[EM] question about Schulze example (A,B,M1,M2)

[capologist]

On Oct 29, 2011, at 12:29 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> you could (for instance) break them in Ranked Pairs order.
> 
> A Ranked Pairs tiebreak is fully deterministic. Sort the victories in order of magnitude, then if M1 > M2 comes before M2 > M1, set M1 above M2. It may feel hackish to transplant parts of Ranked Pairs into Schulze, however.

It may feel worse than hackish.

I'm no expert in this field, but it is one I find interesting and visit from time to time. My first encounter with it was when I stumbled on a website advocating what was then called the Tideman method, before it was called Ranked Pairs and before the Schulze method was discovered. I had an email conversation with the author of that website during which I proposed several modifications that seemed to me to make sense. In each case he responded with examples demonstrating how my proposal failed important criteria and convincing me that it made the method worse, not better.

From the experience I learned that these methods can have behaviors that are not obvious to me and that I should never use a method that hasn't been carefully vetted by people who understand the field much better than I do.

You appear to be such a person. Would you say you have carefully vetted the suggestion you just made, or was it merely a thought off the top of your head?