Sorry, Sugden

[Kelly]

Looks like the most highly-rated Ripper book among Casebook readers is now Trenouth's The Satanic Team.

It seems that more people have voted than could have conceivably bought a copy.

[George Hutchinson]

One vote for each of Karen's socks. And something puppety as well.

So, the troll still lurks, eh? Poor, mad, silly and unpleasant woman that she is, she will always be a pale copy of our very own UK fruitbat.

PHILIP

[Bob Hinton]

Kelly, Kelly, Kelly (said ala Cary Grant)

You can't just post that - link me link me

[Suzi]

Swooooooooooooon!

Now that has brought on a SERIOUS attack of the vapours!!!...where is this unpleasantness Kelly????

[Kelly]

Sorry! I just thought everyone knew where the rankings were.

http://casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/reader_av.html

And the 191 people who have rated Sugden at one star are mostly new votes. As if.

[Suzi]

Hey-and checkout Bob's 'From Hell' ratings.........all of a sudden there's a dramatic change on the rating swingometer !! Oddly!!
Suzi

[Dan Norder]

Boy, that page is a mess.

Karen's books are through the roof despite being historically some of the worst material ever written, Sophie's French book is extremely high, a book I've never even heard of published by the vanity press company LuLu by someone named Maurice Lipton somehow ranks #13, and so forth and so on.

One of the oddest is:

Three Letters From Hell: Letters Reputedly in the Hand of the Whitechapel Murderer
Lands End Press, 1988.
Cardstock pamphlet, 6 pp.
Limited to 175 copies.

Casebook Review: 3
Reader Review: 3 1/2 (592 votes)

Ranking: 8th of 168

Close to 600 votes, but yet only 175 copies of it were even ever made, and that was 20 years ago. I can see how some modern authors hoping to increase sales of their unpopular books by slamming the review section with fake votes could think that was a good idea, but why would some 6 page pamphlet from the late '80s get so many fake votes? Someone trying to unload some of those on eBay or something?

The problem with the voting on this site, which includes not only books but suspects, is that it's clearly a vote early and vote often scenario. Maybe Stephen earns money serving up ads over and over to the people who vote over and over, but I think he'd be better off yanking the whole voting thing. It's especially bad when some news report goes to the suspect page and think that the rankings there in some way represent informed input from experts on the topic.

[Mike Covell]

I thought we could only vote once on these or is that the suspects?
How about resetting the tally and starting fresh with that measure in place? Is that possible?

[Celesta]

Unless everyone has read each of these books, then the results are bound to be skewed.

I haven't voted because I can't make a judgment on a number of them. My voting would skew the results. Some of them are not even in English.

[Kelly]

Celesta, voting only on books you've read doesn't skew results. The number of voters is clearly displayed, so one can see not only how a book is rated, but how many people have read it. A highly-rated book with only 5 readers/voters is not near as impressive as a book that may be slightly behind it in stars but has 800 readers/voters.

Not that it matters now anyway, with Trenouth on the loose.

[Mike Covell]

Click click click click click (Thats my finger on the mouse voting for my faves!!)

[spryder]

Yes, the voting system needs an overhaul - and has needed one for quite a while. My plan has been to require a forum account in order to vote, so that we can better verify the one-vote-per-person policy. Otherwise, as it stands now, its one-vote-per-ip-address, and folks can abuse that by simply jumping onto a number of public computers, or even just restarting their internet service if they have dynamic ips.

[Ally]

Anyway you slice it you have to feel sorry for Trenouth. I mean anyone who is so pathetic they would spend this much time and effort and energy voting on themselves ...well it's just sad.

[Celesta]

Celesta, voting only on books you've read doesn't skew results. The number of voters is clearly displayed, so one can see not only how a book is rated, but how many people have read it. A highly-rated book with only 5 readers/voters is not near as impressive as a book that may be slightly behind it in stars but has 800 readers/voters.

Not that it matters now anyway, with Trenouth on the loose.

Kelly, I see that. Thanks for encouraging me to take a closer look. At first glance, I thought it was a statistical array. So I have happily voted for my favorites.

[Celesta]

Yes, the voting system needs an overhaul - and has needed one for quite a while. My plan has been to require a forum account in order to vote, so that we can better verify the one-vote-per-person policy. Otherwise, as it stands now, its one-vote-per-ip-address, and folks can abuse that by simply jumping onto a number of public computers, or even just restarting their internet service if they have dynamic ips.

Sorry, Stephen. I wasn't making a criticism. I was marveling at how anyone could have read all of these books, esp. as some are languages other than English. I was mistaken in my take on the situation. I mistook it for a statistical average over the group, which is often the way I tend to think, and of course that wouldn't make sense in this case.