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

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2024-10-21 20:11, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
> 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.

It does seem that Google follows redirects, too. For instance, the WP 
article for "Set covering" redirects to the "Set cover problem". 
Searching Google for "set covering" gives the WP article on the "set 
cover problem" as the first match.

So if the WP instant-runoff article is not the first match, it may not 
simply be "because the WP RCV article is a redirect and Google doesn't 
follow redirects". There may be some other reason.

(For what it's worth, my Google search for "ranked choice voting" gave 
the Wikipedia article for "ranked voting", not the FairVote page, as its 
first match.)

-km