Jenab
February 8th, 2005, 12:16 PM
We've had these before, but not long ago when I totaled up the votes from two previous polls and showed the resulting list of favorite authors on another forum, many people simply couldn't believe that some were included while others were left out. And when I thought about it, I had to agree. Some of the left-outs are very highly regarded, even more so than some of those in the bottom half of those who were included.
One of the flaws in previous methodologies was that we had no idea about which authors didn't get votes merely because the voter hadn't read their books (yet). Another flaw is a possible recurrance of me-tooism, in which an author who has already garnered a lot of votes tends to accrete more votes from people who figure that so many previous voters simply can't be wrong. A third flaw is the limit of five authors per voter, which essentially assigns zero weight to every author who didn't get into the top five.
So I want to try another approach to getting votes. In the first round of the poll, I'm going to ask people to NOMINATE authors who probably ought to be considered on the ballot. The voting will occur in the second round. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and list some authors names. The purpose of the first round is to get the names in front of everybody, so that when the time to vote comes, one whose books you like won't slip your mind.
Anybody can nominate as many authors as you want. It's not voting time yet, so repeat nominations will accomplish nothing - though they won't hurt, either. I'll collect the authors' names and alphabetize them. At some point, after the nominations have trailed off, I'll announce that the voting phase has begun.
During the voting phase, please SORT the list of authors FROM alphabetical INTO your descending order of preference, with your most favorite at the top. Vote only for authors whose books you have read.
Authors whose books you have not read, group into a separate section of your post, under the header that says something like "Authors whose books I haven't read yet."
I hope that this will give a better picture of our fantasy Who's Hot.
NOMINATION PHASE BEGINS.
Here are my nominations. Please add any other names you think might be worthy of your vote later. I'll take all the new names and work them into the list in alphabetical order.
Robert Adams
Piers Anthony
Jean M. Auel
Anne Bishop
Terry Brooks
Steven Brust
Trudi Canavan
Orson Scott Card
C.J. Cherryh
Deborah Chester
Glen Cook
Elaine Cunningham
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Stephen R. Donaldson
Dave Duncan
David Eddings
Kate Elliott
Steven Erikson
Jennifer Fallon
Raymond E. Feist
Lynn Flewelling
Kate Forsyth
C.S. Friedman
Kathleen & Michael Gear
David Gemmell
Terry Goodkind
Jeff Grubb
Robin Hobb
Brian Jacques
J.V. Jones
Robert Jordan
Guy Gavriel Kay
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
Katharine Kerr
Robert J. King
Ursula K. LeGuin
George R.R. Martin
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Elizabeth Moon
Peter Morwood
Garth Nix
Philip Pullman
Melanie Rawn
Fred Saberhagen
R.A. Salvatore
Steven Saylor
Clifford D. Simak
Dan Simmons
Michael A. Stackpole
Robert Stanek
Victoria Strauss
J.R.R. Tolkien
Paula Volsky
David Weber
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Angus Wells
Michelle West
Tad Williams
Gene Wolfe
Janny Wurts
Roger Zelanzy
SUB-POLL. Vote on this while we're taking nominations:
Should science-fiction authors be included on the assumption that science fiction is techno-fantasy? YES! NO!
Jerry Abbott
One of the flaws in previous methodologies was that we had no idea about which authors didn't get votes merely because the voter hadn't read their books (yet). Another flaw is a possible recurrance of me-tooism, in which an author who has already garnered a lot of votes tends to accrete more votes from people who figure that so many previous voters simply can't be wrong. A third flaw is the limit of five authors per voter, which essentially assigns zero weight to every author who didn't get into the top five.
So I want to try another approach to getting votes. In the first round of the poll, I'm going to ask people to NOMINATE authors who probably ought to be considered on the ballot. The voting will occur in the second round. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and list some authors names. The purpose of the first round is to get the names in front of everybody, so that when the time to vote comes, one whose books you like won't slip your mind.
Anybody can nominate as many authors as you want. It's not voting time yet, so repeat nominations will accomplish nothing - though they won't hurt, either. I'll collect the authors' names and alphabetize them. At some point, after the nominations have trailed off, I'll announce that the voting phase has begun.
During the voting phase, please SORT the list of authors FROM alphabetical INTO your descending order of preference, with your most favorite at the top. Vote only for authors whose books you have read.
Authors whose books you have not read, group into a separate section of your post, under the header that says something like "Authors whose books I haven't read yet."
I hope that this will give a better picture of our fantasy Who's Hot.
NOMINATION PHASE BEGINS.
Here are my nominations. Please add any other names you think might be worthy of your vote later. I'll take all the new names and work them into the list in alphabetical order.
Robert Adams
Piers Anthony
Jean M. Auel
Anne Bishop
Terry Brooks
Steven Brust
Trudi Canavan
Orson Scott Card
C.J. Cherryh
Deborah Chester
Glen Cook
Elaine Cunningham
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Stephen R. Donaldson
Dave Duncan
David Eddings
Kate Elliott
Steven Erikson
Jennifer Fallon
Raymond E. Feist
Lynn Flewelling
Kate Forsyth
C.S. Friedman
Kathleen & Michael Gear
David Gemmell
Terry Goodkind
Jeff Grubb
Robin Hobb
Brian Jacques
J.V. Jones
Robert Jordan
Guy Gavriel Kay
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
Katharine Kerr
Robert J. King
Ursula K. LeGuin
George R.R. Martin
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Elizabeth Moon
Peter Morwood
Garth Nix
Philip Pullman
Melanie Rawn
Fred Saberhagen
R.A. Salvatore
Steven Saylor
Clifford D. Simak
Dan Simmons
Michael A. Stackpole
Robert Stanek
Victoria Strauss
J.R.R. Tolkien
Paula Volsky
David Weber
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Angus Wells
Michelle West
Tad Williams
Gene Wolfe
Janny Wurts
Roger Zelanzy
SUB-POLL. Vote on this while we're taking nominations:
Should science-fiction authors be included on the assumption that science fiction is techno-fantasy? YES! NO!
Jerry Abbott