[EM] ER/EM FAQs

[Rob Lanphier]

On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Steve Eppley wrote:
> Ok, that's a start.  But I think we should work together to make one
> large and ever-growing document, not a collection of disjointed
> messages.  Shall we commence assembling an outline, to see if a
> reasonable outline structure can work?
> 
> I think the outline should try to be as comprehensive as possible,
> even if we don't intend to work on all its sections.  That will
> leave room for others to come along later and see what needs to be
> done, encouraging them to merge their work instead of posting it
> separately.
> 
> I've dialogued some with Mike O. and Rob L. about outlines for this, 
> and I think there's some consensus about a framework.  There were 
> about a half dozen messages involved; shall I forward them to [EM]?

Yes, go ahead.  I think though, that we should use the one that Steve 
Hill wrote as a foundation, since it's already done.  The mailing 
list might have been acting flakey when I sent out my rewrite of that 
(actually due to some changes that I had asked them to make to our Perl 
installation).  The URL for the latest version is at:
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/cpr/faq.html

I haven't incorporated Demrep's changes yet, but I'll be incorporating
most of them.  I won't be breaking single-winner reform out just yet, but
rather I think I'll rework the title so that it is the Election Methods
Reform FAQ or something like that.  Other opinions? 

Perhaps we should have a FAQ and a glossary to the side.  The FAQ should
be the quick and dirty overview, the glossary could provide the nitty
gritty details.  Or, perhaps we should have an elections-reform FAQ and
several election-methods-list FAQs (like one FAQ for every method.  I've
got dibs on Condorcet :).  Then, through the magic of hyperlinks, we can
interconnect them all.  This would have the added advantage of letting
people "vote with their feet" and write their own FAQ.  It would also 
have the advantage of decentralizing the effort.

I realize I'm probably part of the minority in being able to publish WWW 
pages.  However, I would urge everyone here who doesn't think they have 
the ability to publish to check with your service provider.  You may be 
surprised.  I would also urge you to shop around, because there are many 
providers that do for very reasonable costs (my account, which includes 
SLIP/PPP, email, two mailing lists, and 10 megs of space for any use 
including web pages costs $120/year.  If you are outside Seattle and 
never plan on using the dial-up lines (i.e. you use a different service 
provider and telnet in), you can get all of that for $60/year.  See 
http://www.eskimo.com for more details).

So, back to the outline.  Well, we're going to need an outline even if we 
do the large decentralized thing.  Would you agree that we need the 
simpler, smaller document as well, or should we expand that out?

Rob Lanphier
robla at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla