[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Are people who frequent ANN or MAL representative of the whole view base? What about anime casuals who don't really post on the internet that much or at all and just watch it in Japan on TV?

How representative they are is certainly up for debate. However for our purposes it works well, as being anime fans ourselves we are more likely then not to agree with their assesments, if we were to watch the same thing, helping us find out what is "good"

Western and Japanese perceptions are often different.

Also true, but Anime rating sites are international. Obviously there's an english language bias, but English being the second highest language of choice for Anime fans (behind Japanese of course), I'd say many ratings are taken internationally, so it's less of a "western vs. Japanese bias" as a "International vs. Japanese bias". As far as I know a lot of english speaking Anime fans are Singaporean, Filipino etc.

In the example of Mushishi, you noted that it may be overrepresented. That is why I mentioned it as an example of a bad survey. Tons of people probably don't like this show, though among certain critics, it is valued highly. Genre bias.

This is counter to your earlier "American Idol" asertion, that the popular sludge is best. The only thing I can say is that it tends to be a self-righting system. Generally if something unexpected rises high on the list people outside the original base will begin to watch it, and if it's undeservedly high will begin to sink subsequently, or maintain it's position if it's deserved.

Popularity trumps "quality." People will think that what is popular is all that there is to watch. This is true in all areas of entertainment. Anything that gets a little momentum ends up being highly acclaimed regardless of the actual quality.

Which is why lists can often go around the hype. High Quality stuff that people have never heard of (like Beast Player Erin) often gets known through being represented on the lists.

Saying that the top 10% is usually "good" is pretty much moot to me, because 90% of everything is almost certainly crap. Usually what I and I think many others care about is distinguishing between these top 10%.

You are absolutely correct. I am trying to distinguish between the two. To say "these titles are the top 10% of anime" we need to assess them somehow and make a judgement. It's not assessing a primary characteristic (the show itself), which would take too long if you wanted to assess every anime ever made by watching all of them.

Instead we assess a secondary characteristic that correlates with the primary, IE people's reaction. This is approach is a bit more inclusive then exclusive IE there will be almost no good shows below the 8.0 or so cutoff, but there will be some bad shows above it. It can be used to eliminate 80-90% of anime from consideration before you more closely consider the rest.

I'd say if you just watched Anime randomly you'd only come across a "good" one 10% of the time. If you use my approach and watch anything above 8.0 you'll find that jumps to about 70%-80%. If you set a higher cutoff like 8.5 it will jump to maybe 90-95%.

If you can give me an approach for figuring out what the top anime titles are that's more accurate and faster, I'm open to it.