chugach mtn boy wrote: Let's say I go to Bob Sihler's for dinner. Bob throws some huge steaks on the grill that must have cost a fortune, but he leaves them on a little too long and they get a little dry. Meanwhile, the missus whips up some potato salad that's really pretty good. It would probably be between "Great Work" and "Amazing" on the scale Chad loves to quote. "Susie," I say, "This potato salad is out of this world." Now, I could say something to Bob about the steaks but I'll probably just talk about other stuff, unless he asks me directly. Bob goes for the Glenlivet. It's going to be a good night.
Wouldn't happen that way. For starters, I cook my steaks just past raw, so you'd never have to worry about them being dry. The missus knows I detest potato salad since I detest mayonnaise, so she'd be more likely to saute some broccolini. We'd also probably have cold steamed shrimp with some eye-watering cocktail sauce. And I like MacAllan.
So it's going to be a
very good night.
Chad likes Scotch, too. Poor Josh-- has to have soda.
This might just be a regional thing.
Speaking of regional things, and this is related to what Surgent wrote, the system as desired makes it hard for people to vote 10 on the "boring" peaks. I think Chugach's NC pages are every bit as good and useful as the Shasta page, but there's far more to work with when you're dealing with a peak like Shasta, and it's far easier to make a stunning-looking page. For a lot of Eastern peaks, there just isn't that much to say and there isn't that much one can do in terms of pretty pictures, so to many people, such pages may look like a 7 or an 8 when in reality the writer did an outstanding job with the material at hand.
mrchad9 wrote:Bob it sounds like you are cognizant of the recent changes but are simply choosing to disregard them? If you are having trouble choosing between a 7 and 8 but then give a page a 10 instead then perhaps this suggestion in the OP will help you make up your mind more easily between the options.
Your explanations are leading me to believe this is a better idea than I had originally believed.
I have my standards for what an excellent page is. They are very different from, say, Josh's.
The current 7-10 thing as defined simply does not work for me in all but a few cases. To me, there is no such thing as "The best. Ever." That's just silly, I think. And "Wow! Amazing"? Come on. I don't feel that way when I read pages. "Excellent" is tops for me, and I see many pages that are excellent in their own ways. But "Excellent" isn't even there. I guess it's supposed to be "Great Work" or "Wow! Amazing."
And I always try to keep in mind what the person is working with and judge the effort in respect to that.
The idea proposed in the opening post would only lead me to curtail my voting, not change it. The second idea you floated, the one I said I liked better and which Josh liked as well, is something I would try.
I thought about Grinnell more and gave it an 8, as you did. Reason: excellent writing but only three pictures, and none displayed on the main page. Two of the images are virtually duplicates. Add a few more pictures and insert some into the display to make the page come alive a little more, and I would go to 10.
As I said, I think it's better just to give this time.
If there's really some tweaking to be considered, then I suggest it would be far more beneficial to address the issue of popularity vs. quality. I am in the camp of those who believe the scoring system discriminates in favor of the popular peaks, and in a system where the best stuff supposedly rises to the top, some very excellent material does not while in some cases mediocre material does.
Let's take two excellent pages as an example so no feelings get hurt: Bubba's Shasta page and Scott's Outlaw Peak page.
http://www.summitpost.org/mount-shasta/150188http://www.summitpost.org/outlaw-peak/225744Shasta: 332,672 hits and 232 votes
Outlaw: 11,690 hits and 73 votes
Outlaw Peak gets far more votes relative to hits than Shasta does (app. 0.006% of hits vs. app. 0.0007%), yet Shasta has the higher score. One could even argue that, based on hits vs. votes, Outlaw Peak is the better page.
No offense to Bubba, who has worked hard on that page and done an outstanding job, but I think Outlaw Peak is a far more valuable addition to SP than Shasta is. If you want to find information on Outlaw Peak elsewhere, good luck.
And there are lots of pages like Outlaw Peak out there. Scott's page having as high a score as it does probably has a lot to do with the fact that he is a high-profile member, the page was featured, and he has a trip report and article attached that were featured as well. It's an excellent page regardless but does have those other factors going for it.
This, in my opinion, is an issue that is far more important to address than whether enough people are using 7-9 when they vote.