Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!hirchert
From: hirchert@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Kurt Hirchert)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: CfD: Interest Group Surveys (was: STV new group proposal in 25 lines)
Keywords: single transferrable votes STV newsgroup creation interest group
Message-ID: <1990Feb9.205303.26882@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 9 Feb 90 20:53:03 GMT
References: <1990Feb7.224449.8453@diku.dk>
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 39

1. A person can support, oppose, or have no opinion on the issue of creating
   a newsgroup with a particular charter.
2. A person can have an opinion on what a newsgroup with a given charter
   should be called, regardless of his/her opinion on whether the group should
   be created.
3. In some cases, the issue of name may affect a person's position on creation.

In order to account for these variations, I suggest a vote string something
like
   adcYeAbN
would be interpreted as saying I like name "a" best, "d" next best,..., and
"b" least.  If names "a", "d", or "c" are chosen, I vote YES.  If name "e" is
chosen, I ABSTAIN.  If name "b" is chosen, I vote NO.

YES, ABSTAIN, and NO options would be required to come in that order.

Vote evaluation would come in two stages:
1. First apply the single transferrable vote procedure to the lower case
   letters to determine what is the most acceptable name.
2. Then count the YES and NO votes corresponding to that choice to determine
   whether you have at least 100 more YES votes than NO and at least twice
   as many YES votes as NO (as per our existing procedures).

(One way to implement the above is to remove an uppercase letter from a vote
string whenever the immediately preceding lowercase letter is removed.  Thus,
once a lowercase letter achieves a majority, all you need to do is count the
first remaining uppercase letter in each string.)

What I'm really interested here is the method, not the syntax.  If we're
concerned about people not being about to produce both upper and lower case
letters, we could use a syntax like
   adc/e/b
in place of
   adcYeAbN .

I return you now to your regularly scheduled brawl.
-- 
Kurt W. Hirchert     hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu
National Center for Supercomputing Applications