Okay, let me say this one more time - and could everyone please pay attention this time, because I'm just repeating myself here... Look! It's now in point form!

 

* There is no right or wrong way to classify and count your toys.

* Classification is ALWAYS arbitrary. Is a virus living or non-living? (it cannot self-replicate and it has no DNA). Are monotremes mammals or reptiles? (they're warm blooded and milk their young, but lay eggs and can have venomous spurs like reptiles). Should chimpanzees be reclassified as into the Homo genus, or do homonids (such as humans) need to be reclassified into the Pan genus? Is Taiwan an independent state? (It's an island with its own government, laws and currency) Is Mandarin as a dialect or a language?

* If any comparative analysis is to be made, a common consensus must be applied. In the case of comparing Transformers collection sizes, it is USELESS unless we use the same system of classification. There is no point in comparing collection numbers if one person counts multiples, and another doesn't. Neither is right or wrong in counting or not counting multiples, BUT we need to have a common way of counting in order to make a fair comparison. If we all use our own individual method of counting when we are trying to make a comparison, then THE COMPARISON IS UNFAIR!

* There's no point in sitting here and arguing over whose system is better than whose, because there is no right answer when arguing over such an arbitrary issue.

 

...please don't make me explain that again... please... *sobs.piteously*

 

The 2005 Survey Protocol isn't "official" insofar as it wasn't specified by Hasbro or Takara, but it is an established precedent that was used across five different TF forums. When doing a comparative analysis, WE NEED TO AGREE ON A COMMON SET OF RULES - and that is precisely what was done in July 2005.

 

engledogg: Yes, you're right. The 2005 Protocol's rationale is based on counting which Transformers we have rather than how many separate figures we have. This rationale is was well explained by LordCykill.

 

LordCyKill: your round up or down to the nearest hundred. This rule was made because a lot of boards give you a limit on the number of options you can stick in an online thread poll. So you use simple maths. If you have 249 Transformers, then you round it down to 200. If you have 250 Transformers, then you round it up to 300. You round it off to the nearest hundred - up or down. That's a mathematical law.

The rounding is unnecessary for a poll.  You're either in range or you're not, unless the boundaries overlap.  Otherwise, I'd agree with the mathematical principle if not the granularity (especially running up to the first milestone).  As an aside, it's not _that_ hard to modify the board software for more options if it was something Jack wanted to have done.

The survey was conducted over five different forums. It was easier to simply ask people to mathematically round the figure off to the nearest hundred rather than asking separate board owners to change their board codes... and not all board admins have this ability or are necessarily inclined to change their board codes for the sake of a single poll.

The fact that this was ultimately decided by a handful of individuals from a 25%-50% subset of the forums I know of is exactly why I stress unofficial.  I could make an educated guess, but for the sake of argument, who said that everyone with between 1 and 49 TransFormers (or more that're, say, boxed) doesn't have a collection?  And the rounding is still _unnecessary_ for a poll, unless you're proposing 251 be in the 300-500 group rather than the 200-300 group, in which case the ranges just became pointless.  If I were to be _really_ pedantic, even simply overlapping those ranges (in the example, one ending and one starting with 300) could introduce enough variance to skew the outcome.

 

If the system was designed to be fair (or accurate for that matter), it would have acknowledged issues like doubles and variants with weighting rather than outright exclusion.  The fact that the self-appointed committee didn't take it seriously enough to do that (or change a couple PHP constants and maybe add columns to a table, depending on how different Invision is from phpBB2) tells me I don't have to take it seriously either.  You keep saying how 5 forums are in agreement but it's the Electoral College principle at work.  It's a biased, artibitrary scale, that I certainly didn't/don't agree to, and has only gained any level of acceptance in the absence of competing systems.

 

Look, Goki, it's really nothing personal.  It's OK in a very limited scope and good for you if it doesn't write off a sizeable portion of your collection.  This argument is just going to come up in some form every time details like it's-not-really-how-many-but-which-ones are left out and it's thus misrepresented as something it's not.  Surprising poll results so far in any case.

1/ Yes, it's unofficial. I've never claimed otherwise. It's had a precedence of wide-spread usage, but so has the term "Seekers", which is also a fan term, and that I refuse to use (the official term is "Sky-Raider").

 

2/ The rounding was done because the poll options used in the survey was thus (or something similar, depending on the number of options allowed by individual boards):

* 100 (or less)

* 200

* 300

* 400

* 500

* 600

* 700

* 800

* 900

* 1000+

No, it doesn't suit the poll on this thread, but I was never suggesting the use of the 2005 Survey Protocol for this thread - merely that in future such polls we should have an agreed standard of classification, whether it be the 2005 Protocol or otherwise. As long as we all use the same system of counting, that's what's important.

 

3/ Yes, it is an arbitrary and biased-scale. All forms of classification are arbitrary and biased, even science. Even the method you are suggesting is arbitrary and biased as well, as counting multiples and variants could be considered "cheap" or "cheating." As I've been saying over and over again, there is no inherently right or wrong form of classification.

 

Feel free to conduct your own poll under your preferred system of classification... just make sure that you have everyone counting their TFs according to the same protocol, otherwise the results of your poll will be useless.

 

Sorry if this post doesn't make much sense, as I've typed it whilst on the phone... :P :P

I have around 330. not counting minicons.

420 at last count, including minicons.  :clap

I have over 3000 :tflaugh

uh, this is all rather pointless until we agree to use a common method of counting. I don't care whose method, as long as we all use the same one!!

i'd say i have aboot 50ish.  if i counted all of the ones i used to have with what i have now it would be closer to the 200 mark.  i've become a much pickier collector now, not trying to collect whole series and just get the ones i want.  the hard part is i can never make up my mind about which one i want!