Xref: utzoo news.groups:14753 news.admin:7668 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!shadooby!mailrus!iuvax!cogsci!dave From: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Re: STV new group proposal Message-ID: <29992@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Date: 20 Nov 89 04:59:00 GMT References: <2438@stl.stc.co.uk> <2440@stl.stc.co.uk> Sender: root@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu Reply-To: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Lines: 56 In article <2440@stl.stc.co.uk> "David Wright" writes: >So the call for votes would list the following options: > >A comp.society.rabbit >B rec.pets.bunnies >C rec.pets.rabbits >D rec.rabbits >E sci.coneys >F talk.rabbit >N no This system as proposed won't work, precisely because of the awkward integration of the "NO" vote with the group name options. To see this, take a simpler example. A rec.aquaria B sci.aquaria N no Assume I don't care whether the group exists or not, but I feel very strongly against the name "sci.aquaria". How do I vote? There's no way I can express this group preference without effectively voting eith "YES" or "NO" to the group itself. Either I can vote (1) rec.aquaria (2) NO (3) sci.aquaria or (1) NO (2) rec.aquaria (3) sci.aquaria. But neither of these is right. The first will count as an effective YES vote for the group, demonstrating an enthusiasm for the group which is not present. Ditto for the second and "NO". There are other problems with this scheme (such as incorporating the 100-vote margin), but I won't go into them. Instead I'll repeat the *only* simple scheme which has a hope of working. (1) YES/NO on charter. (2) STV on name. This avoids the awkwardness of having to express feelings on the charter and on the name in the same breath. Only if the charter vote receives 100 more YES's than NO's (and maybe a 2/3 share) will the name votes need to be examined. Then, everybody's preference counts. On the fish vote, for instance, I could abstain from the charter vote while voting [1] rec.aquaria on the name. My preference will be taken into account only if needed. Making the name vote STV rather than MAUVE allows a much more satisfactory range of preferences to be indicated. I know there have been a thousand proposals, but it seems to me that this is the only scheme that doesn't have terrible problems. -- Dave Chalmers (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu) Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University. "To live outside the law you must be honest..."