Posted by Phil M on September 16, 2003 at 03:43:48:
In Reply to: an unusual poem posted by bob on September 16, 2003 at 02:25:42:
: How is this possible?, poem #1662 is rated 2nd in the top 10, but it's dead! This makes no sense to me, something must be wrong... can someone explain this to me?
Number 1 (at this time) 2721 likewise.
If there were just one, a possible theory would be that it was good enough to get to that position but then 'unlucky' enough to be chosen to breed profusely, losing 'fitness' points each time and dragging it into the 'cull zone', but the Offspring list doesn't exhibit such a startling number of similarly-ranged children that should accompany such a situation, for either poem.
[postscript: I'm assuming a difference between "total fame points" for top-ten registry and "instantaneous fitness points" for survivability, which, in hindsight isn't correct. This assumption continues into some of the following as well...]
A more likely alternative is that a concerted dislike was taken to the two (either by a cheating individual or an unlikely but possible blitz of competition between these two and random (but prefered) poems, such that their popularity score took a nose-dive without any other single poem attaining greatness on the back of them.
If David's implemented the asymetric soring system, of course (high value poem beaten by newcomer loses more points) that could have helped the downfall quicker, but still would be unusual.
Another alternative is someone managed to submit votes for the dead poems to give them status despite their situation. (Checks should be in place for that, I would have thought, after v1 had some bother with automated voting.)
The final one is a coding error of some kind that David'll correct, and we've got Zombies walking around. :) If it isn't, however, I wouldn't want the top ten recoded to exclude the recent "gone but not forgotten" greats [note my possible misconception, above] unless we had a "Hall of fame" or "Heroes Avenue" that showed the dead in order of their peak popularity/fitness.