I don’t really know how kosher this is, but we’re trying this a third time. The original two attempts were badly organized and added a value-judgment metric that (a) was a veiled attempt to skew the results, and, (b) couldn’t be applied in any meaningful way to a number of the people (How do you argue that Euclid or Euler are in any way a negative on mankind?)
Because the original attempts were so flawed and because the concept is so perfectly suited for a forum of loud-mouthed know-it-alls (and even the quiet know-it-alls), this game deserves a chance to be played correctly.
As we know, the original list was based upon Michael Hart’s The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential People in History, and the original attempt at this game can be found [url=]here as well as the original list.
I have broken Hart’s list into 5 roughly-equal categories:
Invention and Exploration 20
Leaders 22
Philosophy and Arts 20
Religion 17
Science 21
To get these to be as equal in number as they are I did have to make some judgment calls – the most debatable is my calling Thomas Jefferson a “philosopher”. I also hoped to avoid skewing the results vis-à-vis Hart’s list by numbering the entrants within their categories by alphabetizing their first names, not by listing them according to Hart…
Rules are as follows:
For each round, you are to vote for the least-influential person in each of the five categories. The last one remaining will be considered the most influential person for their category. The categories, and the names for each, will be on post 2
of rounds: The game will be 23 rounds, each round lasting 2 days, with 1 day in between each round (which will allow me time to score each round) (Schedule on post 3). “Days” are considered the 12:00am-11:59pm period in my time zone – Central Standard Time, USA.
The winner of the Religion category will be determined by round 17, the Invention and Philosophy categories by round 20, Science by round 21, and Leaders by 22. (Obviously, this gives Religion an edge in the final as they’ll be well-rested. 
).
The final round will be a one-round smack-down between the five categories, for winner takes all Most Influential Named* Person Evah!
By 12:00am on the first day of each round I will post the remaining people from each category, whereupon the process repeats itself: vote for the person in each category whom you consider the least influential.
Ties will be broken by the original Hart ranking.
How to post your votes:
Like this, without the quotation marks, but with the period (.) between the category and the name:
“Invention. Louis Dagurre
Leader. Queen Elizabeth I
Philosophy. Jean-Jacques Rosseau
Religion. John Calvin
Science. Antonine Laurent Lavoisier”
Keep the categories in alphabetical order, and try to use the name as given – it’ll save me some work.
Please keep all discussion outside the five lines needed to vote – no
“Leader. Queen Elizabeth I – I think she’s wildly over-rated!”…
… type votes. Feel free to comment within the post, but not within the votes. If that makes sense.
There is no changing of votes, except for during the editing period!
No write-in votes either.
Voting Criteria:
Criteria is simple: In each category, pick the least influential person out of those remaining. How you define influential is up to you – number of people influenced, whether the person is fictional, the “truthiness” of their ideas (whether religious, scientific, etc), whatever.
HOWEVER
The Final Round will be a vote of the MOST Influential Person of the 5, not the least influential. Sorry, but 23 rounds is enough! (Unless somebody wants to
take over then and do the least influential for another 4 rounds – let me know).
Discussion
I welcome all discussion, lobbying, denunciations (of the nominees, not the other posters!), and other banter. Just be sure to follow the formatting rules on your votes.
All right – I guess that’s it. Next post will have the categories, post after that will have the schedule.
*As opposed to the un-named people who domesticated animals, tamed fire, discovered metallurgy, invented agriculture, figured out literacy and writing, and were the true founders of human civilization, of all shapes and sizes.
