[EM] "Instant-runoff voting" article renamed to "Ranked-choice voting" on English Wikipedia

Mon Oct 21 11:11:19 PDT 2024

Hi—I definitely agree with this! It's a very problematic misnomer. If I
could press a button that deleted the term "Ranked-choice voting" from
English and replaced it with "Instant-runoff voting", I 100% would.

However, the issue is that's not the choice we have available. When
Wikipedia chooses a title, the most important effect this has is on Google
and Wikipedia searches for that term. Usually, the top result for "XYZ" on
Google is the Wikipedia article titled "XYZ". That's not the case for
"Ranked-choice voting", because there isn't a Wikipedia article titled
"Ranked-choice voting". Instead, the top result is FairVote's website,
which defines RCV as a synonym for IRV in the first line, then provides
zero indication that other ranked voting systems exist.

To be clear—just because the title says "Ranked-choice voting" doesn't mean
we can't (or shouldn't) mostly use the term "Instant-runoff voting" in the
text (which I actually slightly prefer). The question is, do we want people
who google "RCV" to read a page written by FairVote? Or do we want them
reading a Wikipedia article that clearly explains how what FairVote and
most people call RCV is only one kind of ranked voting, and one that's
faced substantial criticism from experts for its properties?

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 7:19 AM Joseph Malkevitch <jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu>
wrote:

> Whatever its faults, Google Scholar gives very focused information to
> scholarly articles about elections and voting when compared with the
> "general" Google search engine.
>
> For me the problem with the use of the name RCV, ranked choice voting, is
> that it suggests that  a ballot which allows the voter to "rank" choices is
> used but offers no clue about what decision procedure is used to get a
> "winner" based on the ballots.  To model voting one needs to specify a
> ballot type and specify a "decision" method. Work of Arrow and other
> scholars chart what desirable and undesirable features different systems
> obey.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joe
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Closed Limelike Curves <closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Sunday, October 20, 2024 2:54 PM
> *To:* Joseph Malkevitch <jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu>
> *Cc:* EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [EM] "Instant-runoff voting" article renamed to
> "Ranked-choice voting" on English Wikipedia
>
> This email originated from closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com, a sender
> outside of CUNY. Never send login credentials, financial information, or
> sensitive information by email. Report suspicious email to
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> Google page counts are often off by orders of magnitude, unfortunately.
>
> But I'm also not saying no academics use the term IRV, just that, in
> recent years, "RCV" is definitely dominant.
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 2:13 PM Joseph Malkevitch <
> jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu> wrote:
>
> For amusement, a few minutes ago I entered the string
>
> IRV voting
>
>  into
>
> Google Scholar
>
> And it claimed to find "about" 14500 citations.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joe
> ——————————————
> Joseph Malkevitch
>
> Email:
> jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu
> Web page:
> http://york.cuny.edu/~malk/
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Election-Methods <election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com>
> on behalf of Closed Limelike Curves <closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, October 18, 2024 4:12 PM
>
> *To:* Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at munsterhjelm.no>
> *Cc:* Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au>;
> election-methods at lists.electorama.com <
> election-methods at lists.electorama.com>; Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [EM] "Instant-runoff voting" article renamed to
> "Ranked-choice voting" on English Wikipedia
>
>
> ** This email originates from a sender outside of CUNY. Verify the sender
> before replying or clicking on links and attachments. **
> This email originated from election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com,
> a sender outside of CUNY. Never send login credentials, financial
> information, or sensitive information by email. Report suspicious email to
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> But, in any case, my main comments on this are that Wikipedia policy is
> actually very clear on this issue.
> 1. Wikipedia requires using the common name for a thing, even if it's a
> misnomer or less-than-ideal. For example, the articles are titled "morning
> sickness" and "Panama hat" instead of "Nausea and vomiting of pregnancy" or
> "That hat from Ecuador sometimes called a Panama hat". This helps both with
> search results and with ensuring neutrality in naming disputes: the San
> Francisco Board of Elections would argue "RCV" is accurate because voters
> do rank the candidates, but that "IRV" is inaccurate because the results
> aren't instantly available.
> 2. Wikipedia requires following the lead of a majority of reliable
> sources. Overwhelmingly, reliable sources (e.g. media, academic papers, and
> so on) use and explicitly define RCV to mean IRV, not ranked voting methods
> in general.
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 10:05 AM Closed Limelike Curves <
> closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The Electowiki article covers this. The name IRV is a promotional name
> pushed by FairVote in the early 2000s. The name never really caught on and
> was never used by anyone but FairVote and Wikipedia, because the first
> place to adopt it (San Francisco) renamed it "Ranked-choice voting" because
> they thought the name IRV would confuse people into expecting the results
> to be released "instantly" (immediately after polls closed). The term IRV
> has never seen much widespread use outside voting theory circles and
> FairVote.
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 9:09 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
> km-elmet at munsterhjelm.no> wrote:
>
> On 2024-10-18 17:38, Chris Benham wrote:
> >
> > I gather that "Instant Runoff Voting" was originally a promotional name
> > in the US that after being used for a long time was changed (for some
> > reason I forget) to Ranked Choice Voting.
>
>  From what I understand, one of the public-facing organizations (might
> have been the LWV) suggested the name because, to the voter, the
> characteristic feature is that you rank the candidates. And then
> FairVote found out that it helped their advocacy, so it stuck.
>
> -km
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