[Ruroshen]

Originally Posted by Roman

Well, if you could assume that everyone knows exactly what their rankings are for each song, it logically only requires 9 votes and which two you match up is irrelevant because each person would already know which one he prefers more.

Not necessarily. I'd argue that while everybody knows which song is their favorite, probably knows which is their second-favorite, and might know which is their third-favorite...after that, it tends to get a little murky. The idea of matching up each song with every other song is that it really makes you quantify it. Sure, you probably know where ML stands in comparison to everything else... but AQRUJF (wow, what an awful acronym!) or MM?

That's where the real differences in opinion would come in, I think, and that's what would allow for some interesting movement in the backfield (i.e. the not-singles), and could even allow for an upset if a song like, say, V3 gets more "wins" against the competition than you'd expect.

So, for example, if ML beats LOT, then we give LOT a chance against G and LOT wins, then it goes against ML again. Why would anyone change their vote here? ML would win again. So, the problem would be if you would say that G is better than ML even though it's not better than LOT, but ML is better than LOT. That's very indecisive.

Wait, I'm confused...why is LOT going up against ML a second time? There aren't any "rematches" in any of the three structures I proposed!

In the first example, every song "fights" every other song only once, and is ranked according to how many victory points it racks up over the course of the "season". (But it will literally take 45 votes for every song to face every other song only once!) In the second, we're eliminating songs bracket by bracket until we come to a final "East vs. West" showdown. And in the third, we're simply picking off songs one by one, round by round, until we come to the final two.

I'll admit I'm probably overthinking this, but at the same time I think it may actually be more straightforward than I'm leading you to believe. I might not be explaining myself very well...I'll draw up some examples.

But anyway, I'm open to any style that the group decides on.

Yeah, same here. Again, if anybody has a better idea, I'm all ears.