their favorite books. If their
favorite book is not the repesentative of an author, they get stuck at
trying to value whether to vote for an inferior book by the author or
a book by somebody else which, in their view, is better than the author's
representative, but worse than the their favorite. I personally would
be much less interested in voting in such an arrangement, and would be
much less interested in the results, since they reflect unknown biases.
Chris