"you guys are dumb if you are arguing about "10 best guitarists", which basically means NOTHING to any other person"

Seems to mean enough for people to get irate about it and/or talk about it quite a lot!

"The best guitarist debate is the biggest waste of time."

Unless you're looking to poll opinion...rather than looking for an excuse to tell people how wrong they are.

Unless you're interested in finding out whether others take their major influences from.

I think you can always take something from a discussion like this...you just have to be a little open-minded about the sort of results it brings up [and understand that it's never going to be a truly objective debate]. A top ten list doesn't have to be a top-trump styled card game. and, judging by the contributions, people enjoy doing lists! It's great to argue the: "No way would x be above y," or "How z hasn't made the list is total s". because it makes people reassess their previous decisions, maybe talk about why such-and-such needs to be on the list and, sweet baby jesus and the orphans, maybe even listen to some new players to see if they are missing anything! Win, Win!

And So,

1. Richard Thompson
2. John Mayer
3. Richard Shindell
4. Bryan Sutton
5. Kris Drever
6. Dave Matthews
7. Tom Morello
8. Jimi Hendrix
9. Eric Johnson
10. Slash

ben.