[EM] 25th anniversary of the election-methods list coming up....

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

Nearly 25 years ago, I sent the inaugural message to the "EM" list
(see [1]; I've also quoted the nearly 25-year-old message below).
That was back in the pre-Dreamhost days.  I migrated the mailing list
to Dreamhost.com in March 2003 (see [2]), but I think the more
significant anniversary is this coming next week (on Monday, February
15).  That was February 15, 1996 was when discussions started
happening on the new election-methods list.

The election-methods mailing list has changed a LOT since 1996.  Back
in 1996, I had only just learned about the Condorcet winner criterion
(or the "CWC"[3]).  Oh to be young again; I had also only recently
learned that "alternative vote" (as they call it in Australia) was not
Condorcet winner compliant.  Moreover, Mike Ossipoff had convinced me
that it was important on the "elections-reform" mailing list (or as we
called it back in the day: the "ER-list").  The ER-list[4] was the
sister list (brother list?  sibling list?) of the EM-list, and it was
the older sibling.  ER used its size and age advantage against EM
quite a bit in the early days.  Now ER has gone missing, and EM is
turning 25-years-old, so EM isn't as worried about being beat up by
it's older sibling.  :-D

The reason for the "EM" and "ER" nicknames: the mailing list software
the respective mailing lists used back in 1996 would preface the
subject line with a prefex in square brackets.  Mail to the EM list
would have "[EM]" prepended to the subject line of every message.
Mail to the ER list would have "[ER]" prepended.  Advanced mailing
list software would recognize square-bracketed prefixes in the subject
line, and not add to them.  So that made it possible for people to add
mailing lists to the discussion, and many discussions would spill over
from one mailing list to the next.  (for example, a heated discussion
between Donald Saari, Mike Ossipoff and other members of the EM
list[5]).  Cc'ing a second mailing list was really common in 1996;
these days, we insist on using online forums.

Anyway, what should we do to celebrate February 15?  I suppose I
should probably at least address some of the weird list issues that
Kristofer Munsterhjelm, but it seems like we should do something a
little more fun.

Rob Lanphier
robla at robla.net
roblan at gmail.com
roblan at protonmail.com
...and many other email addresses that are overwhelmed with spam

[1] http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1996-February/065327.html
[2] http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2003-March/074889.html
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_winner_criterion
[4]:
[5]: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com//1996-October/thread.html#66053

p.s. Below is the first message to the election-methods mailing list,
sent on Thursday evening, February 15, 1996.  At least, this is the
first one there's a record of.  There might be a prize to the first
person who finds the spelling error in my 1996 email (then again,
there might not be!!

----
>From robla at eskimo.com  Thu Feb 15 21:34:05 1996
From: robla at eskimo.com (Rob Lanphier)
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 21:34:05 -0800 (PST)
Subject: New "election-methods" list
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960208182723.28005B at eskimo.com>

I'm starting up an "election-methods-list" list to discuss single-winner
reform, the relative merits of different PR systems, and the technical
underpinnings of all election methods.  This list is intended to
compliment, not to replace, the existing "elections-reform" list.

Please continue to discuss the various electoral reform movements in the
U.S. and throughout the world in the "elections-reform" list.
"elections-reform" is still the best forum for discussing strategies used
in reform campaigns, specific legislation addressing reform, and
educational material about reform.

What is the difference, you ask?  "election-methods-list" discussions will
most likely be more technical in nature, with the ultimate goal of
providing recommendations and educational material to the members of
"elections-reform".  There have been complaints in the past that
discussions on "elections-reform" have been too technical, and
"election-methods-list" has been created to offload the more prolific
technical discussions to "elections-reform".  It lets folks use
"elections-reform"  to stay abreast of current activity in electoral
reform without fear of their inbox exploding.

To subscribe to "election-methods-list", send mail to majordomo at eskimo.com
with no subject line (any subject will be ignored), and the following one
line in the body of your message:

subscribe election-methods-list

My apologies to anybody who stumbled on the web page that I set up a week
ago at http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/cpr/election-methods.html and tried
to subscribe (and failed, because the list didn't exist yet).  In the time I
was waiting for the list to get set up, I set up the web page.
Everything should *now* work according to the instructions on that page.

That's all there is to it.  Let me know if you have any questions about
the new list.

Thanks,
Rob Lanphier
robla at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla