Enough people liked the last Moderate game that there's definitely going to be another, but there's a lot of questions about when it will be, and the rules. So I'd like to hear the opinion of the board before making any plans.

1) The poll should start...

A) January 2011
B) July 2011
C) January 2012

Note: If there is a site update coming in the next month or two of when we plan it, we will wait for the update.

2) You should be able to nominate...

A) Anything ranked between 501-3000
B) Anything in that range except In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (The first moderate champion)
C) Anything in that range that was not in the first elimination draw (Completely new 128)
D) Anything in that range that did not make X round of the elimination draw
E) Anything in that range, except no more than X can come from the first elimination draw
D and E: Fill in X

3) In the elimination draw, should old albums be against old albums and new albums be against new albums like last time (To increase participation), or should anything be able to go against anything?

Right now for the qualifying round I'm thinking of doing it like this:
5 per block of 100 albums from 501-1400
10 per block of 2000 albums from 1401-3000

Qualifying over 9 weeks, starting with doing 501-600 and 2801-3000 in the same week, then converging toward the center doing two blocks per week, with 1301-1400 being last. (I feel the game lost a little momentum last time because so few people could vote in the last few qualifying blocks).

D) Is this a good plan for the qualifying round, or should we go with something else?

How about doing moderate songs instead?

Agree with John, it's easier to have access to lesser-known songs than albums...

Songs - Jan 2011
Albums v2 - Jan 2012

I'm personally a little less interested in putting time into a moderate songs poll, but I'd absolutely participate if someone else ran it.

i'd like to do a whole new set of albums! (option C)

Certainly In the Aerplane should be excluded, but that still leaves you with the same bunch of usual suspects, so maybe option C would be best.

I like the idea of having 2 blocks to vote on at any one time, it should speed things up nicely.

I like option C so we could hear entirely new albums. Plenty of great albums from the lower parts of the list were left out first time around.

I don't think moderate songs makes sense unless a sizable portion of the songs come from outside the top 3000. There are so many underrated tracks that are entirely left off of critic's lists because they aren't released as a single or are too long.

I'm for jan. 2011, with new albums.

I think what I'll do is wait to see if anyone else decides to do a Moderate Songs poll. If somebody does I'll wait till it ends. If nobody does I'll start Albums up sooner.

I'm glad people seem to want the 'Full new 128' option. That's the one I wanted too.

I've got an idea for how to handle the bracket placement I want to run by you guys.

After the 128 are decided on, you guys send me a checklist of which one's you've heard and which you haven't. Then, albums are placed into eight divisions based on how many people have heard them.

That is, the 1-16 most heard albums go in division 1, the 17-32 most heard albums go in division 2, and the 113-128 most heard albums go in division 8.

Good idea/bad idea?

I would be willing to run the Moderate Songs poll, if it started right after the next update that hopefully will include 08 and 09 songs.

As for the next moderate albums, I think trying to find a whole new 128 would be delving all the way through the barrel and into the ground. Maybe excluding the top 32 would be better.

I disagree with that. There are several of my top 200 all time that didn't qualify last time. Just off the top of my head, Song Cycle, United States of America, Os Mutantes, Deceit, and every Tim Buckley album. But excluding the top 32 would give a second chance to albums that got upset early like Let It Be, New Adventures In Hifi, Discovery.

So, right before the poll starts, we'll do a straight vote on whether to exclude just the top 32 or have a whole new 128.

I didn't participate in most of the last moderate poll, so how will I know which albums are still eligable?

I'll list the ones that aren't in every qualifying block. For example, in the 501-600 block I would just write:

"Albums not eligable:
The Replacements - Tim
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The SEa
Modest Mouse - The Moon And Antarctica
Daft Punk - Discovery
Elliot Smith - XO
Beatles - Let It Be
Beatles - Help!
"

I'm noticing two Radiohead albums fell below 500 in the last update. If we do use this rule, I don't think we'll have any problem finding good stuff.

I have one more idea for the qualifying round. Supposing instead of picking 5 per block of 100, we pick 4 per block. That would yield 100 from the voting, and then for the last 28, everybody gets to vote one album directly in.

I would agree with VanillaFire and exclude only the top 32. Some of them deserve a new chance.
Sure, the 128 would help discover "really" hidden gems, but between 2500 and 3000 we will qualify albums which only 2 or 3 persons love (is it good or bad, I don't know !)

Well, the idea is to bring a larger audience to the ones only two or three people have heard of.

But as I said, when I actually run the next game there'll be a straight up vote between excluding the top 32 or the entire top 128.

Wow i'd love to participate of a new albums poll... i'm not a huge fan of the songs poll idea... picking songs is not my thing!

Last time around there were great albums, but i'd like to hear new ones this time. So maybe every album that participate last poll should not be eligible this time. Doing this we might see stuff like:
*some very underrated female singer/songwriters albums like Laura Nyro's records or Rickie Lee Jones's
*a good amount of underrated 00s albums that were forgotten when the EODs came out or those hidden
*More 60s/70 gems like Vashti's debut album, you know, this kinda stuff that are the reason why i love these polls!

I'm in whatever you guys do! Be able to find some new music and see other people enjoying the underrated music you also love is a great feeling. I can't wait!

Also, there are a bunch of terrific albums that are currently bubbling under, and many of them will still be there next update, maybe we could include records inside the bubblig under too, God knows how underrated they are.

Here's an update of my intentions for the next Moderate game.

It will begin at the start of 2011. UNLESS Henrik says there's an update coming in the next two months. Then it will wait for the update.

The first week there will be a vote between disqualifying anything that qualified last time and only disqualifying those that made the round of 32. The qualifying will then last nine weeks. First we will do 501-600 and 2801-3000, then move toward the middle.

I want to experiment with something to make the qualifying a little more user friendly. Instead of five albums qualifying from each 100, four will qualify from each 100. After all the voting is done, there will be 100 qualifiers, and 28 more spots. Then, people will be able to vote albums in directly. Everybody will have a day to name an album they want to put directly into the draw. If more than 28 people vote, 28 random ones will be chosen. If fewer than 28 people vote, they will all be put into the draw, and the rest will be filled in with the highest point-getters that did not qualify. This way will guarantee everybody's personal favorite gets in.

Here's how the draw will be organized. There will be four divisions, based on how well known an album is. That is, the 1-32 most well known albums will go into one bracket, the 33-64 most well known will go into the next, etc. This guarantees two things. First, that everybody will be able to vote in division 1. Second, that one really unknown album will get to the semifinals. 'Well known' will be determined by number of google hits when you type in '(Band name)' '(Album name)'.

Once the divisions are decided, seeding will be done by amount of points in the qualifying round.

There will be four matchups voted on per week.