[EM] The poll is a good idea--suggestions for a better one

[James Green-Armytage]

	Mike, thank you for your participation in the poll. Some replies follow...

Mike, you wrote:
>The number of people voting in the sections is closely related to how
>close 
>to the beginning they are. So the ordering of the methods matters.

	That is true so far, but I'm hoping that people who haven't made it to
the bottom of the page yet will do so later on... in which case the order
will not matter. I choose a taxonomy that would be as non-controversial as
possible while dividing the list into manageable chunks. 
	By the way, Mike, you define a lot of terms on the EM list which you then
use in later posts. I strongly encourage you to create a page for most or
all of these terms on electowiki. For example, I don't know what you mean
by power truncation, and it is very cumbersome to search for the
definition in the EM list archives. If you created a page for it on
electowiki, I would easily be able to find out what you were talking about
when you used the term. I think that a page for AERLO and ATLO (probably
one page rather than two) would be a good idea as well.

>But the main objection to the balloting is that it can only be counted
>for a 
>few kinds of methods: Rank methods, CR, other methods that use ratings,
>and 
>methods that combine rankings and ratings.

	I don't know; that sounds like quite a few methods to me. I guess if
people really want to specify an approval cutoff or something like that,
they could put it by their name in the participants box. For example:
 JG James Green-Armytage ... approve 6-up (meaning that I approve of any
method with a rating greater than or equal to 6)
	As I mentioned earlier, though, the point of the poll in my mind wasn't
to declare a winner, but rather to gain individually interesting bits of
information from every voter's rating of every method. Hence, tally
methods for the poll itself were not a primary concern for me.

Sincerely,
James