28 years of progress and a wakeup call
On 2024-05-21 21:49, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
The feedback I've gotten since starting to make these fixes to Wikipedia
has so far been mixed in this list, but unanimous in conversations with
everyday people. From Wiki editors and this email list, the response has
often involved nitpicking phrasing based on 12-dimensional mathematics,
philosophy, or a strict interpretation of Wikipedia guidelines. The
response from normal people, every time I link them to the
newly-improved version of the article, has been "Oh! I get it now, that
finally makes sense. Why didn't anyone explain it like that before?!"
Please:
- Be polite and helpful.
- Use smaller words. No LaTeX or single-letter variable names.
- Avoid minor details like handling ties.
- Emphasize what's important. Don't get sidetracked in discussing minor
problems like strategy. What matters is each method's Condorcet
efficiency and social utility efficiency, and whether it's better than
IRV's. - Put material where people will read it. That means /Wikipedia./ If
you can't put it there, put it on//Arxiv, /then/ put it on Wikipedia. If
you put it on Arxiv first, it's not original research anymore. :)
I would, but here's what happened when I last tried:
After some minor edits, I decided to improve some election-related
articles. This went well at first, but then on a particular article, the
process ground to a halt. I tried to improve the article, but another
editor considered my information to be too confusing to the average
reader, reverted it, and (after further pressing) reinserted it buried
in an auxiliary paragraph far down the article body.
A rather long talk page back and forth ensued, which ended in me
emphasizing the relevance of the point to the article. The other editor
said that the point was only tangentially relevant and that equal
treatment would require one to drag in a bunch of other points that
would clutter up the article. I gave reasons why this particular point
was unlike those other points and was relevant to the article matter.
The other editor repeated his statement without acknowledging my response.
At that point, I decided I had enough and left.
Now I now know that there are various administrative measures and
dispute resolution mechanisms that one could use to get neutral third
parties involved. For that matter, a simple "no consensus" at the right
time might have saved me a lot of trouble. But I was well and truly
exhausted at that point.
From then on, I've been mostly doing scattered edits to articles not
related to election methods. I don't have the endurance, nor do I have
the backing of enough editors to deal with this kind of attrition.
But feel free to import stuff from electowiki if you'd like. Just credit
it in the edit message since it's CC BY-SA.
And I know your last statement is meant to be a joke, but for the
benefit of the other list members,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:ARXIV :-)
- Put the important material in the lede. Only about 3% of Wiki users
read past the lede.
I would, but see above.
BTW, I think it's "lead".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section
- Tell the truth. Don't lie or exaggerate or mislead about your
favorite method. Don't say stuff like "Condorcet methods only have
strategy if there's a cycle", because people will just google that and
immediately learn not to trust you. - Focus on what matters, and what we can all agree on: we need to beat
the everloving shit out of IRV. Even if you hate every other voting
method that's been proposed on this list, that doesn't matter. FairVote
is the biggest obstacle standing between us and meaningful election reform.
I would suggest the following additional point:
- If you discover a piece of information (a scientific result, say)
that favors one class of methods or another, but it could be
misinterpreted in a way that would favor IRV, then don't hold that
against it. If the process or result isn't itself biased, then whether
or not it supports IRV, not to mention whether someone could possibly
misconstrue it to support IRV, should be irrelevant.
I don't like IRV, as should be evident by my poll ballot, but I still
posted its manipulability results.
Maybe referring to a bunch of sources and going "these authors say this,
those authors say that" contributes to the incomprehensibility that you
dislike. But if we're to summarize, then the summary should be
accurate. Not just simple. Even if that potentially gives the IRV guys
more ammo.
-km
On 05/23/2024 4:44 PM EDT Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de wrote:
- Put the important material in the lede. Only about 3% of Wiki users
read past the lede.
I would, but see above.
BTW, I think it's "lead".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section
There is this little dumb history why "lede" became a thing in journalism:
Lead
Further information: Lead paragraph
The most important structural element of a story is the lead (also intro or lede in journalism jargon), comprising the story's first, or leading, sentence or possibly two. The lead almost always forms its own paragraph. The spelling lede (/ˈliːd/, from Early Modern English) is also used in American English, originally to avoid confusion with the printing press type formerly made from the metal lead or the related typographical term "leading".[6]
Kristofer, I dunno what to say about the English Wikipedia. It has it's own strange politics and mob rule. 17 years ago I was permanently banned ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rbj ) because of an uncompromizing and wrong position they took regarding Intelligent Design, essentially attributing the meaning of the term to whatever the Discovery Institute says it is. I resisted and it just got worse and worse. Tried, unsuccessfully, to get Jimbo involved. Omegatron knows about this, I think.
I still edit anonymously. The lede for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time is still mostly my writing and I did that anonymously as a banned editor. But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem got all fucked up despite that my drawings still exist in it.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
On 2024-05-24 02:36, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
Kristofer, I dunno what to say about the English Wikipedia. It has
it's own strange politics and mob rule. 17 years ago I was permanently
banned ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rbj ) because of an
uncompromizing and wrong position they took regarding Intelligent
Design, essentially attributing the meaning of the term to whatever the
Discovery Institute says it is. I resisted and it just got worse and
worse. Tried, unsuccessfully, to get Jimbo involved. Omegatron knows
about this, I think.
I still edit anonymously. The lede for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time is still mostly my writing and I did
that anonymously as a banned editor. But
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem
got all fucked up despite that my drawings still exist in it.
I don't think Wikipedia itself is (all that much) to blame here. It's
mostly just the other editor successfully deterring me from going there.
Let me indulge in a bit of general observation.
Every system, even those that encourage radical participation, needs
some way to keep the griefers out: those who both have more power of
some sort, and who have the inclination to use that power to make the
lives of others worse.
Most obvious or incremental ways to do so tend to lead to an increase in
bureaucracy. It takes deliberate and careful design to minimize such,
and even more deliberate and careful design to avoid creating a
different sort of implicit power imbalance.
So that there is a Wikipedia "bureaucracy" doesn't surprise me. That
there is an implicit power imbalance doesn't surprise me either: the
editors with the most endurance and/or knowledge of the process
naturally have a leg up on the rest.
I think that the Wikipedia admins would probably be helpful were I to go
through the proper channels to involve them. I just don't have the
staying power to do that.
-km
Re: Wikipedia voting-system articles, I’ll remind you that “Closed” has
rewritten a number of them.
If you’ve found a downturn in their quality….
Just saying
On Fri, May 24, 2024 at 05:00 Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de
wrote:
On 2024-05-24 02:36, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
Kristofer, I dunno what to say about the English Wikipedia. It has
it's own strange politics and mob rule. 17 years ago I was permanently
banned ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rbj ) because of an
uncompromizing and wrong position they took regarding Intelligent
Design, essentially attributing the meaning of the term to whatever the
Discovery Institute says it is. I resisted and it just got worse and
worse. Tried, unsuccessfully, to get Jimbo involved. Omegatron knows
about this, I think.
I still edit anonymously. The lede for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time is still mostly my writing and I did
that anonymously as a banned editor. But
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem
got all fucked up despite that my drawings still exist in it.
I don't think Wikipedia itself is (all that much) to blame here. It's
mostly just the other editor successfully deterring me from going there.
Let me indulge in a bit of general observation.
Every system, even those that encourage radical participation, needs
some way to keep the griefers out: those who both have more power of
some sort, and who have the inclination to use that power to make the
lives of others worse.
Most obvious or incremental ways to do so tend to lead to an increase in
bureaucracy. It takes deliberate and careful design to minimize such,
and even more deliberate and careful design to avoid creating a
different sort of implicit power imbalance.
So that there is a Wikipedia "bureaucracy" doesn't surprise me. That
there is an implicit power imbalance doesn't surprise me either: the
editors with the most endurance and/or knowledge of the process
naturally have a leg up on the rest.
I think that the Wikipedia admins would probably be helpful were I to go
through the proper channels to involve them. I just don't have the
staying power to do that.
-km
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
On 2024-05-26 04:50, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Re: Wikipedia voting-system articles, I’ll remind you that “Closed” has
rewritten a number of them.
If you’ve found a downturn in their quality….
Just saying
Here's an example where I do think I've found a downturn in quality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
The lead says "In political science, Duverger's law (/ˈduvərʒeɪ/
DOO-vər-zhay) refers to the observation that political systems with only
one winner that fail the sincere favorite criterion typically result in
two-party rule."
However, what Duverger said in his article is that FPTP leads to
two-party rule while top-two and proportional representation lead to
multiparty rule.
Since top-two fails the sincere favorite criterion (the FBC), I can't
see how that can be right.
Granted, the previous version said that every single-winner method would
be Duvergerian. But the editor (see the article history) should have
checked if FBC agreed with what Duverger was saying.
I have other, more serious examples too. If anyone would like them, and
would like to take up the proverbial torch of doing edits on Wikipedia,
just send me a private mail.
-km
Hi CLC,
I think that WV Condorcet probably does get around "Monroe," at least given some
assumptions about voter behavior that I think are realistic. I don't relish the
idea of having to make that argument, but I think "Monroe" has limited scope. (It's
actually hard to understand what the scope of the claim is meant to be.)
The central problem with the methods Monroe investigates and then condemns is that
the methods don't have a way to know which contests are important. It seems that
voters opine on every pairwise contest, and if truncation exists at all it's just
interpreted away, the same as split votes. Burial strategies and counter-strategies
(which are also burial) will quickly confuse the scenario.
I quote how he explains the situation:
"All of these [paired comparison systems] ask for and use complex preference
information. All of them then give the incentive for voters to exaggerate their
preference differences over the most competitive alternatives up to the point where
it is unclear who the main competitors are. At this point all alternatives can win,
including alternatives that have absolutely nothing to recommend them except [that
they are on the ballot]. All paired comparison systems violate [Non-election of
Irrelevant Alternatives]; all of them are useless."
Monroe realizes he could use first preferences to help. He observes that if a
method satisfies majority favorite then it won't be as bad as Borda. But for the
most part he doesn't seem interested in exploring nuances. His writing is a little
hyperbolic.
He clearly doesn't mean to say that all methods based on the pairwise matrix are
bad, because his own proposal is still based on pairwise comparisons. It just
blocks candidates from winning who don't have any first preferences.
It's not at all demonstrated that you have to use first preferences as your cure;
this is just his view of the evidence. And because there isn't a general proof
regarding "paired comparison systems," it's not clear without further analysis that
"Monroe" applies to Condorcet//IRV or Condorcet//Approval(implicit), let's say. And
if it doesn't, that shows that there are avenues available to us.
Kevin
votingmethods.net
Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com a écrit :
Why would Monroe (2001) not apply, unless you use the tied-at-the-top rule?
On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 2:09 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com wrote:
I meant that wv Condorcet can be relied on to elect the sincere CW, due to its
excellent deterrence of offensive-strategy.
On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 14:00 Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com wrote:
What Meyerson & Weber demonstrated was that Approval’s Meyerson-Weber equilibrium
is at the voter-median. i.e. Approval homes in on where the CW is.
But, additionally, it seems to me that Approval has chosen the CW on every EM poll.
Other than wv Condorcet, Condorcet’s won’t always elect the sincere CW, because
of strategic-cycles.
My & W also demonstrated that Plurality can keep on electing any pair of parties
forever at MW-equilibrium.
…which of course is what it’s doing now. (with a bit of help from mass-media
promotion, & evidently at least occasional count-fraud.
wv Condorcet will, because of how well it deters offensive-strategy.
There's some difficulty here in that Duverger's law has been used
inconsistently. I'd agree the statement of Duverger's law on Wikipedia is
currently quite bad. I'd also note—like you did—that it was bad even before
I edited it, and I think this is an improvement: going from "every
single-winner system leads to two-party rule" to "single-winner systems
that don't comply with FBC lead to two-party rule" is less incorrect,
even if it's still incorrect, because it no longer (incorrectly) states
that FBC-compliant single-winner systems lead to a 2-party system. I've
just provided an additional citation to an author using FBC in this sense.
Duverger's original paper, like you say, makes the claim that FPP
inevitably leads to a two-party system, whereas top-2 runoff and
proportional representation create multi-party systems. Political
scientists have abandoned this framing because it's simply wrong: many
top-2 runoff countries have two-party systems, and quite a few FPP
countries don't have two-party systems. Top-2 runoff has a weaker push
towards two-party rule than FPP, in large part because top-2 fails sincere
favorite less often. But 2RS countries still have noticeably fewer parties
on average than proportional representation countries, and game theory
models of strategic voting tend to find that 2RS countries have stable
equilibria at 2 or 3 party systems.
I'd love it if the article were rewritten to reflect all this nuance, but
there are a finite number of hours in the day for me.
It's a bit exaggerated, I agree. The thrust of his argument, though, is
correct. For tournament solutions like Schulze/Ranked Pairs, there are
strategic equilibria where voters all bury the hell out of each other and
the winner ends up being a complete lottery. DH3 is another example.
I definitely agree he's overstating his case when he says these methods are
useless. These systems have multiple strategic equilibria (especially with
winning votes). Often there are plausible equilibria around executing a
defensive strategy to protect the Condorcet winner. In small settings like
local elections, voters have less information, so zero-info honesty becomes
more important (a property score lacks).
I don't think Monroe applies to Condorcet//IRV, but I do think it applies
more weakly, in the sense that there are probably equilibria where the
wings engineer a center-squeeze to bury a Condorcet winner.
I'm unsure about Condorcet-Cardinal hybrids. My hesitancy comes from them
failing either FBC or later-no-help. I suspect this causes them to fail the
Condorcet criterion in some strategic equilibria as well, because
turkey-raising and favorite betrayal obscure the sincere Condorcet winner
in the polls. I agree this is a good avenue for further research, because
finding a method that elects the Condorcet winner in Myerson-Weber
equilibrium—but still satisfies strong sincerity in the zero-information
case—would be great.
But right now it looks to me as though, despite their mathematical
elegance, all the known Condorcet methods have plausible
strategic equilibria where the CW loses.
On Sun, May 26, 2024 at 6:14 AM Kevin Venzke stepjak@yahoo.fr wrote:
Hi CLC,
I think that WV Condorcet probably does get around "Monroe," at least
given some
assumptions about voter behavior that I think are realistic. I don't
relish the
idea of having to make that argument, but I think "Monroe" has limited
scope. (It's
actually hard to understand what the scope of the claim is meant to be.)
The central problem with the methods Monroe investigates and then condemns
is that
the methods don't have a way to know which contests are important. It
seems that
voters opine on every pairwise contest, and if truncation exists at all
it's just
interpreted away, the same as split votes. Burial strategies and
counter-strategies
(which are also burial) will quickly confuse the scenario.
I quote how he explains the situation:
"All of these [paired comparison systems] ask for and use complex
preference
information. All of them then give the incentive for voters to exaggerate
their
preference differences over the most competitive alternatives up to the
point where
it is unclear who the main competitors are. At this point all alternatives
can win,
including alternatives that have absolutely nothing to recommend them
except [that
they are on the ballot]. All paired comparison systems violate
[Non-election of
Irrelevant Alternatives]; all of them are useless."
Monroe realizes he could use first preferences to help. He observes that
if a
method satisfies majority favorite then it won't be as bad as Borda. But
for the
most part he doesn't seem interested in exploring nuances. His writing is
a little
hyperbolic.
He clearly doesn't mean to say that all methods based on the pairwise
matrix are
bad, because his own proposal is still based on pairwise comparisons. It
just
blocks candidates from winning who don't have any first preferences.
It's not at all demonstrated that you have to use first preferences as
your cure;
this is just his view of the evidence. And because there isn't a general
proof
regarding "paired comparison systems," it's not clear without further
analysis that
"Monroe" applies to Condorcet//IRV or Condorcet//Approval(implicit), let's
say. And
if it doesn't, that shows that there are avenues available to us.
Kevin
votingmethods.net
Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com a écrit :
Why would Monroe (2001) not apply, unless you use the tied-at-the-top
rule?
On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 2:09 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
I meant that wv Condorcet can be relied on to elect the sincere CW,
due to its
excellent deterrence of offensive-strategy.
On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 14:00 Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
What Meyerson & Weber demonstrated was that Approval’s Meyerson-Weber
equilibrium
is at the voter-median. i.e. Approval homes in on where the CW is.
But, additionally, it seems to me that Approval has chosen the CW on
every EM poll.
Other than wv Condorcet, Condorcet’s won’t always elect the sincere
CW, because
of strategic-cycles.
My & W also demonstrated that Plurality can keep on electing any pair
of parties
forever at MW-equilibrium.
…which of course is what it’s doing now. (with a bit of help from
mass-media
promotion, & evidently at least occasional count-fraud.
wv Condorcet will, because of how well it deters offensive-strategy.