3) It doesn't matter if you have seen less than thirty courses, as long as you're not voting more of them into the top 100 than you should based on your experience. Again, the standard deviation thing is just a math-based excuse to disenfranchise certain voters. Save that for American politics, where it belongs!
Good one.
By the way, what is it with the line spacing and font controls on the website these last couple years? It's much more difficult to format things the way you want.
OK, let's take me as an example. I've played 34 of the raw top 100 courses, most of which are in the top 50. So I would be expected to rate 30-40 courses as top 100 courses. What is considered a minimum top 100 course rating? The 100th best course has a raw score of 7.4, so I could justify rating 30-40 scores at 8 or higher. I guess you have to trust the raters to be honest and unselfish. The last list was generally comparable to the three major published lists.
Maybe you solve that by making a "7" a top 100 course. I know Stone Eagle well, having played it a number of times, and rate it a 7, but enough people are put off by the severity of the terrain to rate it 5 or 6, which knocks it out of the top 100.
But that makes the distinction between a 7 and 8 very important in this exercise. For a reminder, here are the definitions for a 6, 7 and 8 golf course:
6 — A very good course, definitely worth a game if you’re in town, but not necessarily worth a special trip to see. It shouldn’t disappoint you.7 — An excellent course, worth checking out if you get anywhere within 100 miles. You can expect to find soundly designed, interesting holes, good course conditioning, and a pretty setting, if not necessarily anything unique to the world of golf.8 — One of the very best courses in its region (although there are more 8’s in some places, and none in others), and worth a special trip to see. Could have some drawbacks, but these will clearly be spelled out, and it will make up for them with something really special in addition to the generally excellent layout.