[EM] 28 years of progress and a wakeup call

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2024-05-21 21:49, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:

> The feedback I've gotten since starting to make these fixes to Wikipedia 
> has so far been mixed in this list, but unanimous in conversations with 
> everyday people. From Wiki editors and this email list, the response has 
> often involved nitpicking phrasing based on 12-dimensional mathematics, 
> philosophy, or a strict interpretation of Wikipedia guidelines. The 
> response from normal people, every time I link them to the 
> newly-improved version of the article, has been "Oh! I get it now, that 
> finally makes sense. Why didn't anyone explain it like that before?!"
> 
> Please:
> 1. Be polite and helpful.
> 2. Use smaller words. No LaTeX or single-letter variable names.
> 3. Avoid minor details like handling ties.
> 4. Emphasize what's important. Don't get sidetracked in discussing minor 
> problems like strategy. What matters is each method's Condorcet 
> efficiency and social utility efficiency, and whether it's better than 
> IRV's.
> 5. Put material where people will read it. That means /Wikipedia./ If 
> you can't put it there, put it on//Arxiv, /then/ put it on Wikipedia. If 
> you put it on Arxiv first, it's not original research anymore. :)

I would, but here's what happened when I last tried:

After some minor edits, I decided to improve some election-related 
articles. This went well at first, but then on a particular article, the 
process ground to a halt. I tried to improve the article, but another 
editor considered my information to be too confusing to the average 
reader, reverted it, and (after further pressing) reinserted it buried 
in an auxiliary paragraph far down the article body.

A rather long talk page back and forth ensued, which ended in me 
emphasizing the relevance of the point to the article. The other editor 
said that the point was only tangentially relevant and that equal 
treatment would require one to drag in a bunch of other points that 
would clutter up the article. I gave reasons why this particular point 
was unlike those other points and was relevant to the article matter. 
The other editor repeated his statement without acknowledging my response.

At that point, I decided I had enough and left.

Now I *now* know that there are various administrative measures and 
dispute resolution mechanisms that one could use to get neutral third 
parties involved. For that matter, a simple "no consensus" at the right 
time might have saved me a lot of trouble. But I was well and truly 
exhausted at that point.

 From then on, I've been mostly doing scattered edits to articles not 
related to election methods. I don't have the endurance, nor do I have 
the backing of enough editors to deal with this kind of attrition.

But feel free to import stuff from electowiki if you'd like. Just credit 
it in the edit message since it's CC BY-SA.

And I know your last statement is meant to be a joke, but for the 
benefit of the other list members, 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:ARXIV :-)

> 6. Put the important material in the lede. Only about 3% of Wiki users 
> read past the lede.

I *would*, but see above.

BTW, I think it's "lead". 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section

> 7. Tell the truth. Don't lie or exaggerate or mislead about your 
> favorite method. Don't say stuff like "Condorcet methods only have 
> strategy if there's a cycle", because people will just google that and 
> immediately learn not to trust you.
> 8. Focus on what matters, and what we can all agree on: we need to beat 
> the everloving shit out of IRV. Even if you hate every other voting 
> method that's been proposed on this list, that doesn't matter. FairVote 
> is the biggest obstacle standing between us and meaningful election reform.

I would suggest the following additional point:

9. If you discover a piece of information (a scientific result, say) 
that favors one class of methods or another, but it could be 
misinterpreted in a way that would favor IRV, then don't hold that 
against it. If the process or result isn't itself biased, then whether 
or not it supports IRV, not to mention whether someone could possibly 
misconstrue it to support IRV, should be irrelevant.

I don't like IRV, as should be evident by my poll ballot, but I still 
posted its manipulability results.

Maybe referring to a bunch of sources and going "these authors say this, 
those authors say that" contributes to the incomprehensibility that you 
dislike. But if we're to summarize, then the summary should be 
*accurate*. Not just simple. Even if that potentially gives the IRV guys 
more ammo.

-km