Polling Queue Announcement and August 2020 Poll II

I have several announcements to share about the polling queue.

I want to say thank you to everyone who submitted songs during these past two and a half years.  When I began this website, I wasn’t sure what to review and depended on Billboard’s top 100 Christian songs to review songs.  An online friend suggested that I create a process for users to submit songs for review.

As the site grew, I realized quickly that a simple queue would not suffice.  I turned to polling so that I could prioritize the growing demand for Berean Test reviews.

Over these last few months, I’ve tried several tactics to reduce the queue size:

• Removed links to the submission form from reviews.
• Added option for users to inquire about specific line(s) (as opposed to a full review).
• Limited submissions to one song per user per week.
• Added a second poll bi-weekly.

Despite my best efforts, the queue is still growing!  After some prayer and guidance, I decided to establish a cut-off point at 100 songs.  This threshold will include songs on deck and will exclude Hillsong, “extra”, and “on hold” songs.  As of this post, the current song submission queue is 84 songs deep.

Once the polling queue reaches this threshold, I’ll temporarily suspend the submission form for two poll cycles. During the suspension period, I also won’t accept submissions through other means (contact form, direct email, social media, etc).  I realize that this is inconvenient; However, I can’t think of a better way to keep a lid on song submission growth.

With a cap placed on the song submission queue, I want to concentrate on emptying the “extra songs” list.  These are a list of songs that I promised to review before switching to my current system where I keep an offline copy of song submissions that do not pass polling.  Many of these “extra song” submissions are over a year old!  Based on my current projections, I expect to empty this queue in about seven to eight months.  This requires me to abandon bi-weekly double polling.

Finally, I’ll continue to monitor the “on hold” songs for now, especially the hip hop/rap submissions.  If it becomes too large, I’ll consider polling to reduce its numbers.

I appreciate your patience with my rapid tweaks to polling.  Hopefully, this will be the last change in a long time!

Now, for our regularly scheduled polling update.

Thank you for voting on my fifth July and first August 2020 polls!

In Poll A, Brian & Katie Torwalt’s Holy Spirit and Casting Crowns’ Praise You In This Storm dominated the competition, cementing reviews.

In Poll B, Matthew West’s Hello, My Name Is and Reuben Morgan’s I Give You My Heart lead the pack and were placed on the schedule.

This post contains a regular poll with eight songs to choose from.  I will review the top two voted songs.  Ties will be broken based on earliest submission.

This poll will close at the end of July 18, 2020.  If you don’t like these picks, consider submitting a song for review.