[EM] Intro to list (etc)

[Rob Brown]

At 08:48 PM 10/27/2003, Dave Ketchum wrote:
>I read these two threads thru 2130 EST on Monday, but choose to respond to
>this original.
>
>Looks like a GREAT idea, though a few details disturb me.
>
>You talk of a primary customer, who would give their users some experience 
>with Condorcet, but as individual voters with no choice as to details of 
>the implementation.

Yes.  My client doesn't really want to so much "give them experience with 
Condorcet", but simply to have a good way of doing polls that works better 
than plurality for picking multiple candidates.  Their users are unlikely 
to be particularly interested in the theory.  Some of them will, I'm sure, 
but the #1 goal is to make this seem every bit as simple to use and 
understand as the regular old plurality polls like you see all over the web.

*My* goal is somewhat different than my client's....I want to warm people 
up to Condorcet.  But my approach aligns well with my client's 
interests.....make it seem simple.  If it seems complex, it will drive 
people away.

>Doing that well takes what I consider to be an almost complete program, so 
>I would lay out design for a more complete program, planning to implement 
>only the subset for starters, and then completing the rest if/when that 
>seemed worth the extra effort.  Some details:
>
>List of candidates - done by whoever sets up election.  Can have long 
>names but MUST have a unique label of not more than 4 characters, to allow 
>for max quantities of candidates to be displayed in vote matrix.

You mean to avoid the problem of it making the tables too wide?  There ARE 
some options, for instance http://weblogz.com/voting/vertical.html , but 
that is IE only.  I think I can do something for mozilla et al but it won't 
be quite as pretty.  (I tried something below it that would work on other 
browsers but its pretty ugly)

I'd hate to force the poll maker to come up with understandable names that 
are 4 characters max.

>Vote - every voter can vote, so this must be easy - perhaps permit voter 
>to use either full or above short labels - there are other possible 
>methods.  For a simulation mode, let "voter" vote as multiple voters 
>choosing a vote pattern.
>
>Display ballot count matrix, as if this was last voter before polls 
>closed.  Could make sense to display this while the voter is voting, 
>stepping as the voter goes thru ranking candidates from first to last 
>voted by this voter.  This ONLY starts with matrix as of voter starting to 
>vote, incremented according to voter's current proposed vote.

Interesting idea with the dynamic updates.

Although honestly, I think only a small number of voters are going to be 
interested in seeing the matrix itself.  I'm posting a response to another 
message ( Displaying intermediate results in Condorcet-based elections ) 
that covers my reasons for not wanting to show a matrix by default, and for 
continuing in my quest for a way to show a simple bar graph of scores.

-rob