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From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Another proposal for modified voting rules
Summary: Simplified STV and moderately name czaring
Message-ID: <372@enea.se>
Date: 17 Oct 89 22:51:17 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB, Sweden
Lines: 65

(I tried to post another article with similar content, but
I don't think it made it. Apologies if I am redundant.)

Several ideas have been presented here to improve the voting
scheme to handle name conflicts. My idea is similar to some
of the presented, and is a simplified form of the single
transferable vote system. Also, it gives room for a name
czar, or rather a name supervisor.

First the name supervisor(s). (I think there should be more
than one, but not more than 5-6 people.) When a group is
proposed with what they think is an inappropriate name,
they have the right to dictate that what they think is a better
name should be considered. This is implemented so that the
call for votes must cover both names and give them equal
attention. (Assuming that Greg Woods is one of the supervisors,
they have control of news.announce.newgroups.)

When you vote for such a call, you have ten possibilities:
(A is original proposal, B is supervisor's idea.)
YES to both                 NO to both
YES to both, preferring A   YES to both, preferring B
YES to A, NO to B           YES to B, NO to A
YES to A                    YES to B
NO to A                     NO to A
In the latter four cases you don't have any opinion on creating
a group with the name you don't vote on.

Tallying the straight votes are trivial. The preference votes
(YES to both, but I prefer X) is counted to X in the first
step, where we compare the two names with each other. Winner is
the name with biggest difference between YES and NO votes in
absolute numbers(*). After this the loser's preference vote
are added to the winner. If the winner now passes the 100 
more-YES-than-NO limit the group is created with that name.

The advantage with this system over STV and the one proposed by
Bob Sloane is that it is much simpler.
  It can be used to resolve sci/rec.acquaria issue, but it cannot
be used for resolving the discussion we had about comp.object.
  I have retained the preferrence mechanism from STV, but to be
honest, I don't think it is that terribly important. It would be
nice, but...

I think the point with the name supervisor is important. Without
that we can sit here say TALK.whatever. The group champion will
still call for votes on sci.whatever, and too many would vote in
favour, since they care more about the group than the name. With
this model, they would at least get an alternative.
  Why not let the name supervisors be name czars and dictate the
name from the start? Because that would cause to a deluge of flames,
and even more important: name czars are human too, and can make
erroneous assumptions.

(*) One could think that percentage would be better that absolute
difference, when choosing the winner. This is OK, as longs as the
creation criterion is also percentage as Chuq wants it to be. But
if we have different criterions, we run the risk of getting anomalies.
Example:
      A: 400 YES  250 NO
      B:  50 YES    1 NO
B wins but does not pass the creation criterion.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
"My baby's a 26. On a scale from one to ten, my baby's a 26." - Chic