Holasovice.

What purpose would this serve? Not only will we continue to pay attention when these site are inscribed, my idea would be they would automatically carry forward into whatever 2020 list we finally decide upon (not included in voting). For the 2020 version any sites between 66 - 117 could be submitted again by our community in their selections (if that suites you). Because these sites listed below are 40% from Europe and North America, many of the outstanding sites from these regions will not even need to be considered when you make your new selections. If we just go about picking many of the same sites as 2014, there really is not much point. I keep coming back to, what do we want from this activity - Top Missing 2020?

For me it comes down to:

1) Highlight Top Missing sites that are perhaps a bit less known or even obscure (doing some research), including both tentative nominations and aspiring sites (non-listed). Indeed, it was particularly rewarding to see our 2014 sites that were put forward by our community that eventually became tentative nominations and some even were inscribed!

2) Pool our knowledge of world heritage (I benefit greatly when hearing your perspectives about outstanding sites around the world). Els seemed to take all of 10-20 minutes to make her selections. Yet, for less "seasoned travelers" this could easily take hours of research and my opinion could easily be swayed once I read about your selections.

3) Improve on the 2014 version which was heavily favored toward Europe and North America (not saying those selections were not deserving). However, arguably a few "less deserving" sites from around the globe did make it onto our list between 66 - 117.

4) Participate in a dialogue, share and learn about new potentially deserving world heritage sites, and ultimately have fun.

5) In some ways take on the role of the Advisory Bodies (ICOMOS and IUCN) in creating our own improved World Heritage List, which we can revisit and discuss as new sites are inscribed in the coming years.

I highlighted in bold 11 of 25 of Els new picks that are found in our "remaining" Top 50 Missing List. While these are undoubtedly excellent selections, we already generally know these sites are very deserving. I would be curious to know what Els (and all of our community) chooses when these sites from our 2014 voting are off the table. In some ways re-voting on some of the best sites from 2014, inevitably lessons the value of our original list, which I thought was pretty great!

I am happy to go either way (so in or exclude the original list), but I don't think I will vote much differently in the end. There are very few "new" potential sites that I personally discovered after 2014 (Zakouma NP is one natural site that has developed a lot in the last few years for example). But maybe it is more common to me than to others to follow all those lists and I do not get surprised easily anymore.


I think in the end that's the main point.

Actually winterkjm, I think you have rather changed my mind, that perhaps for the purpose of this one, we should leave to one side the sites we put at the top of the list last tie (I may have missed the reason why you drew the line at 66th downward).

And then go through pitching and researching, rather than just re running the list from a few years back (2008!! I thought it was at least within the last decade :/). That would focus us all on learning about new areas, though I will admit there are some on this forum that have travelled to most of the places proposed.

I liked the little pitches that were written up last time, with clear details and claims to OUV (example)

For the quick and easy mass votes, perhaps Nan's proposal of the brackets can be used for a fun World Cup tournament to decide the best (and worst?) WHS in a knock out tournament, and perhaps that discussion can be taken to another forum thread, so as not to distract from this more cerebral exercise.

Maybe this becomes Top 100 Missing? Fifty from the remaining list of 2014, and 50 new additions with the most votes in 2020?

What do we want?
Option 1 - All new Top Missing 2020 (including re-voting on sites from the 2014 list)
Option 2 - New Top Missing 2020 (excluding top 50 remaining sites from 2014)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Option 3 - World Heritage Brackets (replace Top Missing format)
Option 4 - World Heritage Brackets (in addition to Top Missing, doing both)

Infrastructure for proposing sites, voting:
Option 1 - UNESCO Designated Regions + mechanism for C/N balance
Option 2 - UNESCO Designated Regions (Proportional - countries/territory)
Option 3 - No regional, no cultural/natural restrictions (2014 format)

Equal # per region and mechanism for C/N balance
Africa - 5 selections (2 natural or mixed)
Arab States - 5 selections (2 natural or mixed)
Asia and the Pacific - 5 selections (2 natural or mixed)
Europe and North America - 5 selections (2 natural or mixed)
Latin America and the Caribbean - 5 selections (2 natural or mixed)
*user is not restricted to only 2 natural selections, but cannot propose less than two per region

Proportional Approach
5 Africa
3 Arab States
6 Latin America
5 North America and Europe
6 Asia Pacific
*option to include or not include mechanism for C/N balance

Next, we have to figure how proposals will work and what follows?
Option 1 - Sharing Top 25 (forum only, no voting)
Option 2 - Sharing Top 25 (forum posts, specific sites need to be given a 2nd from a fellow user to be included in voting)
Option 3 - Sharing limited # of proposed nominations (on tentative list or non-listed) which includes a "pitch" that goes into OUV to some extent (filling a gap, comparative analysis, etc). This option would also require a 2nd from a fellow user to move on to the voting stage.

I think Top missing means Top missing. So our previous sites (that are not inscribed) should be relisted. However, I think that I would vote differently and have a wider knowledge of sites nowadays than previously.

Personally, I like the bracket idea a bit, because it allows to write exposes for the proposed sites and structure the process a bit by having people make an argument. Easier to do that in a bilateral comparison than for the full list: I can't place Neuschwanenstein in a top 100, but I can say Cambridge is better. Also, the original list also was more on sites being known, so taking our time with the process and giving lesser sites some exposure would help. Last but not least, by doing divisions (Europe, Africa, Asia, America) we could make sure that we weigh each continent better than in a one off list.

It also allows to wring a few blogposts out of the process.

I know what I would prefer from the proposed matrix, but how should we carry on? Should we vote on the procedure too?

Users who are interested, put in there opinion and we can go from there. Once we have a consensus (and Els approves) we an move forward. I really enjoyed this experience in the past, so I am looking forward to a 2.0 version, whichever format that eventually takes.

Thanks for your proposals, winterkjm. Here are my thoughts:

What do we want?
I lean towards Option 1. Since some of the Top 50 from last time have already been inscribed, we are guaranteed to have some new sites listed in the Top 50. I would also hope that there are enough new members in this forum that some fresh ideas for sites may be given.

I appreciate how you mentioned the benefit of pooling knowledge about World Heritage Sites. When we were voting on Top 200, I found the topics for each category to be very helpful for learning the importance the community placed on certain sites. I mentioned earlier that I think individual Top 50 forum topics for each region, i.e. Top 50 - Africa, Top 50 - Europe and North America, etc,., might be helpful to sort out the proposed sites for voting. If we were to give a period of two to three weeks for forum members to submit sites under the respective topics and then discuss the pros and cons of those sites, that would give people time to think about what sites they'd like to vote on. I know that is a different structure than the proposal options you gave, but I think it might help organize some of the submissions and discussions.

My preference for voting, then, if we were to use forum topics to introduce sites that people could vote on, would be to hold a vote using the Equal Number per Region and Mechanism for C/N Balance approach. If everyone voting chose their top 5 ranked from the sites that were listed in each of the forum topics per region (with a minimum of two mixed or natural sites), that would help guarantee some diversity in the list. In order to rank the Top 50 from the votes submitted in this approach, you could award 5 points for each 1st place vote, 4 points for each 2nd place vote, etc., then tally the results.

Incidentally, I love Nan's bracket competition idea, since I'm missing March Madness here in the US, but I'm wondering, as meltwaterfalls suggests, whether we can do that simultaneously with a competition with existing World Heritage Sites (something like, best site inscribed over the past ten years, or favorite site in Europe, or site we most want to visit in 2021).

Yes, thank you for sharing. I forgot about this, this would be very helpful for our purposes.

Maybe we could just start with that? Pick a continent, maybe add the existing remaining ones on the previous Missing List at the top so we know which ones we have already. And then add new ones one by one, while explaining and discussing them? Start with 1 continent and 1 topic, so the focus is there.

Is 2 weeks for proposals/discussions per region fine with everyone? Does that feel too long, short, or just right?

If we go with 2 weeks, the final list of proposals would be finalized for Top Missing - Africa [2020] by Monday, April 6th. Does this give everyone that frequents this site enough time?

Africa: Proposal Period 3/23 - 4/6
Arab States: Proposal Period 4/6 - 4/20
Asia and the Pacific: Proposal Period 4/20 - 5/4
Europe and North America: Proposal Period 5/4 - 5/18
Latin America and the Caribbean: Proposal Period 5/18 - 6/1

Under this tentative schedule, all proposals would be finalized and we could begin voting in mid-June.

The main drawback of this approach is that most of the forum members are not frequent members. Hence, if go by region wise approach, then many members won't be able to propose for all 5 regions.

Hence, I would recommend for one-go suggestions for all the regions. It's the same way in which few of the members have already done.

I think we may run into an issue with cross national sites. E.g. Works of Gustave Eiffel would span several continents. What to do about these?