[conlang_learners] Now or in September?

[Jim Henry]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Padraic Brown<elemtilas at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, James Montgomery <dreamripple at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't see why not, but don't know what the others think.
>
> Some people may not want a public vote (for whatever reason). I think that a public vote *could* sway the more ambivalent voters to go along with the crowd -- if enough people (not a majority) are in favour of language X and their votes are on public view, other people might simply say "well, looks like language X is going to win anyway, and even though I'd rather have language Y, I'll go with language X just because 'every one else' is."

That's a good reason.  Another good reason, probably also sufficient
by itself, is that several of us have conlangs of our own under
consideration, whether nominated by ourselves or someone else.  Having
one's conlang fail to be selected when "competing" with so many other
conlangs as excellent and widely admired as some of the higher-profile
conlangs on the shortlist is not likely to hurt one's feelings
particularly; but knowing exactly who didn't vote for one's conlang,
and how low the ones who did vote for it ranked it relative to other
conlangs.... I'd rather not know that.

> Just pick someone who is willing to accept the votes, reply to the voters to let them know that their vote has been received, count the votes and let the group know the results.

I'd say at least two people, to count independently and report to each
other their detailed counts and (once they have agreement on that) to
the group at large the final results.


> I'd be willing to do that. If there's any question of "quis custodiet", then perhaps all votes should be CCed to Jim or some other person who can serve as a second counter.

I don't think either Padraic or me should be the vote counters,
because Padraic nominated some of his own conlangs, and because
someone (don't recall who) nominated gjâ-zym-byn.

The people who are on this mailing list and have a conlang of their
own on the shortlist, whether nominated by themselves or someone else,
are Larry, Padraic, Arthaey, Roger, Olivier, Ashucky, Dayle, and me.
That leaves 40+ other people who could count votes.   Do any of y'all
volunteer?

If you're thinking of volunteering, take a look at the Wikipedia page
on "Instant-runoff voting",

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

and ask here if you have any questions about how it works or how we'll
implement it.

Maybe to test the system we should first give the volunteers a small
set of fake ballots with fake conlang names (Foolang, Barlang, Quxlang
etc.) and make sure they both come up with the same results...?

The ballots should look something like this:

ballot #1:
Foolang
Barlang
Quxlang

where voter #1 would most like to learn Foolang, then Barlang and
Quxlang in that order, and doesn't particularly want to learn any of
the other nominated conlangs;

ballot #2:
Barlang
Foolang
Bazlang
Quxlang

where voter #2 most wants to learn Barlang, then Foolang, etc., in
decreasing order of preference.

That is, when voting you should list all the nominated conlangs that
you would have any interest at all in learning, in order from most to
least preferred.  If you don't want to learn a particular conlang at
all, leave it off your list.

The vote-counters can start by going through and eliminating from a
copy of the ballots all the conlangs that aren't in first place on
anybody's list; then eliminate the conlang(s) that appear in first
place on the fewest people's lists, and so on...

If that seems unwieldy, maybe it's a good argument for doing a
two-round vote, to pick a shorter shortlist; with the first-round vote
being done with some simpler method than instant-runoff voting, e.g.
simply list the conlangs you would like to learn, and the five that
appear on the most people's lists become the shorter shortlist.  (It
could be six or more if there is a tie for fifth place, as seems not
unlikely with such a small population of potential nominees.)
Brett's idea of giving everyone a month or so to study the shorter
list of conlangs in greater depth is also a good reason for this
procedure.

Does anyone object to the above proposed voting structure?

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/