It’s that time again (nearly). And I’m simply repeating the same introduction we had four years ago, for what is laziness without me doing it?
If you’ve had four years of anguish that your favourite song didn’t even make it past the opening stage in 2019, there’ll soon be another chance to put things right.
Our crack team of terrible web designers (me again – CtSO) and some willing guinea pigs are about to re-test the technology, because I forgot how we did it last time and have had to rebuild it from scratch. I propose we use the same format as last time – a mass free-for-all of 220 songs in random one-v-ones (the Baguette Dilemma Round), leading to a last 32 knockout stage. But if anyone has any better ideas, the floor is now yours.
Lord leominster
I can’t quite remember the previous format but I seem to remember the baguette dilemma round selected songs to go forward into the knock out round. It struck me that some albums were under-represented in the knock out round. My suggestion: if we round up the EPs and Peel songs into Stony Ground and find a way to manage the duplications in DHSS, Back Again and ACD, I think we could have 16 albums. A separate baguette dilemma round for each album could select 4 (or 2) songs per album to go forward to the knock out round which would be a total of 64 (or 32) songs which would be mathematically safe in halving each time down to a winner. Four songs from Godcore in the knock out v four songs from Voltarol would be pleasing, to me anyway.
4 February 2023
Lord leominster
Or we could add EPs to the closest album rather than piling them all into Stony Ground.
My suggested format would make for a long competition but that would just extend the fun (and the work for CtSO, sorry).
4 February 2023
Bad loser
Already anticipating Terminus & Oblong of Dreams being paired together in the early knock-out rounds.
4 February 2023
Chris The Siteowner
If we wanted to ensure a wider representation of albums in the last 32, there are a couple of ways we can do this. Yes, we could have a baguette dilemma round for each album. Or we could have a mass free-for-all baguette dilemma round, as before, but then from the scoring, create a table for each album.
Or (and it’s a very similar thing) a compromise might be to have a mass free-for-all baguette dilemma round, with the top song from each album qualifying, alongside the 16 highest scoring songs which weren’t the top songs on their albums. However, last time out, the only album that wasn’t represented in the last 32 was Some Call It Godcore (highest scoring song Friday Night And The Gates Are Low at 75), so the only difference created by this system would have been that one getting through …at the expense of Terminus, which (incredibly) was only 31st.
Last time’s baguette dilemma round results can be seen here.
5 February 2023
D list paul ross
Or we could just accept some albums have better songs than others.
5 February 2023
Schoon
Chatgpt bla bla:
Final:
“24 Hour Garage People” vs. (TBD)
It also thinks “This is How You Can Tell That You’re Running” is an HMHB song.
5 February 2023
Lord leominster
Thanks for considering this, Chris. Just one last thought: if we had a baguette dilemma round for each album that lasted for, say, a week that would allow anyone who’s interested enough time to give each album another ‘deep’ listen whilst voting, along the lines of the fandom group in BookFace.
6 February 2023
Schoon
I like the idea of treating the albums like they are countries in a EuroHMHBvision type contest. This might aid a little in reducing recency bias.
6 February 2023
paul f
A Song for Europe?
6 February 2023
EXXO
@ Lord Lemmo. Just as we should have had certain basic educational requirements for participation in the Brexit vote, likewise here. I would propose nobody qualifies until they prove themselves able to write a critical review of each entire album.
6 February 2023
Lord leominster
They’re all really great, just in different ways. Will that do?
6 February 2023
Lord leominster
Before you say ‘could do better’:
DHSS – groundbreaking
Back Again / ACD – anarchic
McIntyre – Verityesque
Leaden Pall – urban
Godcore – holy
Voyage – experimental
Four Lads – regional
Bridgewater – mature
Camell Laird – tuneful
Achtung – disrespectful
CSI – troublesome
Bisodol – acidic
UFO – national
Stony Ground – eclectic
Creative hub – insightful
Voltarol – astonishing
6 February 2023
Chris The Siteowner
OK, thanks to the commenters above, who I mailed out a beta test of the latest voting software to. It seems to (almost) be working OK so far, which is a relief! So the mass baguette dilemma round can be done again without any problems. Hooray!
My headache is going to be the folks who try to manipulate the vote. They did it last time, and I imagine they’ll try it again, sadly. I’ve no worries about the mass baguette dilemma round – even the couple of people who must have dedicated large parts of their lives for a couple of weeks last time to voting 10,000 times or more, didn’t manage to swing the dial for (or more likely against) a particular song more than a very few places. Still, it caused me more work than I could have done with to sort out the mess.
However, in the knockout rounds, it’ll be harder to limit votes to one per person. I can try to monitor IP addresses but it’s difficult. Facebook and Twitter polls are a bit exclusionary; Easypolls looks like it might work, although it costs money. Or we could add a sign-in to the voting forms, I guess, and/or do the voting by email. Actually, that’s a distinct possibility. Unless anyone has any better ideas?
8 February 2023
paul f
Is it too naive to suggest an honour system? I think Biscuit fans are by and large a pretty decent bunch, so maybe just adding the instruction “Please vote only once on this tie” or the disclaimer “By voting I acknowledge that I have not already voted on this tie” will be sufficient.
8 February 2023
paul f
@ Lord L – that is very reminiscent of Terry’s one word descriptions for any nationality Bob can throw at him in the “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?” episode, “No Hiding Place” (IMHO the finest single episode of any sitcom, ever).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNiTo_TbeQ
8 February 2023
Chris The Siteowner
@Paul F – I wish it were so, but I have my doubts. However, I have an alternative for the final few knockout rounds, where multiple voting might make a difference. How about I provide a button to click for your preferred choice, which fires off an email with that choice? Then I can just add up the emails received, and easily discount more than one emailed vote from the same address. Sure, it’s not perfect, but then even with (say) IP monitoring, people can move around to different locations, so it’d be just as effective at preventing any nefariousness. In fact, it might be better, because other tactics used in the past included encouraging friends who knew nothing about the band to join in the vote, or putting requests in online forums. People would be less likely to comply with the request if it meant sending an email.
8 February 2023
EXXO
Email ID would be good, and about time I’d say. Online polls aren’t worth much without. If only there was some way of ensuring that people voting were actually familiar with all the songs, which is another thing that makes the results lack validity in my opinion. Personally, if I liked this sort of thing, I would restrict it to members of a particular fan group who by their membership showed that they were likely to have the necessary knowledge. Even if that group had to be created especially for the poll – but that’s a lot of work, and as I say I don’t really like online popularity things anyway. I don’t like them, but the opinions expressed do irritate me enough to get involved, is how I would put it. L’enfer c’est les autres in both directions, comme toujours.
BTW in 2011 when push came to shove I did mention the later rounds on two LFC forums (only one of which was an open forum and so could be found by your search Chris), but certainly nobody would have voted who wasn’t a massive fan of the band and have more idea where the band are coming from that many voters. Incidentally, people said they’d voted both ways after my post on ‘Red and White Kop’ trying to persuade them to vote a particular way.
9 February 2023
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Haven’t been very active on the site recently but on the basis that the LFC is even better than writing on your slipper with a biro, I shall be looking forward to the Baguette Dilemma round.
Terminus is still their finest song, btw, but its merits may again fall on stony ground
10 February 2023
Liquid greek
Been lurking on here for a while but I look forward to taking part in the LFC whatever the criteria are decided upon
12 February 2023
Lord leominster
@Paul F. Thanks for reminding me of that episode of Likely Lads. I like the line “there’s lots of families in our street I can’t stand, either.” I seem to remember that episode also gave us “I spy with my little X-ray eye”.
I’ve started my Lux Familiar homework, that is listening to *everything* and mentally ranking each song. That’s what we’re required to do, I take it. Having stumbled upon approximately 80% of HMHB’s output all in one go one happy day five or so years ago now (thank you, Spotify), I have trouble linking songs to their titles and even their album so I’m reminding myself what song Malayan Jelutong is, for example. Happy days.
13 February 2023
The harbinger of nothing
For what it’s worth, I like the idea of the Baguette Dilemma round being one album at a time. I know all the albums and all the songs pretty well, but I found it tricky last time being able to quickly recall every single one with enough clarity to immediately decide upon my favourite. I also think it would encourage people to discover lesser-known albums – and who knows, maybe even purchase that one they never got around to. Alternatively they might choose not to vote for the albums they don’t know, thus not skewing the results.
Perhaps there could be a day or two for each album, with the winning song going through, then a few days at the end for all of the remaining songs together? Appreciate it may not be possible though.
I also propose that “The Last 32” be renamed “The Page 32 It’s A Bad Review Round”.
14 February 2023
THE MOTH
@GokWanAcolyte – another vote for Terminus from me. So that’s a start.
15 February 2023
Chris The Siteowner
In off-site conversations, the idea of voting one album at a time seems popular. We could do this, of course. However, I’m not sure about a fixed number of songs from each album going through to the knockout stage, it’d be unfair on a few albums. So how about a qualifying stage on a per-album basis, sending through (say) 4 or 5 songs per album through to a slimmed-down mass baguette dilemma round, where anything goes and the top 16 or 32 go through to a knockout stage?
18 February 2023
The harbinger of nothing
Sounds ideal to me. Perhaps to account for the variation in numbers of songs per album and relative popularity of some of the midfield runners, the upper quartile for each album could be guaranteed a baguette (that would be 3 or 4 from most albums, around 55 songs in total) with some additional spots going to the highest-ranked losers by win percentage?
18 February 2023
Injured buzzard
Sounds good. Maybe the studio albums and a compilation of the non album/single tracks from Peel Sessions etc.
19 February 2023
Lord leominster
How about this? We could have a separate baguette dilemma round for each of the 16 albums to select the best song per album. The top song per album goes straight to knockout stage comprising 32 songs, so that’s 16 places of the 32 taken leaving 16 places to fill.
Then we have a mass baguette dilemma round that contains everything that didn’t win the best of album title. But that puts us straight back to where we started, really, as the best song of each album should be able to make it through to knockout round in any case. And pretty much backs up the comments made by CtSO in comment 4, above.
As the person who put forward this idea I would just like to say that I don’t have strong views on this. My initial thoughts were based on the symmetry of having 16 albums to choose from.
A general observation: this song selection process just shows us how good a band we have. Most of the other bands would have their best and most popular songs from the early years with later works, frankly, a bit of an embarrassment.
19 February 2023
gipton teenager
Still not dead yet. Can’t wait for the 2023 LFC.
20 February 2023
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STAVE
I have no creative ideas on how to do it, but I’ll cast another vote for some sort of album-by-album runoff. Maybe it would force people to listen to Some Call It Godcore and recognize its brilliance. I can’t sit here watching my beloved little offbeat collection of quirky delights being snubbed, scorned, and disrespected as it has been in past LFCs.
And yeah, I guess it would also force me to listen to a few of those early albums that I generally ignore…
20 February 2023
lord leominster
Further to my previous post where my enthusiasm for format change was waning, my Lux Familiar homework has brought me to 90 Bisodol where Joy in Leeuwarden and reminded me:
Sixteen teams are taking part
Sixteen camps of hope
Some contain top, top players
[None] are just a crock of shit
and
Rotterdam is cock-a-hoop they have the final there
But there’s often more intrigue in the pool games
That sentiment must count for something.
20 February 2023
Mr Galbraith
I’m afraid I don’t have any bright ideas about how this years LFC should operate (I’m certainly no Infantino) apart from suggesting it should last as long as possible, in order to provide a welcome distraction from seemingly everything else in the world that’s going on currently.
22 February 2023
Lux inferior
An alternative idea for the LFC ‘23…
How about a straight knock-out all the way through? (Magic of the cup, and all that.) So, 110 ties in round one. 55 ties in round two. Then the 9 narrowest round two losers earn a reprieve, leaving 64 tracks for round three. Straightforward from there on in.
This means a few big guns could potentially bite the dust early, while also giving some plucky outsiders the chance of a deep run in the competition. As a massive fan of the seemingly vastly underappreciated This Leaden Pall, it definitely works for me.
Whichever format is settled on, it’s an awful lot of work for CtSO to oversee given we all know the final result is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
22 February 2023
Chris The Siteowner
I don’t mind the work, it’ll be fun. I like the idea of an album-based group stage, but my main problem is the length of time it’ll take – surely we’d need to leave each album open for voting for a week, which means four months just to get through that part (sure, they could overlap, but that negates the reason for doing it, namely for people to listen to the album and then vote). But maybe that doesn’t matter; indeed, as Mr G says, it could even be a Good Thing. I do like the Baguette Dilemma stage, it’s quite unusual and it’d be a shame to lose that, although we could, I suppose, have (say) 5 or 6 songs qualifying from each album to a streamlined version of that. Decisions, decisions…
22 February 2023
lord leominster
Not that you need it, but here is my decision.
A separate week long baguette dilemma round for each of the 16 albums. Top song from each album automatically goes through to the first knockout round of 64 songs, so that’s 16 out of 64 places taken, leaving 48 places to fill.
The next five songs per album (that is in places two to six per album) go through to the mass baguette dilemma round, so that’s 80 songs in the mass baguette dilemma round. From the 80 in mass baguette dilemma round, 48 are selected to fill the remaining places in the first knockout round.
That should make for a very long, involved and unnecessarily complex process.
23 February 2023
Chris The Siteowner
Nice, especially the “long, involved and unnecessarily complex” bit. A small flaw however is that it would be preferable, before the knockout rounds, to hide the relative performance of the qualifiers to date. With this one, we’d know the top song from each album (even if we didn’t announce it, the top songs could be deduced from their non-appearance in the mass baguette dilemma round).
23 February 2023
lord leominster
Ah. Yes. I was wondering which one of you would spot that first.
In that case top six from each album straight into the mass BG round. Then, based on position in mass BG round, top song from each album is seeded in the knockout round so that it doesn’t meet a top song from another album. Something like that.
23 February 2023
Schoon
Another alternative would be to have a squad selection round, where we vote for songs on an album, perhaps ordering them in preference order. Then the top two from each album take part in the 32.
23 February 2023
Lord leominster
Not sure why I put BG as short for baguette dilemma.
Instead of a BD round for each album we could be asked to simply rank the songs in each album. We do this song ranking only once per person per album, verified by email. For example, if there are 12 songs on an album top ranked song gets 12 points bottom ranked song gets 1 point. Then CtSO adds up all the points to get an overall album ranking based on everyone’s individual ranking.
From the ranking, the top six songs per album go into the BD round comprising 96 songs. BD round whittles this down to 64 songs.
First knockout round has 32 pairs of songs but seeded such that top ranked song per album doesn’t meet top ranked song from another album.
As for seeding in the knockout round, this could be done by CtSO without revealing how songs were ranked. We could only guess where songs finished so wouldn’t know how the ranking had fed into the seeding.
Not sure about seeding for second round of knockout.
I was with you right up to ‘simply’.
23 February 2023
Lord Leominster
We could call the first round the Sixteen Camps of Hope round, and CtSO’s aggregate ranking could be the Mass Rank for the RNLI.
23 February 2023
Lord leominster
Or Mass Rank for the WNLI.
23 February 2023
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Perhaps,, if we do each album separately, we should use single transferable vote on the basis that it is unlikely that any song would get more than 50%. The remaining 48 places would then be allocated by the differential between them and the winning track. This would mean potentially that a track that came 7th on an album (which would exclude it on a straight 2-6 placement) but which was more popular than say the 5th track on an album where there was one very obvious winner, would still qualify. We could then define each album as a ‘safe seat’ or a ‘marginal’ and look at swing between each at each subsequent LFC.
(Alternatively we could just do what CtSO decides is manageable and is easily understandable to the rest of us).
10 March 2023
transit full of keith
In the spirit of previous tournaments, I suggest we give Chatteris a completely uncontroversial bye to the semi-final followed by a punch-up in the car park.
10 March 2023
Chris The Siteowner
Right, here’s where I am, after thinking about all the requests and suggestions. We’ve had ourselves a group stage and a knockout tournament in the past, and it’s seemed to provide all the thrills and excitement of a real World Cup, or something. So we probably don’t want to mess with that too much. But having per-album voting has also been a popular suggestion, because it makes it easier to re-familiarise ourselves with the more obscure content before voting. So I reckon …why not have a qualifying tournament, but perhaps not quite on a per-album basis, but on a per-decade basis?
So here’s the plan. We have five week-long qualifying groups, one for each decade (yeah, if that doesn’t make the band feel old…). These will be on a Baguette Dilemma basis and will each send a couple of dozen or so songs through to the main tournament.
From this, we move on to the tournament proper, which will start with a mass Baguette Dilemma round for all the qualifying songs. This will only be about half the size of the group stage in previous tournaments though, perhaps 100 songs, so the contestants should almost all be familiar to most voters.
After this, we’ll jump to a last 16 knockout stage, and you can guess the rest.
13 March 2023
Chris The Siteowner
Here’s how I propose to have the qualifying stages.
Group A: 1980s – 26 songs
Last time 11 of these (42%) made the top 100 in the Baguette Dilemma round, but only 3 of them made it to the last 32 and 1 to the top 10. I propose that based on past performance, the top 15 songs (58%) get through the qualifiers.
Group B: 1990s – 71 songs
Last time only 19 of these (27%) made the top 100 in the Baguette Dilemma round; just 6 made it to the last 32, and only 1 to the top 10. I propose that in this group, the top 20 songs (28%) get through the qualifiers.
Group C: 2000s – 70 songs
The Europe of the qualifying groups. Last time 43 of these (61%) made the top 100 in the Baguette Dilemma round; 14 made it to the last 32 and a massive 7 to the top 10. I propose the top 35 songs (50%) get through the qualifiers.
Group D: 2010s – 38 songs
Last time 27 of these (an impressive 71%) made the top 100 in the Baguette Dilemma round; 9 made it to the last 32 but only 1 to the top 10. I propose the top 20 songs (53%) get through the qualifiers.
Group E: 2020s – 15 songs
The new boys. I propose that we give them a decent chance and that the top 10 songs (67%) get through the qualifiers.
As ever, all thoughts appreciated, but I think it’s now becoming admirably complex and contrived, which can only be a good thing.
13 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
I like the decades idea, but I’m not so keen on the fixed percentages. Starting with a built-in bias against 1990s output just doesn’t seem right, and who’s to say that it’s still the case now?
I would prefer a set percentage to qualify automatically with the balance to be decided based on relative popularity in the combined results.
Also I think the 2010s and 2020s should be merged, to make the group sizes more equal and avoid one album (plus one song) competing only with itself.
13 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
How about the top 30% from each decade (derived by rounding up the lowest proposed percentage slightly, for simplicity) go through automatically, with the remaiinder decided on the combined ranking of vote percentages?
In whole numbers that would be:
1980s – 8 songs
1990s – 21 songs
2000s – 21 songs
2010s & 2020s – 16 songs
Lucky losers – 34 songs
This would still give a bit of an advantage to the 1980s and 2010s because they have fewer songs, so the losers are likely to have higher percentages. Unless we apply a prolificness factor… but we don’t want to overcomplicate it now, do we?
13 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
Perhaps a prolificness factor is actually the answer… Here’s an alternative suggestion.
At the end of all four baguette dilemmas, rank every song by the number of victories it scored, in a combined list. Then, to account for the varying levels of competition which would mean more votes for songs in smaller groups, apply a prolificness factor based on the size of the group. This would simply be the number of songs in the group as a percentage of the total, so:
1980s – 12%
1990s – 32%
2000s – 32%
2010s & 2020s – 24%
Then rank all the scores, with the top 100 going through.
13 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
Advantages of this scoring system:
– Deceptively simple;
– All songs have an equal chance;
– Incentivises voting.
13 March 2023
Chris The Siteowner
Cheers, THON, I get your point on wanting to avoid an inbuilt bias, although I thought it replicated the awkwardness of the footy World Cup qualifiers rather neatly. But you’re right, we should avoid that.
I’m not as keen about comparing songs having played in different groups though, even if it does mimic the awful ‘best third-placed teams’ arrangement of the Euros.
So what about a quick extra round – the qualifiers playoffs – to decide the lucky losers? So for example, x% from each group qualify directly, and the next y% go into a playoff from which z% qualify.
The percentages can be allocated to be whatever we want, but it might be nice to make the total number of qualifiers for the main tournament’s Baguette Dilemma round to be a neat number – say 110, which would be 50% of the original entrants.
It turns out that if we make x=25%, y=50% and z=50%, it’s possible for each decade to have as many songs in the top half as it did last time, should the voters decide.
Group A: 1980s (26 songs) – 6 qualify and 13 go to the playoff, so the number of songs qualifying for the main tournament’s Baguette Dilemma round will be at least 6 and at most 19 (last time 11 ended up in the top half)
Group B: 1990s (71 songs) – 18 qualify and 35 go to the playoff, so 18–53 qualify (last time 19)
Group C: 2000s (70 songs) – 17 qualify and 35 go to the playoff, so 17–52 qualify (last time 44)
Group D: 2010s (38 songs) – 10 qualify and 19 go to the playoff, so 9–29 qualify (last time 29)
Group E: 2020s (15 songs) – 4 qualify and 7 go to the playoff, so 4–11 qualify
14 March 2023
JD O’GLOVES
Where’s Stephen Hawking when you need him?
14 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
That seems like a more complicated way of arriving at the same result to me. The relative popularity of each song isn’t likely to change if they’re pitched against other lucky losers instead of the most popular songs of the decade. And for cross-decade comparison I don’t see much difference between a competitive fixture and statistical analysis, especially given that none of the songs involved are likely to make it far beyond the next round.
I think I’d take ‘best third-placed teams’ over a mass playoff containing 16 camps of not much hope.
15 March 2023
Chris The Siteowner
I get the common sense of this with respect to it not affecting the songs that’ll make the last 16, but I rather wanted to allow for more songs to qualify for the tournament on merit from popular decades, rather than have 100 (or whatever) songs qualifying in proportion to the number of songs recorded that decade…
17 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
They wouldn’t be in proportion. There would be different distribution curves and different voting numbers for each decade. The purpose of the prolificness factor is actually to eliminate what you are concerned about. Let me explain.
The biggest factor in the number of wins or losses that any song receives is simply the number of times it comes up. That is directly proportionate to the size of the group. Consider a simple example of two groups where group A is 20 songs and group B is 10 songs. If the same number of votes is cast in each group, then group B songs will have twice the number of wins and losses compared to group A. Group A contains two thirds of the songs, so its scores are multiplied by 67%, and group B’s by 33%. The factor for group A is twice as big – thus it evens out the results, leaving relative popularity of the songs as the deciding factor.
Relative popularity of the groups (i.e. decades) is also taken into account. If fewer votes are cast in either group, their songs will appear lower down the ranking. So if the 1990s is genuinely less popular than any other decade, I would expect fewer votes to be cast, and fewer songs to get through. Hence it incentivises voting.
However I’m not running the competition, and any of these methods will work. I’m merely offering some statistical expertise. It’s good to get something useful out of the maths degree!
18 March 2023
JD O’GLOVES
Oh my head hurts ……
18 March 2023
Chris The Siteowner
Ah, this is maybe what confused me a little. The problem surely is the assumption that the votes cast will be related to the popularity of the decades. This won’t be the case. In a baguette dilemma format, people will just vote in relation to the amount of time they have. They’ll cast as many votes in a 1990s group as a 2000s one.
(If I sounded like I know what I’m talking about here, don’t be fooled – I’m barely keeping up!)
18 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
If that’s the case, it’s not a problem. It doesn’t affect anything at all from a fairness perspective. It would mean that everything is as even as it could be across the board.
From a player’s point of view, it simply means that if you want your favourite songs from the midfield of a particular decade to go through, you do actually have to vote for them. In my example above, if twice as many votes were to be cast in either group compared to the other, that group would have more songs going through as lucky losers. Which is as it should be.
It would be interesting to see if some decades attract more votes than others. Does the voting population have equal knowledge of – and interest in – each decade?
19 March 2023
The harbinger of nothing
By the way, if you need any backroom staff, I’m happy to assist – whatever the format.
19 March 2023
andy b
In response to THON’s question at post 55, yes, this small percentage of the voting population does have equal knowledge of – and interest in – each decade, at least regarding HMHB. Chart music of the last twenty or so years, OTOH, is a bit of a mystery. Popular culture no longer applies to me.
20 March 2023