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how tops & flops lists work

How lists work is a matter of understanding the following two items:

  1. What a Tops & Flops list looks like when you view it; what information it contains.
  2. How to find the Tops & Flops lists you want to see.

What lists looks like; what information they contain

Each Tops & Flops list is about a particular category, subject, or theme that is drawn from the arts. Each list has a title at the top followed by a list of items and additional or supplementary information. The list items may be ranked.

categories, subjects, and themes

Tops & Flops is a collection of lists about categories, subjects, or themes in the arts. Virtually any aspect of the arts is potential candidate for a list.

Each Tops & Flops list deals with a single category, subject, or theme drawn from the arts. A specific list may deal with virtually any aspect of the arts that one can imagineany category, subject, or theme. For example, a single list might address any one of the categories, subjects, or themes shown below:

  • Moviemakers, music-makers, authors, TV personalities, stage personalities, painters, sculptors
  • Movies, music, books, short stories, TV shows, paintings, sculpture
  • Performers, publicists, directors, set designers, publishers, editors, impresarios
  • Conductors, divas, jazz men, rock-and-rollers
  • Genres from rock-and-roll to folk to classical
  • Venues such as concert halls, exhibition halls, museums, libraries, galleries
  • Events such as historic  performances, exhibitions
  • Recordings and recording
  • Art periods, movements, techniques

A typical list addresses such issues as whether arts items on the list are good or bad, large or small, too early or too late, important or unimportant, enlightened or unenlightened, worth knowing about or not worth knowing about, etc. Categories, subjects, or themes can be favorable, unfavorable, objective, or neutral toward the items on the list. The category, subject, or theme of each list is selected by the list-maker and is a representation of his personal knowledge and opinions about the arts.

In essence, each list is an expression of a single list-maker's opinions or objective knowledge about a single art category, subject, or theme. Since all items on a list are about the same category, subject, or theme, a single list is an expression of a single list-maker's knowledge and opinions about each of the items on the list—whether each item is good or bad, neutral or indifferent, early or late, etc.

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list titles

List titles are names that make it easy to identify each list. A list's title is the same as its category, subject, or theme.

For example, if a list were about certain kinds of novels, the list's title (category, subject, or theme) might be Best British novels of the 21st Century. In this example, the list's title asserts that each item on the list is one of the best British novels of the 21st century. Each item on the list is a British novel and each novel is one of the best of its kind; there are none better.

A list's title appears at the top of the list.

list items and additional content

Items on a list appear below the title at the top. There may be from one to ten items on a given list.

Each item on a list belongs to (is an member of) the category, subject, or theme named in the list's title. In the above example, the list bears the title Best British novels of the 21st Century. Each item on the list cites a single, specific British novel written or published in the 21st century that is the best of its kind.

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How to find lists you want to see

You have the option to browse through the collection or to look for just the specific lists in the collection that are relevant to your interests. To browse, simply visit the Tops & Flops Table Of Contents and click a subject of interest. (see Manual Searching, next below).

There are three methods for finding lists that are relevant to your interests. Use them alone or in combination with each other:

Method #1—manual searching

Tops & Flops offers a table-of-contents which displays the title of every list in the Tops & Flops collection. The title of each list cites its category, subject, or theme.

Since a list's title cites the list's category, subject, or theme, you can read through the table-of-contents to look for lists that are about the category, subject, or theme you want to see. You can read list titles in the table-of-contents the way you would read chapter titles in the table-of-contents of a book. Once you identify a list that you want to see, simply click to open the page where the list is located.

Method #2—the Tops & Flops automated table-of-contents

The Tops & Flops table-of-contents mentioned above is automated; it has features that allow you to automatically search for words or phrases in the cited titles that are relevant to the category, subject, or theme you are looking for. With the aid of these automatic features, you can quickly and easily identify the lists that are about the category, subject, or theme you are looking for and eliminate irrelevant lists. You can sort, print, or otherwise process these lists. Once you identify lists you want to see, click each one to open it.

Finding lists you want to see using the automation features in the Tops & Flops table-of-contents is as easy as 1-2-3:

  1. Visit the Tops & Flops table-of-contents page.
  2. Apply the keyword search feature and other automated features until the table-of-contents is reduced to only Tops & Flops lists you want to see.
  3. Click the title of each Tops & Flops list you want to see to open the list.
     

    —tip—

    you can't search for the contents Tops & flops lists at the Tops & flops table-of-contents

    Table-of-contents searches only find Tops & Flops lists based on their titles; they do not find lists based on their contents.

    If you want to search the contents of Tops & Flops lists, use Electricka's Search Tool (see Method #3, below).

Method #3—keyword searching with electricka's search tool

Electricka's Search Tool is a keyword search engine similar in some respects to Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo. You may already have used it to search for pages at Electricka's web site.

Since the Search Tool examines all the words on each page it searches, when you use the Search Tool to perform keyword searches looking for Tops & Flops lists, you will examine not just list titles, as with Method #2, but you will also examine every word in every list in the collection.

—tip—

searching for Tops & flops lists at electricka's Search Tool

Electricka's Search Tool finds Tops & Flops lists that match keywords you specify, whether the words are located in list titles or in list contents.

IMPORTANT: When you use Electricka's Search Tool to find Tops & Flops lists:

  1. Follow the instructions you find on Electricka's Search Tool page.

  2. Click the Category box titled Tops & Flops Lists before you search.

See the instructions for searching for Tops & Flops lists:

  • Visit Electricka's Search Tool page and click the words Search Tips in the To Do box in the right column: click here.

  • See the instructions for searching now: click here.

 

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