Year polls 2.0: a planning thread

[Lencho of the Apes]

We're about six weeks away from finishing our month-by-month survey of all world cinema, so I reckon this would be a good time to start collecting our thoughts about how we want to do round two, revisiting all those years over the course of the next decade or so.

First question: Does anybody want to take over? I'm happy doing doing it, and I'm happy letting someone else take the reins. Speak up if you're motivated.

Second questions: What changes do you think we might make in the procedure?

Third question: are the cut-off points as presently established agreeable to everyone? (1896 and "current year minus five"...) Personally, I'm leaning in the direction of thinking that a year five years previous is too soon for much cream to have risen to the surface, and I'd be quite willing to make it current year minus ten or... whatever...

As for other changes, one thing I would really like for round two is to change the balloting procedure to ensure that each voters' #1 pick gets a place on the final list. Yea? Nay?

What else?

[Holymanm]

I think 5 is certainly within range. At least back when I watched movies, I would generally watch 7-15 movies for the current year, but that number would shoot up to 30-60 1 or 2 years later - and that is most certainly a good amount for polling.

But moreover,the more recent a year is, the more interesting it is to do the 2.0 reassessment later, and see how drastically it may or may not change...

[Curtis, baby]

1895-2009 makes sense to me

I think the scoring should be changed... #1 gets 2, #2 gets 1, #20 gets 1?

I think something like

1=5 points
2,3=3 points
4-20=1 point

or something like that makes sense

essentially, that would also ensure that every #1 pick makes the final list

[flip]

i'd be inclined to adjust slightly in the opposite direction -- current year minus 3 or minus 4 would be what i'd prefer. one thing i'd find interesting is comparing the year-end polls we did back when those recent years ended with the results now, to see what gems we've discovered as a community in the intervening time.

i'm in favour also of a very-simple-yet-somewhat-more-top-heavy point system. if the only proposed change were 'every #1 makes the final list', i'd vote in favour. i'd also vote in favour of something similar to bure's proposal, though i think you should need to post a modestly long ballot to take full advantage of the 5 pt and 3 pt slots, since otherwise people who just haven't seen many films are going to be elevating with 5 pt votes the most seen classics, and that's probably not what we want.

i also wonder if, when we redo this, we should be preserving any of the earlier ballots from previous polls. i'm partly thinking of people like karl and twodeadmagpies, who sometimes take a month or two off from the forum, but who post such interesting and eclectic ballots that i'd hate to see them omitted from an scfz poll. and then i'm also thinking about people who partly defined the aesthetic currents at scfz in its earlier days, people like m penalosa and james•, who aren't around any more. i know some people will disagree with that, because they want poll results to reflect the evolution of the forum membership, but i prefer it when the results of these polls differ meaningfully from the results you'd get if, say, letterboxd ran the same kind of exercise, and counting ballots from our past members who had watched a lot of film and who had interesting perspectives would help accomplish that.

[greennui]

I think 1895 should be be the starting year, 54 entires on lboxd, the first Lumiere shorts and whatnot. The current 5 year cutoff seems fine to me, def think we should inlude some 2010's years seeing as we're entering a new decade and all.

Every #1 should be included, yes.

Don't agree with flip when it comes to preserving old ballots, comparing the old and new poll results should be an aspect of it all. If Penalosa and co were around now their ballots might have looked different from the old one.

[St. Gloede]

2. Any interesting in increased rankings ala our other polls, ie tiers? It would allow a stronger differentiation between top favourites, and more general favourites/great films.

3. In general I stop actively looking into the films from any given new year after 2-3 years have passed, so the 5 year rule did not seem inadequate but almost too strict for me. Even up to the last year will often render good/interesting results.

4. I don't mind including every 1 on the final list, but I don't have any strong feelings towards it either way. It is a good way to highlight personal favourites, but does go against consensus building.

[kanafani]

I guess no one else thinks we should try something else (like in-depth country/region/genre polls, or focusing on a director, or whatever). I bow down to majority rule. I guess I’ll sit the new iteration out. I see no point in re-posting pretty much the same lists.

My 2 cents on scoring and points: Who cares? The final results are by far the least interesting aspect of these polls. The final lists are consistently way more watered down, predictable, and boring than individual ballots.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Obviously, as someone who only joined in over the past couple of years, I'm extremely excited about doing the whole exercise again, as that gives me a chance to participate in a poll for every year.

I strongly agree with Lencho that current year minus 10 is better than 5, for providing a good sense of historical distance, but then, of course I would, and if anything I'd make it 15, so feel free to ignore me. I also agree with greennui that 1895 might warrant inclusion.

On Flip's point about letting ballots from the first iteration have an influence, I would say that at minimum we might want to link to the first iteration's forum at the start of every year's forum. That way the current membership can glean recommendations from the ballots of the first-timers and potentially vote for them.

Scoring-wise, I'm happy with any system. Tiers of 5 would be interesting to me, but I don't want to make more calculating work for the calculator.

[sally]

my personal preference would be to make each poll from 18-whatever to say, 1959, last for about 3 months, and any polls from years later than that last maybe a couple of days or perhaps not bother, but appreciate that not everyone will feel that way.

(i'm still traumatised with only scratching the surface of the 1929 poll and that was in oh god 2014)

what may be a good general idea would be to perhaps start two threads for each poll, one for the hardcore number dump, and one for the decorative/discovery aspect? am wary of clogging the main one with too many ooohs & aaahs sometimes and making it harder to wade through for the tally.

also kanafani, nothing stopping us doing a country/genre poll as well? just someone has to be fool/kind enough to run it

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

my personal preference would be to make each poll from 18-whatever to say, 1959, last for about 3 months, and any polls from years later than that last maybe a couple of days or perhaps not bother, but appreciate that not everyone will feel that way.

OMG I obviously could not agree with this more ! This would be sublime, but yes, I have no real expectation that others would want to do this.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

I've got a world cinema project, trying to see at least 1 (good) film from every country in the world. I've never run a poll, and I've never been great at collating data. But I'll gladly try to teach myself and run a country poll if there's enough interest in adding that to the ever growing list of polls.

[flip]

I guess no one else thinks we should try something else (like in-depth country/region/genre polls, or focusing on a director, or whatever).

i'd be curious to hear more about what you're thinking here. we did the country/region polls earlier and covered the whole world (and that was the best set of polls we ever ran imo, tons of interesting films made the final lists). a couple of people have asked about running those again, and i've been thinking about how we might do that - the problem with those polls is that they're a huge amount of work to tally, though maybe python can help.

those nation polls were done pretty systematically, so that we covered the planet. i've been much less systematically running genre polls, on a completely haphazard and arbitrary schedule. i didn't have a specific goal to poll every genre -- i've been polling ones that at least a couple of people seemed interested in polling at a certain time -- but i wouldn't mind doing a more comprehensive series of genre polls. the one issue with those polls (moreso than with nation polls) is that typically only a few members have done really extensive viewing within a genre, and everyone else tends to be voting for well-recognized genre 'classics', so our poll results have been pretty predictable, which makes it so the tallying work doesn't feel all that meaningful.

and of course we're running that series of director polls, but maybe you're thinking of polls where everyone makes a concerted effort to watch a lot of a director's films first, rather than the quick and informal things we've been doing.

[greennui]

also kanafani, nothing stopping us doing a country/genre poll as well? just someone has to be fool/kind enough to run it

This! I think everyone wants more polls like that so if you want to do it and know how to do it then you should run such polls, kanafani!

[greennui]

Also, I really think we should do decade polls and have them last like 3 months or something. That way everyone can watch all the stuff they didn't get round to during the individual year polls.

[MrCarmady]

Out of all the views represented in this thread I'm closest to Gloede's take - 10 years is absurdly restrictive, and even 5 seems excessive to me. Sure, gems from 2017-18 might emerge in the next couple of years, but we have enough members on this forum that do make an effort to keep up with the interesting stuff that's coming out to create interesting lists. And what's the worst case scenario? We can always re-run the 2017 poll later if we feel enough time has passed to move the needle on the results.

Definitely agree with the #1 thing but that can also be done manually, as a separate list for each year. As people have pointed out, consensus is by definition less interesting than the individual lists anyway.

As for ballot preservation, I think we should link back to them but not count them, as greennui has said, these members might themselves have changed their lists since then, so the final result wouldn't be reflective of SCFZ as it is now or even as it was then.

Decade polls are a great idea!

As for genre, I think the horror ballots are still sitting untallied. If no-one wants to take them on, I can give it a go.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

10 years is absurdly restrictive, and even 5 seems excessive to me.

I don't have a strong opinion here, but generally agree. I'll of course discover more 2019 film over the next several years... but I'll do the same with 1956.

[sally]

my only problem with polls for recent years is that unless you're on KG seeing enough for a poll is practically impossible. (still waiting for first cow, it must be heaven or another round to become available to anyone in the uk), the restrictive limit is not coming from anyone not wanting to watch recent movies, i'm constantly amazed at how anyone seems able to

[flip]

my only problem with polls for recent years is that unless you're on KG seeing enough for a poll is practically impossible.

the proposal though is that we not poll any of the last ten years, and imo you don't need to be on kg to have seen a worthwhile amount of cinema from 2013 say. nor from 2018 i'd say but that's obviously less clearly true.

[Umbugbene]

No strong opinions here about how or whether to re-run the year polls, but I do like the idea of decade polls. I'm also excited about the new actor (and actress, I hope?) polls, and as always the director polls, though to be honest I think we're running out of great directors.

I agree with Flip that the region polls were the best we've done. I still use those as one of my favorite checklists.

Sorry but no interest from me in the genre polls. I believe less and less in the idea of genre, and I could hardly care less what genre a film belongs to.

[thoxans]

happy to do the polling, if you'd like to take a break, lota! need an excuse to work on excel/python stuff. boring data sets about how many mm off a sample of bolts are from the pop mean isn't doing it for me... i like the ideas about changing up point distros and/or auto adding each person's #1 to the final list. running simultaneous polls also seems preferable up to a point. doesn't appear there's a ton of overlap in participation between, say, the poll for 1911, and the poll for 2011. guess my only q rn is: in what order would we want to run the polls? same as before?? randomly, but within reason (i.e. no sense in polling 1913 and 1904 in ~6 weeks' time, if we're already doing them now)??? should we take an order poll for the order of the year polls!?!?!? an order order poll for the order poll for the order of the year polls!?!?!?!?!?!?

[nrh]

if for recent polls availability is an issue for people w/o access to torrents, any of the streaming sites, or vod rental we should formalize a year poll requests list in the resources section, kind of a companion to the great link posts that lencho already does.

we also might add a week or so to the standard poll run time, i feel like this current round of people on the site are actively watching more for all the polls than in the past.

[thoxans]

I think the horror ballots are still sitting untallied

finished mine, only to lose it cuz of some unexplained glitch, which subsequently pissed me off, and made me pout ::sticks hands in pockets, and kicks away pebble in glum fashion::

[pabs]

in what order would we want to run the polls? same as before?? randomly, but within reason (i.e. no sense in polling 1913 and 1904 in ~6 weeks' time, if we're already doing them now)???

I started my "scfz year polls so far" log for this reason. It would make sense to refer to it for the 2.0 cycle of polls and maybe avoid doing any of the years from the most recent 50 polls that we did. In other words, we should start anew with the first 50 polls we did last time. They can be in random order and not exactly in the same order we did them the first time.

Year polls 1.0

First scfz poll to most recent poll (in the order in which they were conducted) :

1986
1934
1954
2007
1929
1937
2009
1993
1962
1921
1984
1955
1995
1943
1975
1960
2001
1931
1981
1972
1946
1925
1998
1952
1970
1947
1967
2000
1932
1983
1922
1992
1956
1974
1945
1964
1930
1950
2008
1976
1941
1996
1969
1920
1944
1987
1896
1973
1933
1911
2002
1961
1900
1990
1991
1917
1953
1903
1982
1924
2003
1907
1978
1919
1957
1985
1898
1939
1909
1968
2006
1942
1916
1928
2010
1938
1966
1908
1951
2005
1897
1926
1977
1994
2013
1994
1940
1899
1923
1906
1989
1958
2011
1949
1918
1912
1965
1935
1999
1971
1948
1902
2012
1910
1914
1979
2014
1927
1959
1980
1905
2004
1936
1915
1997
1963
1988
1913 current poll
1904 current poll

[kanafani]

but maybe you're thinking of polls where everyone makes a concerted effort to watch a lot of a director's films first, rather than the quick and informal things we've been doing.

Yes, something like that. Go deep on an "unknown" director, or a country, or genre. Spend time on it, so the goal is not simply generate a list, but discover movies you haven't seen/hidden gems/etc. We could even go beyond just movies, share essays/shortish books on the subject (lots of things are available on pdf), etc.

Of course all this can be done parallel to the beloved year poll. It's just a matter of available time and interest.

Also of course I have not put much thought into this, but I can think a little more about it. I'm willing to organize/run some such thing.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

but maybe you're thinking of polls where everyone makes a concerted effort to watch a lot of a director's films first, rather than the quick and informal things we've been doing.

Yes, something like that. Go deep on an "unknown" director, or a country, or genre. Spend time on it, so the goal is not simply generate a list, but discover movies you haven't seen/hidden gems/etc. We could even go beyond just movies, share essays/shortish books on the subject (lots of things are available on pdf), etc.

Of course all this can be done parallel to the beloved year poll. It's just a matter of available time and interest.

Also of course I have not put much thought into this, but I can think a little more about it. I'm willing to organize/run some such thing.

Would be very interested in participating in these deeper dives! (though, yes, not as a replacement of the beloved year poll)

[nrh]

was definitely feeling this when eveylyn suggested la cava and nobody was quite there. would love to have some kind of formalized director deep dive thing that everyone is up for.

saying that of course as someone who is dreadful at watching stuff for polls but it's a really appealing idea.

[niminy-piminy]

in general...
I am in favor of any poll that will last for the whole month (i.e. PoM) and thus I will have enough time to make viewings.
I have no preference for any points system.
I am in favor of formalizing a request system that will allow viewings of "unavailable" titles for (whatever) poll. (I will gladly participate in filling the requests.)
I would appreciate if not only ballots would be posted in (whatever) poll thread but also whatever trivia related to (whatever) poll.

specifically...
1/ I participated only in a few year polls so far and thus "second" round will be mostly my "first" round.
But even if f.e. 1988 poll would be repeated I still have many unwatched leftovers.
And I would probably keep only about half of my old 1988 ballot and half I would replace with new discoveries — so I won't be tired of the year polls in my lifetime, I guess.
2/ If suitable directors (with enough viewings) will not be available anymore, I am fine participating in a "director PoM" (picking whatever fringe underwatched director and going on a month-long discovery spree).
3/ I was not present during country polls but seems to me you polled f.e. "Eastern Europe" and not all the East European countries? Or am I wrong? I would gladly participate in f.e. a month-long Nepal poll and I don't think it was done already. Or was it?

[kanafani]

Cool, good to know there is some interest in "non-year deep dives". I'll start a "brainstorming" thread on this idea soon. Meanwhile, let the year poll lovefest continue here!

[niminy-piminy]

Yes, something like that. Go deep on an "unknown" director, or a country, or genre. Spend time on it, so the goal is not simply generate a list, but discover movies you haven't seen/hidden gems/etc. We could even go beyond just movies, share essays/shortish books on the subject (lots of things are available on pdf), etc.
Of course all this can be done parallel to the beloved year poll.

+1

[niminy-piminy]

What about (besides carrying on with year polls) mimicking the KG system of MoM (replacing "master" for "poll").
Having a thread "PoM suggestions" and out of suggestions (director, actor, cinematographer, genre, country, etc., etc.) to always pick something (one or two or... picks) for next month.
And also occasionally having "PoM redux" for subjects we already polled in the past but we want to investigate again/deeper (like the repetitive horror October).