[conlang_learners] voting system

[Philip Newton]

2009/8/16 Jim Henry <jimhenry1973 at gmail.com>:
> Does that suit everyone?  In particular, does the date range for
> voting suit everyone (I'm a little concerned that it includes a major
> U.S. holiday weekend) and does the date range for vote counting suit
> Philip and whoever else is willing to volunteer to count votes?

The dates sound fine to me, and I'm still willing to help count votes.

> Another idea I thought of is that the vote counters could announce to
> the list that they've finished counting the votes, and will announce
> the result live on a certain IRC channel at a certain date and time.
> In that event, they should privately contact the creator of the chosen
> conlang, get their permission if we don't already have it, and make
> sure the date and time for the IRC meet suits the conlang creator as
> well as all the vote counters, before making an announcement.

This might be more difficult, depending on the specific time chosen,
especially since I'm on a different continent from (I suspect) the
majority of the list, as well as (I suspect) the majority of conlang
creators. But we would have to see.


2009/8/16 Jim Henry <jimhenry1973 at gmail.com>:
> 2009/8/16 Olivier Simon <cafaristeir at yahoo.com>:
>
>> 1°) First of all, each vote should be reduced to, let's say, 10 conlangs or
>> less (Imagine that everyone of us proposes a whole list of all the conlangs
>> of the Frath list in order of preference...).
>
> If Philip or the other vote counter agree with you, I don't see a
> reason not to put a limit of 10 or so conlangs on the ballot just to
> make things easier for the vote-counters.  But if the vote counters
> don't mind handling some ballots with as many as 25 conlangs on them,
> then let's not limit people arbitrarily.   In fact, I don't think with
> instant-runoff voting that having no limit on the ballot will make the
> vote counting significantly more work.  It seems to me likely that the
> instant-runoff process will produce a consensus winner in less than
> ten rounds of counting, in which case limiting the ballots to 10
> conlangs would not have saved the vote-counters much if any work.

That's pretty much what I thought.

I don't mind ballots with many votes on them, assuming we stay with
instant-runoff voting (which I would prefer, for simplicity) -- since,
as you say, one will typically only have to look at the first half a
dozen or dozen votes on the list anyway in order to determine the
winner.

If we decide to go with some variant on range voting, then limiting
the number of conlangs on the ballot starts making sense. (Since even
someone's bottom-ranked conlang could result in changing the winner,
all items on all ballots have to be taken into account when
calculating the winner.)

So: for IRV, I propose no limit; for range voting, a limit. (10 sounds
reasonable to me, too.)

> Would those who prefer range voting to instant-runoff voting please
> post saying which variant of it they prefer and why?

FWIW, I prefer IRV, as I said before. (But I'll count by range voting
if that's what the majority of the group members want.)

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmail.com>