Mitch's Wood Coaster Poll Results

Yes , I understand it takes all the comparisons. Like say I vote phoenix 40th. It will have 39 L's on my polls. However its cumulative record against the Racer at PKI might still be 70 to 1, so it will get a win against the pki racer. And so on However, say its compared to an obsecure wooden coaster, like Sea Dragon, or whaterver. And only 20 people have been on it, and me and a group of friends have 11 ballots. We could easily put it below that ride, and a few other less ridden coasters.

What my point I am trying to get at, is I am not sure I really like the way you can negatively rate a ride soo poorly. Also the cumbersome nature of voting, limits how many people fill it out. It seems to favor people that are more online savy coaster enthusiasts. Or people who have the time to mess with it. A top 10 list is much easier and assessible. It just seems like no one ever questions this poll or its methods, but when Amusement Today comes out with its poll, everyone complains.

An again back to Aska/Viper. 10 to 3 like it better, however that is such a small sample size. It seems silly to have Aska in the top 10 with only 16 people having been on it. That is not really representative of the taste of people who enjoy coasters.

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10 to 3 like it better, however that is such a small sample size. It seems silly to have Aska in the top 10 with only 16 people having been on it. That is not really representative of the taste of people who enjoy coasters.

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It's entirely representative of people who've ridden Aska, though. Seems sillier for a coaster not to be considered because not many people have ridden it.

Is it supposed to be a measure of popularity with ridership numbers being the equalizer (like the Golden Tickets) or should it be a measure of popularity with quality being the equalizer? There's a big difference there.

How was this poll hard to do if you took the Coasterfanatic point and click poll?

Also, after doing it once, All you gotta do is save it as a text file and next year just copy and past doing it the regular way.
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I dissagree with some others poster here, The 500 in the poll represents a much larger group and far more diverse than a NEWS poll that happens to be taken mainly in inner cities and geographic regions. Most NEWS polls are 200 or less.

Chuck

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Beast Fan said:
However, say its compared to an obsecure wooden coaster, like Sea Dragon, or whaterver. And only 20 people have been on it, and me and a group of friends have 11 ballots. We could easily put it below that ride, and a few other less ridden coasters.

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And you can't do that with the AT poll? Sure you can. Both polls are open to sabatoge. Ultimately, I'd hope that people would be honest with their results and that enthusiasts can easily look at the ballots and police their own. That's essentially what happened with last year's steel coaster poll.

Are you really that upset that the Beast did so poorly that you have decided that the entire poll is flawed? :)

What I don't understand about the Aska thing is that if obscure coasters may supposedly have some sort of overall advantage over more popular ones, what gives for White Canyon at #168?

Is it so impossible that Aska is that much better than Viper with a very similar layout, but at the same time, possible that White Canyon is so crappy with a very similar layout?

Of course my argument is "Duh, of course" but maybe that isn't as clear as I thought it would be. *** Edited 12/8/2006 9:54:00 PM UTC by matt.***

From friends I talked too that did the ACE tour, Aska was the surprise woodie of the trip and made manys favorite list.

Chuck

At least Thunderhead is still in the top 10.

Psyclone has a very similar layout but no one seems to be questioning its low position on the pole. ;)

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FLYINGSCOOTER said:
At least Thunderhead is still in the top 10.

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Why wouldn't it be? It only got beat out by a preference for those coasters ranked above it.

Chuck, who says not bad for a three year old coaster thats up against the new breed :)

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Beast Fan said:
Layout means nothing?

well not sure I agree, but watching the video of the ride, it seems to perform very similar. I do agree that maintenance plays an important roll and how the ride tracks and runs. I am not an airtime junkie like some of you.

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I think airtime is the key thing you're missing there. From what I've heard, Aska is so well liked because it has amazing airtime. Sure it follows the same path that Viper does, but the elevation changes and the curvature of the apex of each hill varies causing different forces that you can't glean from a POV video.

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Beast Fan said:
I still perfer the Golden Ticket awards. Yes, they are done for mostly advertising reasions, however, that doesn't discount the credibility of the rankings. They sample experts from all over the usa and the world, and they vote their top 10. This list however skews the rankings by comparing head to head wins/losses, which give the advantage to less ridden coasters overseas.

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Oooh, so I'm an expert at something? Kewl!

As others have pointed out, the "problem" with the AT poll is that it skews the results towards coasters that have had a large number of riders, good or not. Thousands of people have ridden The Beast and few other rides, and as a result consider it the best thing out there since they have little to compare it to. Does that make it a better ride than, say, Tremors at Silverwood? Heck no (IMHO)!

As one of the 13 people Mitch's poll who HAS ridden both Aska and SFGAm's Viper (and actually did rank Viper one notch above Aska, making me one of "those" 3...), I can tell you that Aska is a damn good ride. TPR has nothing to do with that ranking, and never will -- TPR's Japan trip is next year, and Dreamland is sadly done.

They may be essentially the same layout, but that doesn't take into account the intangibles -- location ("d00d, we're in freaking JAPAN!"), weather, maintenance, all sorts of things come into play, and they CAN make a significant difference. The day I rode Aska (which incidentally was my 400th coaster :) ), it was rainy and the ride was running somewhat slow. That impacted my ranking, when compared to the night rides after a hot summer's day I have on Viper. A larger sample set (ie more mutual riders) might make a difference, or it might not. NONE of these polls should be taken too seriously, but they can be interesting to look at.

*** Edited 12/9/2006 1:06:42 AM UTC by GregLeg***

Oooh, so I'm an expert at something? Kewl!

Makes me one too...I voted in the Golden Tickets ;)

Ten years ago, if you had told me that Rolling Thunder would place ahead of Mean Streak, (albeit only two spots,) I probably would have smacked you.

Seriously, think about all the rides with that Cyclone layout:

CI Cyclone, GA Cyclone, Viper, Aska, TX Cyclone, Psyclone...

Some of these (CI Cyclone) are well ridden and are among the perennial favorites. Some of them (Psyclone) are perennial candidates for a bonfire.

Why couldn't Aska be near the top of the pile, even though it happens to be in Japan?

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GregLeg said:NONE of these polls should be taken too seriously, but they can be interesting to look at.

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You can't take these polls too seriously.
You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor... ;)

...or can you?

:)

I was actually thinking of what way I would perfer a poll to be done. I think they best way would be for each person to do a top 20 list. And give 20 for 1, and so on. And than average the score, so that way to eliminate the bias to people riding a certain ride more than others. This would eliminate the possibility of really ranking certain rides low, however it would still take into the affect of lesser ridden coasters.

For example, say there was 5 polls, and Raven was ranked 3, 3 times, and 4 once and 5 once. So its average score would be (18*3+17*1+16*1)/(5) = 17.4 . Now if say Shivering Timbers was ranked in 2 list, number 1 and number 7 its average would be 17 and thus Raven would be ranked higher in the overall list. Does this method make sense, or what flaws would it have?

It would have the same exact "flaws" that Mitch's poll has, and the exact same flaws you've been complaining about.

1) Just as in Mitch's poll, if a coaster has only been ridden by a small number of people they can drastically affect the results; averaging really only works well if you're averaging a significant number of results. If only three people had ridden a ride and they all give it a 20, then it's going to take the #1 spot. If they all rank it a 1, then it's going to take last place.

2) It's still just as open to the "sabatoge" that Mitch's poll is because you can lie all you want about what rides you've ridden and how you want to rank them. This wouldn't matter much on a much-ridden ride, but it could greatly affect the results for something that few have ridden (see above).

-Nate

Well I am actually curious if there would be a difference in the results. For one it is easier to fill out. however mitch is easy once you do it once, but you have to take the time to figure it out the first time. Not that it is really that hard, but still a little more effort than a normal poll or top 10 list. Well its just an idea

The result would be the same. The Beast would suck regardless of what poll you used.

Yeah, that is probably why the Beast in everyone other poll is in the top 10. You might not like it but alot of others do. Its been in the top 10 every year in the golden tickets, was near the top in other online polls done by coasterbuzz or screamscape, etc. So not sure where you get the idea that people think it sucks. This is the only poll were it does not do well. Yet is in the top 5 I think on number of riders.