The biggest problem with this is that , say we set that we expect people to rate an average book at 5 on a 1 to 10 scale, I'll definitely tell you that the average review will push 8 or 9, because people will artificially inflate their ratings; so now with all these ratings high up on the scale, it's hard to distinquish between books.

My idea, which is similar to a PM Hall of Fame idea that I had, was that each person could mark a certain fraction of the books as their favorites; no ratings, just, say, 5 out of the 25 books available. The user can change their selections at any time, of course. The overall list would then be just a similar summation of the votes in order.

-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important

Here's what I like in the print world: the Musichound guides (such as the rock edition). They'll have a page on, say, Johnny Cash, and explain his career, and at the bottom, there are four sections:

• What to buy: "Start with the Columbia Years box set" (and why)
• What to buy next: "American Recordings and Live At Folsom Prison" (and why)
• What to avoid: "Country Christmas(and why)"
• Everything else

Plus, the whole numeric ranking thing reminds me of when your local radio station "COUNTS DOWN THE 500 GREATEST SONGS OF ALL TIME!", and they imply that "Gimme Shelter" (#37) is a "better" song than "Bell Bottom Blues" (#38).

Also, blakem: ++ the node because it's a quality node, and then dissent. Mods are NOT intended to say "I agree with you." Personality voting is bad enough; we don't need opinion voting, too.

xoxo,
Andy
--
<megaphone> Throw down the gun and tiara and come out of the float! </megaphone>

There is no doubt about it, ranking (probably any vote based system) is a kind of popularity contest—but having said that, why would anyone think it implied some kind of absolute order of things? At worst it is on par with the Miss America thing and at best it reflects the gathered opinions of those who cared to vote. As far as its use as a guide of what to run out and buy, even that probably wouldn't do any harm. If between a review (or reviews) a ranking and leafing through the book at the bookstore, they decide to add same to their collection, well, that strikes me as quite reasonable. On the other hand, if any or all of this is used as a substitute for thinking, then I'd have to say that would be a bad thing!

hsm

You guessed my 'hidden' agenda!

the best thing we can do is writting more reviews

On my www.sdragons.com I keep a bibliography of Perl books I've acquired—mostly to stop me from buying a book I already own! It is not always current, at the moment I need to add 3 more. Any way, I'd like to see reviews for all of them, the more the better.
hsm

I've seen at least one instance (can't remember where) in which the author posted an AM followup for people to cast votes on the idea of his original post. This sounds very similiar to what you propose with Book Rankings.

It's the difference between "Good Review." and "Good Book."

-Blake

OTOH, though, there is a problem with this: after doing something long enough, a person loses his qualifications to judge the value of an introductory-level work. Sure, we can talk about whether the jokes in the third llama are better than the ones in the second, but the "proof of the pudding" for a text on that level is whether someone who doesn't know what they're doing can pick it up and learn how. As a degenerate example, try picking up Dr. Seuss' "Hop on Pop" and evaluate its ability to teach you simple prepositions; you can certainly see where they're used in the text, but you no longer have a frame of reference to gauge its effectiveness.

That said, I DO believe that a weighted rating system has potential, provided there is some categorization of intended audience. For example, consider (with a weight sliding-scale of 0-1.0):

• Advanced/Internals - example: panther - weighted at 1.0 for poster level 9, -0.1/level below
• Specialized Topics - example: Stein's NPP - weighted at 1.0 for poster level 6, -0.2/level below
• Intermediate - example: shiny ball - weighted at 1.0 for poster level 5, -0.2/level below, -0.1/level above
• Introductory - example: llama - weighted at 1.0 for poster level 3, -0.2/level above to a minimum of 0.1
• Reference - example: camel - weighted at 1.0 for poster level 3, -0.4/level below
This way, some estimation of the poster being in the target audience for the book is factored into the weighting system as well.

Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

While there is some truth that advanced people may have a hard time appreciating the position of not advanced people, it is equally true that people who are not advanced are not in a good position to evaluate how many misconceptions they were taught, or to know how many bad habits they will later have to unlearn.

As a result while I wouldn't say that being advanced makes you qualified to decide how good a book is for beginners, it does not disqualify you either. And if beginners are taken as the only judge of what beginners need, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind.

Consider well the example of Matt Wright's Script Archives if you don't get my point...

After doing something long enough, a person loses his qualifications to judge the value of an introductory-level work.

True for some, but not all of us. For some years I taught my native language to foreigners and had to make decisions on the approbriate textbook. I don't think first year students are more qualified than me, to judge which language textbook is better for them. Of course its no easy job to judge a textbook and I have spent a lot of (mostly unpaid) time in reviewing beginners textbooks. That does not mean, that I am not interested in reviews and opinions by beginners; they are helpful as well. And they helped me to do my job better.

While these kind of information is helpful and interesting a book review is much more than "it worked for me" or "it doesn't work for me" . Believe me or not, but reviewing a book (in a fair way) is pretty hard work. I believe that many of the more advanced Perl Monks are able to review a book like the Llama Book in a fair way, but this won't be done in just a few minutes or an hour, but will take many hours or days.

Hanamaki