sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) (10/14/89)
Since we don't get news here when we should I haven't got
Peter Da Silva's and all other people's ideas for the last
week. Nevertheless, this is my idea.
The problem with STV that I have been advocating and still do,
is that it makes voting, vote counting and verification a complex
task. The following presents a simplified variant to be used
when a group champion stubbornly wants a group in the wrong place.
Part of the idea is to have some supervisors of the name space,
call them name czars if you like. They would *not* have the final
word, but only have an advicing function. If someone proposes
a group with what the supervisors think is an inapportiate name,
they have a right to introduce an alternative name that should be
given equal emphasis in the vote as the group champion's original.
That is, they cannot dictate that a group should have a certain
name, but they can dictate that a certain name should be considered,
and in that way encourage people to take position in the name issue
more than they do today.
With this scheme there would be ten ways to cast a vote. Say
that A was the original proposal and B is what the supervisors
want. We get:
YES to both
YES to both, but I prefer A
YES to both, but I prefer B
NO to both.
YES to A, NO to B.
YES to B, NO to A.
YES to A
NO to A
YES to B
NO to B
In the four last cases we don't care if the group is created with
the name we don't vote on.
Applied to sci.skeptic the supervisors would have dictated that
talk.skeptic should be an alternative. Those who didn't care about
the topic, but worried about the namespace would have voted
NO to sci.skeptic and said nothing about talk.skeptic.
How to interpret the result? There are several ways. First the winner
must pass some common minimum like the current 100 more YES than NO.
But how to select the winner? Absolute or percentage? Say that A gets
400 YES and 150 NO and B 350 YES and 50 NO. Using absolute numbers
A wins, using percentages sees B as a winner. Using absolute number
"feel" more correct, but percentage would probably favour the super-
visor's alternatives. (One should note that both proposal will get
a high amount of NO votes. Some people who prefer A will vote NO to
B for tactical reasons.)
I haven't here covered how to count "YES to both, but I prefer X".
I leave that to further discussion if the idea catches on.
The advantage with this system is that is simpler than STV. The
drawback is that it cannot be used to resolved problems like
comp.object where everyone has his idea on what is the best name.