The Lists Project

[Rayon Vert]

And it's one thing to make a reminder or an official ruling, but another thing entirely for someone to actually remember that rule when compiling their list. I could foresee a lot of people forgetting to list one film or another for a given year because that wasn't how Letterboxd had it, while someone else using IMDb as a reference would have that issue with something else.

If IMDB is the reference point, what if, in the single year mini-list, people were explicitly told to run through every single item on their list with IMDB before handing it in?

[swo17]

There's also the problem that IMDb may randomly change the release year for any given title if anyone in the world submits a change and one of their moderators approves it.

The only way I can see domino's idea working (one month devoted to each year) is if I maintain a master list of the eligible titles and everyone refers to that list when submitting their votes. I can start with a rough master list of obvious titles, and then if you want to vote for something that's not on that list, you need to state your intention in the thread, and then if I agree that it is eligible for that year I will add it to the master list. It might even be best if voting is performed on some kind of third-party site where you have to rank your choices 1-25 from a defined list. (I was just trying out SurveyMonkey and I don't think I could do this there with a free account. Does anyone know of any other sites that might be good for this?)

[domino harvey]

These pages might be helpful, there is one for every year
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_in_film

You could plug each of those into the Wayback Machine Archive.org for a set date and the films would be locked into the data specifically on the page at that moment in time, with any film not appearing on the page needing a judgment call from you versus everything all year

[Rayon Vert]

I was just checking the 1960 one earlier, almost mentioned it!

[swo17]

So I would still need to work out some kinks (like not allowing anyone to vote for the same film 25 times) but how does something like this look?

P.S. Feel free to fill out this survey for fun!

[domino harvey]

That’s missing a lot. Why not just say “Use this specific link to determine eligibility. If a film doesn’t appear in that link, please speak up in the thread or via PM for an eligibility ruling”?

[swo17]

Well part of the aim of creating a form like that was that I might automate more of the process so that this wouldn't be ten times more work for me. I know there are a lot of titles missing from those drop-down menus, but how many are missing that you would actually want to vote for? My thought was that those could be brought up in the thread (which ought to be done anyway if you expect anyone else to vote for them) and I could add them to the form at that time. I mean, I could also just put every 1960 film in the drop-down menu to begin with, but IMDb says there are nearly 5,000 of them!

[domino harvey]

Gotcha. I certainly can’t fault you for trying to automate the process

[swo17]

So that list is just every 1960 film I currently have in my spreadsheet, meaning that someone probably voted for it on a top 50 for the decade either this round or last round. Any one person could probably only fit 5-10 1960 films on their 1960s list, and that produced 69 unique titles, so opening it up to 25 titles per person might produce, I dunno, 150-200 unique titles? Would that be too laborious to have to search from in a drop-down menu?

[domino harvey]

Can you add an option to provide a short answer for any films not in that pull down versus trying to add all possible films?

[swo17]

I'm new to Google Forms, but it looks like I can only add a short-answer "Other" option if each question is multiple-choice as opposed to a selection from a dropdown menu. The disadvantage of that is that you have to see all 70 (or perhaps eventually 200) options for all 25 spots, instead of having them "hidden" in a dropdown menu that only expands when you click on it. Is that a big deal? I'd want this to be as clean and straightforward to use as possible.

I'd still strongly prefer not having an "Other" option though, as I really want to prevent people from being able to vote for something that isn't eligible because the rest of us are categorizing it as a different year. All it takes is a simple post in the thread saying "I want to be able to vote for these films that aren't currently eligible." Is that so much to ask?

If it helps, my thought of how this might work is like so:

1. I start out the 1970s list including an initial list of films eligible for each year in the decade. I've actually been doing this all along, just without separating everything out by year. See, for example, this link from the reference section for the 1960s thread, which I put in large type:

A list of all films that received votes during our prior 1960s project

At any time, if there is a film you want to be able to vote for in one of the yearly mini-lists that you don't see listed, publicly state your intentions in the thread and I will add it to the master list for the appropriate year. It also might be a good idea to look ahead to years we aren't doing yet and identify any films you'd like to be able to vote for when the time comes, lest you run into the situation where, for example, we start doing 1975, you announce that you want to vote for something, and it turns out we should have included it in 1974.

Also, if you think all of this year-by-year stuff is too much, you can just participate in the full decade list like normal after we have covered every individual year. And you don't necessarily have to wait until a film's year comes up to discuss it, though it may be advantageous to do so.

2. For all those that are up for it, each month will be nominally devoted to one release year, and the cutoff for making suggestions to add to the master list of eligible films for that year will be the last day of that month. Then as the next month starts, we can immediately start discussion for the next year in the decade. At the same time, within a day or two I'll set up a poll for the year we just finished, and then give people like a week to vote on it before posting results.

3. At the end of ten months, we'll have one more month for Round 1 voting and then another month for orphan rescue.

[domino harvey]

Swo, I assume you’re auto exporting the answers to an Excel you can then play with? I actually create Google Forms all the time for work, but that’s the only way I can see your methodology making sense

[swo17]

Yes, I've already verified that I can export an Excel file that I should be able to work with

[Pavel]

I'd gladly vote for the individual year lists and it'll be even sort of helpful to organize my catch-up chronologically. Only way I can imagine skipping a month is if I haven't seen 25 great films from the year (and haven't managed to expand the list meaningfully enough in that month) but I imagine that won't happen as 25 is a low enough number, and I'd be comfortable giving a point or two to films I like but don't love

[senseabove]

I feel like requiring 25 for the single-year lists is a stretch and will limit the less voracious or experienced listers, assuming there are any. At a glance, I've seen in the range of 15 to 35 per year for the 70s, and finding 5-10 movies I want to vote for in 30 days is an extraordinarily high hit rate. Since these are mini-lists and won't affect all-time-eligibility, could we make the minimum list 10 or 15 and up to 25?

[swo17]

I like 10-20 or 10-25

[Pavel]

Yeah, I've seen 34 films from, say, 1971, but have a hard time finding even 10 I love. So 10-20 (or 25) is perfect and the number of films I vote for will vary depending on how many I've seen and how many I manage to catch-up with

[Red Screamer]

Ten mini-lists for the decades project sounds more complicated than helpful to me. Could we find a way to rotate discussions or spotlights to give special attention to each year without having to worry about listmaking and eligibility rules? Or maybe we divide and conquer with a different group of members taking special interest in each year over the course of the project?

I’d be down for a single year list once in a while though, and I’ll throw out 1971 as an appealing year for one. I’m in the same place as you, Pavel, but my watchlist is chock-full with films from that year.

[Rayon Vert]

Once in a while is my preference too. I'd still be keen on doing a 1960 mini list just after the decades list runs out, running parallel to the start of the 1970s, and see what the traction for it is. Just my preferences.

[Pavel]

How would we decide which years to tackle? Do a vote? Or do we just do all (beginning with the 70s) and people choose in which lists to participate. I'd probably try to make a list for all and it'll be helpful with ordering and prioritizing my 70s catch-up, though of course some years are way stronger for me than others

[swo17]

The way I see this working, individual users can ignore any or all of the individual year mini-lists that don't interest them and participate in the decades lists the same, just with an even longer window for participation. I mostly like this idea because it should keep some interesting discussion going constantly throughout the project, instead of mostly at the front and back ends. I think it's at least worth trying for the 1970s

[Toland's Mitchell]

Like others, I'm not sure I would participate in every single-year mini list if were to do 10 during the 70s project. But there's no pressure to do so, since they won't affect any eligibility. So I'm fine with it if the consensus wants to go for it. Although I would pitch the idea of instead of a whole month for each single year, how about 3 weeks? To keep projects on a 9 month schedule instead 12 months, cause that would push things back quite a bit in the long run. So 3 weeks per single year list would be approximately 7 months to do all 10 year lists. And let's say the final single year list deadline is also the Round 1 Decade Deadline. And then the next 2 months for Orphan Rescue Round?

[Pavel]

I'm fine with making it 3 weeks. I'd sort of prefer a full month to be able to watch more movies, but I understand not wanting to prolong the project

[domino harvey]

People need at least a month to participate in a list project, experience has shown

[swo17]

Also, wouldn't it get confusing to have all these deadlines at regular random dates (Apr 17, May 8, May 29, Jun 19, Jul 10, etc.) as opposed to just always on the last day of the month? I don't mind letting the timing breathe a little (or a lot) so that people don't feel rushed contributing to genre/auteur projects as well and/or having a life. What's the rush really to move right along to the next time period? One thing that could be worth targeting is getting to the next all-time list at a clean cut-off point. So for instance, if we gave each decade 16 months, it would look something like this:

05/21 - 08/22 1960s
09/22 - 12/23 1970s
01/24 - 04/25 1980s
05/25 - 08/26 1990s
09/26 - 12/27 2000s
01/28 - 04/29 2010s
05/29 - 08/30 2020s

Of course, we could also just pick an ideal duration, apply that to each decade, and then when we get to the current decade, we can simply pro-rate all the points and everything based on multiples of 5 and 1 for each year included (i.e. if the current decade covers the 8 years of 2020-2027, everyone would submit a top 40 and a film would need to place on two top 8s to be eligible for the all-time list)