alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells) (11/27/89)
In article <4598@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.lonestar.org writes: >This is a call for votes on the name of an aquarium newsgroup. The vote will >be held by the Single Transferrable Vote system: Without commenting on the propriety of calling for this vote (I suspect plenty of others will do that), I would like to point out some of the various technical problems with Peter's call for votes: - Peter is allowing 'write-ins', but write-ins are extremely problematic in STV and can lead to very paradoxical results. I don't have time to elaborate here, but the basic problem is with a ranking type of vote being applied to a set of choices that are unknown and unused by a large percentage of the voters. This is even worse in STV than in MAUVE, and people objected to it in MAUVE. - Peter didn't even make a legitimate attempt to include all the names that were proposed. Here is a partial list of omissions: rec.aquarium (no s) rec.pets.fish sci.aquarium sci.bio.marine sci.bio.fish rec.pets.aquaria rec.pets.aquarium rec.pets.aquariums I find it terribly amusing that the name used in the interference vote against sci.aquaria wasn't even listed in Peter's call for votes. - Peter started this without opening any sort of debate first. If he had opened it up for debate, he could have very quickly gathered a list of names - and even support/lack of support for the voting scheme. - Peter chose to use STV while there is still extremely active debate in news.groups about the relative merits of various multiple choice voting schemes. Perhaps this is one of the reasons he limited the number of name choices. The possibility of STV paradoxes increases dramatically with the number of names ... and his message makes it clear that he is doing this with a pretty strong agenda. I strongly protest to this action. It is, in my eyes, worse than anything that Peter has accused Richard of pulling. If Peter wants to salvage any pretention of a credible vote out of this, I suggest he do the following: - Pull the current vote. - Start a discussion in news.groups requesting feedback about the list of names and what voting scheme to use. - Call for a vote when the list is compiled and some concensus has been reached as to the voting method. Note that the news.groups poll on multiple choice voting is due to be published any day now ... -- --------| Rest assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls Alien | would scarcely get your feet wet. - Deteriorata --------| decvax!frog!cpoint!alien bu-cs!mirror!frog!cpoint!alien