What I did was:
- Select the best of the ones that I have visited (ca. 160)
- Gradually add other "important" ones

But the ones at the bottom may have gotten less attention.

I had written down/added another 100 to my personal top 100 (made up not only of visited ones) while participating in the categories discussion. Then I tried to opt for a balanced geographical representation when "chucking out" the last few sites to finally get to the Top 200 in the voting session. I left out some personal favourites in the process to be able to follow this approach in a "fair" way but overall I'm happy with the result and I would be overjoyed should I ever visit all the sites I voted for.

I took our community list of top 220 as the basis. I then removed those sites I did not agree with (about 50). I then filled the missing 30 or so (to get back to 200) mostly by adding natural sites which I find most strongly underrepsented. For some of the sites I removed I looked for a replacement sticking to the same category, but mostly I replaced them by more natural sites.

I'll add a 'heartbeat' here about the progress (without disclosing the results of course).

Before I sent the mass e-mail out this morning, 12 of us had voted. There were no sites we all did agree on. There were 2 sites on top.

Now 17 people have done so. The highest ranked sites (10) all have 13 votes. 350 WHS have no votes at all.

37 have now voted, for 821 different WHS. The 2 at the top have 27 votes.

Hi Els,

is there anyway users can get a list of the ones they have voted for?

I know we can get up the tick box page, but there isn't a way of copying it with the appropriate boxes.

It isn't a massive problem if not, I'm just not convinced I have done my best with selections, and was trying to find an easier way of reviewing them.

I've added 'Your Top 200' at the page after you've logged in

Top 200. Quite a laborious undertaking! The first time I faced it (yesterday), I did a 380 list. Today I hit 230 and from then on, I started to analyse what had representation more than once (for example, for me it was unnecesary to nominate a latin american colonial fortification if I had already nominated Cartagena for maritime and La Habana for colonial center). I reduced sites like ten to fifteen times, to achieve my list, which I think is as representative as I wanted it. Not perfect, though, I wanted to have something Armenian, and something Chavin culture, more than one Maya site (I thought Uxmal)...etc.

48 people have now voted, for 882 different WHS. There's a (one) number 1 now, with 40 votes.

This was a bit of a challenge, but I finally winnowed my list down to 200. Thanks for all your work putting this together on the website, Els! I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

55 people have voted now, for 921 different WHS. There still is 1 number one, with 46 votes.

I will publish the results next Saturday!

It really is amazing how nearly every site has someone to root for it as "Top 200" material - and only from a population of 55 voters. I had always expected a long "tail" but no where near as big as that!

Perhaps we should have a go at guessing which are the 110 WHS which have no one to "love" them!!
I suggest the Madara Rider - but perhaps we have a Bulgarian mediaevalist among our number
And can anyone really have voted for Nesvizh or Mir?
The Par force Hunting Landscape must surely be another.
A few other suggestions going forward alphabetically - Nessebar, Boyana, Sveshtari, Ivanovo and Srebarna . Sorry Bulgaria - nothing against your country which has plenty of interest but many of its WHS are not that inspiring having emerged in the very early years of the scheme before "levels" had been set
To "equalise" matters I had better choose a few from UK ! Can anyone really have chosen Studley, Liverpool or St George ?
Going backwards alphabetically through the countries - a few more suggestions
Zabid, Waterton, Colonia, Bukhovinan Metropolitans, Struve, AL Ain, Nisa, Diyarbakir.......
Takes us to 20 already. At that rate I am soon going to pass 110 of what are, in my view, "no hopers"!
Perhaps the biggest "take away" from the exercise is the impossibility of reaching objective assessments in these matters across a population of different nationalities, professions etc. One man's "uninspiring location" is another's "centre of the Universe"!

Several of these have got votes! One even 5!

I'm only seriously going to doubt the audience of this website if someone votes for the Par force hunting landscape.

I'd mention Beemster, Schokland, choirokoitia, St Gavin sur gartempe, Nord Pas de Calais, heritage of mercury, Monte San Giorgio, Stevn Klimt, Tugendhat villa, stoclet, um er rasas, Abu mena, bardejov, blaenavon, new Lanark, ferto-neusidlersee, butrint, etc. I'd reckon you'd have to be quite an affectionate supporter of industrial heritage, modernism or actual remains to rank any of these as top 200!

I think the set up of the voting may lead to some of those underwhelming sites getting some backing.

Its set up may lead people to answer a different question, so instead of "what are the 200 best WHS?" it may lead people to vote for "what is the best example of a mining landscape?" That way something like Nord Pas de Calais, which (to my surprise) got a fair wind in our discussions on mining, could get a nod.

I don't think that approach is a bad thing, personally I quite like it shifting focus away from the most famous and being more representative of all aspects of the list. But strictly it isn't the results of the question "what are the 200 best WHS?"

Also when it comes to the final count is it worth thinking about combining the votes for Contiguous Sites? Are people who vote for Iguazu NP essentially just voting for the whole, or is it that they think it is better than Iguacu. Ditto for the Sundarbans, unless people really care deeply about levels of salination.