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

[VoteFair]

Maybe announce the anniversary on Reddit in the r/EndFPTP subreddit?

It might be insightful for younger folks to learn that a group of people 
have been pioneering better vote-counting methods -- and waiting a long 
time for increased interest in adopting better voting methods.

Mentioning the overlap with Electowiki might be appropriate.

(I'm not offering to do this post. Everything I post on Reddit gets 
automatically, and immediately, downvoted by bots.)

Richard Fobes

On 2/8/2021 8:43 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> 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
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
>