[conlang_learners] Voting mechanisms

[Jim Henry]

Long before we vote on what conlang to learn (probably about
September) we should come to a consensus about what voting mechanism
we'll use.  Brett Williams suggested, in a post to the CONLANG list,
use of approval voting ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
); out of all the conlangs anyone has suggested, we each list all the
ones we'd like to learn, in no particular order, and the conlang
that's mentioned by the most people is chosen.  If multiple conlangs
are tied for first place, we'd have a runoff election of some kind to
pick one of them.

Another method I'd like to suggest is instant-runoff voting (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting ); we'd list the
conlangs we'd like to learn in a ranked order, most to least
preferred.  If no conlang gets a majority of the first-choice votes,
then we eliminate the conlang that got the fewest first-choice votes,
and from the ballots that listed it as first choice, redistribute
those people's votes to the conlangs that they listed as their second
choice.  Repeat as necessary until some conlang has a majority of
first-choice votes.

You can look up other possibilities at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-winner_voting_system

Another issue is whether to have a secret ballot or open ballot.  The
only reason I can think of to have a secret ballot would be to avoid
bruising the ego of anyone who is participating in the project and has
a conlang of their own in the running, whether nominated by themselves
or by someone else.

What do y'all think?

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