[EM] wiki opinion poll

James Green-Armytage James_Green-Armytage at antioch-college.edu
Tue Jun 14 02:46:44 PDT 2005


Hi folks,
	I'm announcing this change as requested by the poll: I've changed the
"must"s on several questions to "should"s. I'll give a brief argument for
the change here, but if the change is unpopular, others are free to revert
it.
	Example: the question "Raising X on one ballot without changing anything
else must not decrease X's winning probability". In short, "the method
must be monotonic". 
	If I agree with the statement, and put +, then I agree that any method
MUST be monotonic. What then, does it mean for me to put ++? That it
*really* must be monotonic? That's redundant. However, what if I think
that methods should be monotonic, but I'm willing to accept monotonicity
failure given certain other benefits.
	Both of these problems (meaninglessness of ++, and inability to express
"should" rather than "must") seem to be solved by the word change:
"Raising X on one ballot without changing anything else should never
decrease X's winning probability"
	If you agree that a method *should* be monotonic, you can vote +. If you
think that a method *must* be monotonic, you can vote ++.

my best,
James




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