The mediocre top 10 list

I was reading an interesting bit in Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail about how top 10 lists of things that are spread thinly across multiple categories tend to be banal. His primary example is that of top 10 lists of artists from all genres. Any casual reader of such a list would immediately recognize the loss of focus inherent in such a list–it’s simply a jumble of popular artists with barely any d...