[EM] wiki

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 06:12 PM 8/31/2005, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
> > Re your DFC wiki page, I hate it.
>
>Thanks again. You're a very emotional man it seems. I hope you have your
>pills in reach since I heard that hating is not very healthy.

Warren, it seems to me, doesn't actually "hate," the kind of hate 
that would indeed be unhealthy in the way suggested. He is, however, 
often impolitic with his criticism.

> > I also think I want there to be a concise clear and unambiguous 
> description of DFC,
> > and that wiki isn't it.
>
>Feel free to assemble one. By the way, I told you the "concise clear and
>unambiguous description" you demand in one of my last emails after you
>had mentioned DFC. Actually, the randomness is deliberately included in
>the design since (i) no deterministic method will provide for group
>strategy equilibria when there is no Condorcet Winner in the usual sense
>- only randomized methods can do so, and (ii) it will provide for some
>kind of "proportional representation" in the long run over a number of
>DFC decisions.

I'll disagree that "only randomized methods can do so," since there 
are other alternatives that are neither deterministic or randomized, 
beginning with the simple one of holding some kind of runoff.

Perhaps someone could take Mr. Heitzig's mail, with its concise 
definition, and use it to clean up the wiki page. I'd do it if I had time.

Many of the wiki descriptions of election methods are, shall we say, 
difficult for a newcomer to understand. I think I have understood DMC 
for a few seconds here or there; I think the method is actually 
simpler than the description makes it seem. Mr. Heitzig is correct 
that if we don't like a wiki page, the burden is on us to fix it. 
However, if I'm not confident that I understand a method, I'm not 
likely to take up the task of fixing it. Indeed, there is an aspect 
of DMC that is, shall we say, counter-intuitive, and it has been the 
subject of edits and counter-edits.