FAQ

[Mike Ossipoff]

I agree that Arrow's criteria & his impossibility statement should
be n the FAQ, because there's always someone who will bring it up,
claiming that Arrow showed that it's completely hopeless. It never
fails. So certainly we must cover that in the FAQ.

But I wouldn't put it first. Of course I'm partial to my pitch, but
it seems to me that we should start by asking what it is that we
want from a single-winner method.  Then we'd say "OK, & here's
how to do that." Don helped clarify the position when he pointed
out that Condorcet's method can almost be regarded as a thinly
disguised copying of the standards that we consider important.

Of course a method can't really be the same thing as a standard,
because a method has to be a lot more specific than a standard.
But it's obvious when a method seems to written around or based
on certain standards, all but incorporating them in its 
definition.

So, thanks to Don's suggestion, we could say "If you like those
standards, then why not write them into a method? Here's such
a method..."

Maybe that sounds promotional, but I don't think an article
can really be objective & helpful at the same time. My www
article tried to be objective, but I wouldn't do it that way
now; I'd make it advocatory, because that's really the only
way to present the information directly, without lots of wasted
words.


Mike




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