Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Voting system

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[edit] Voting system

Self-nom. This article is the culmination of the efforts of many voting theorists and voting system enthusiasts. I think that this article has become a great example of NPOV in a field that sorely needs one, because almost all of the other published literature and web sites on voting systems are biased in favor of one voting method or another. The article has been through a peer review, and now I think it's ready to be a featured article candidate. rspeer 01:59, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

• Support I was expecting to see an article couched in jargon and theoretical babble that I wouldn't understand. Instead, I'm very pleasantly described. It's well-written and conveys its subject to a lay reader, such as myself, brilliantly. One criticism is that it's slightly disjointed in that the history of voting systems bit at the end is kind of a subtopic. Maybe some reference to the history in the introduction would be useful, so that this section doesn't come as a surprise. Excellent work overall, jguk 11:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Well written article, showing how much thought has gone into seemingly simple things. Very complete when including its many branches into complementary articles. −Woodstone 14:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
• See below. Minor object. First let me say that the article seems nicely comprehensive and is written at a very appropriate overview level, and that it is very well-written at a sentence-by-sentence level. Nice images, too. My objection is that it is choppy— specifically, there are a lot of really short paragraphs and a lot of really short sections. (Outline or "Powerpoint presentation" style, some might call it.) Specifically, I'd:
  • Eliminate the subsections in "Aspects of voting systems" and use prose to introduce the sub-topics
  • Eliminate most of the subsections in "History".
  • Combine paragraphs in "History".

—Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:43, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with combining sections. For an article this long, I figured that frequent headings are important for keeping track of where you are. Without dividing the history into five eras, for example, I don't see how to keep it from being one huge, undifferentiated section. Likewise, I think the headings in the "Aspects of voting systems" section serve a useful purpose -- if you want to get on to the meat of the article, you can skim them and see that the major aspects are the ballot, voting power, and constituencies right from the headings. But if this really isn't the right style for a featured article, I suppose I can go through and merge sections. rspeer 03:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Another way of looking at it is that the best writing is organized — at the page level, if you know what I mean — by the writing itself, not by the table of contents. Especially in the history section, I think you'll find that it improves when it flows as one coherent narrative rather than a grab-bag of sections. (I hated it when someone gave me this same advice in my first FAC, but I can promise I harp on this point nowadays not out of spiteful revenge, but because I became a believer.) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:20, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

• Support Very good effort. — Wackymacs 08:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
• Support now. I see you've "smushed together" the history section. This article gets my support now, even with the short "Aspects of voting systems" sections. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:14, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Update: Support still stands with (5 instead of ealier 6) subsections reintroduced back into history. I'd have gone with fewer, but it's hardly a deal breaker! I like the way it reads now with the combined paragraphs a lot better, too. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
• Support - a pretty comprehensive and easy-to-read overview. A few comments. (i) The table in the middle setting out whether systems meet various voting system criteria is quite wide and may not display well on smaller (x600) screen sizes. Making the font smaller, or abbreviating the headings, or both, may help. (ii) In the History section, there is no discussion of voting systems in Ancient Rome (election to Roman assemblies, election of officeholders, etc). (iii) There is no mention of unanimous voting systems - such as blackballing - for elections to membership of Gentlemen's clubs and similar bodies. (iv) Pace Bunchofgrapes, but I think the "smushed" history section still looks a bit choppy as a single section. I wonder if adding a few subheadings back (say, ancient world, development of voting theory in the 18th century, implementations in the 19th and 20th century innovations, and issues in modern times) would help? (v) It may be worth mentioning that different voting systems can be used in the same country at the same time - for example, five different voting systems are currently used in the UK for different purposes: "first past the post" (for general elections and most local elections, with mostly multi-member constituencies in local elections), closed party lists (for the European Parliament), single transferable vote (for the Northern Ireland Assembly and local elections in Northern Ireland), the additional member system (for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Assembly) and the supplementary vote system (for directly elected mayors, such as the Mayor of London) - see Elections in the United Kingdom. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Two or three subheadings in history would be great for that length. (It was six before.) Pre/post 20th century? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:57, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

The table has been tested for lower screen resolutions. Try resizing your window and note how the headings wrap. I'll try to work in (ii) and (iii), and the dreaded (iv), later. I don't think (v) is necessary, and it would bloat the article. rspeer 17:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Re (i): with my standard screen setup using the classic skin, I have to scroll right to see the last column or two. Re (iv): looking at the edit history, I see I was asking for for pretty much what was there before your changes to deal with Bunchofgrapes's comment! Re (v): I was surprised to see discussion of recent developments in the US, Canada and New Zealand, but nothing about the spread of proportional representation in the UK. - -- ALoan (Talk) 19:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

• Support - I found this to a very effective reference article: useful, comprehensive, and well-written. (This is my first "support" on FAC; formulating a support seems much harder than an objection, because you inevitably end up endorsing quite a number of things at once. For me, at least, it is way easier to be confident in "knowing what you don't know" when you have specific objections, Over-limiting one's support also seems problematic ("this part is OK, I don't know about the rest", as does overgeneralizing ("I thought it was great!". Participating in this whole "consensus, not a...vote" thing is tricky, and requires lots of work. IMHO.) My support here is based on absolutely no formal knowledge of voting systems, and no significant critical experience in the various presentation styles for academic/reference material:
  • Clean expository writing - The writing may be (well, is) spare, and this reinforced by the many short paragraphs, however, the job is clear from the start, and the style handles it well. Many things are explained, but the overall context of "voting systems" is maintained. "More words" or a more conversational treatment could possibly work as well, but that is so far distant from this approach, and this works, so I find the style to suit the subject matter very well indeed.
  • Effective use of subheadings - The sections are logical, and not overdone. I feel confident in returning to this article and being able to easily access specifics about voting systems, and the TOC establishes this.
  • Establishes sense of authority, feeling of confidence -- trust - In part due to the above, after reading the first few paragraphs, I was basically "confident" in the material, and this was maintained through to the end. On any number of levels, I automatically question what I read to a greater or lesser degree; here, I soon felt that everything was likely well-handled and consistent, and could concentrate on the actual information at face value.
  • Abstraction to a consisent level of detail - This overview involves many classes and subsets and variations and the like, and an uneven treatment could easily have created confusion. The choices of what to explain in more or less detail was well-handled. When an "other options" list was presented, it seemed natural, There was never a sense of, "oh, why wasn't that explained more?" A case in point, I really like this bit, where the distinction between Condorcet method and Condorcet completion method could have been offloaded to the Condorect voting article and not been missed by me; based on my trust in the authors, I feel its inclusion adds to my understanding at this overview level without getting "too detailed" compared to the rest:

These methods are often referred to collectively as the Condorcet method, because the Condorcet criterion ensures that they all give the same result in most elections. The differences occur in situations where no option is undefeated, meaning that there exists a cycle of options that defeat each other. Considering the Condorcet method to be the abstract method that does not resolve these cycles, specific versions of Condorcet are called Condorcet completion methods.

General comment: It is actually readable! It could be seen as "too point-form", but I read it for FAC, not out of current interest in the topic, and it did carry me right through by building an informative picture. I also checked the article history, scanning versions in 50 edit hops, not looking for anything in particular, and it was cool to see how the article had evolved over a period of four years with many contributors doing stints over time -- this added some confidence in the article's accuracy. I'd return to this page if I wanted to know something specific, say, about "proportinal representation", FIRST, before hitting the search engines, for the context it provides.

Criticism: The lead could be crunched into one paragraph. Especially given the spare styling and amount of info to come, reading it in one go I think is much more effective in setting the tone and providing an overview. Also, the "smushing" of the History section subheads is I think a mistake (I first read it before the smushing and instantly noticed the difference). For one, it changes the rhythm that preceded it. Second, it makes the section a bit misleading, in that it is a history beginning with democracy, and I'm not sure if that is exactly the same as the history of "voting systems". (Using the subhead to clear this up may not be the best solution, but it worked for me.) I am also somewhat concerned by a comment in a previous support about the omission of stuff like blackballing; I would hope (trust) that "all" of the reasonably relevant info is here. This illustrates (my) difficulty with support, but in balance, I will trust that this final FAC process will appropriately catch such things (heh-heh). An "Other voting systems" as a mop-up section for anything that may be of lesser overall importance, if warranted, would perhaps satisfy anything in this area.

Phew. Given the relatively little time I spent on it, and whatever background expertise or lack thereof I bring to the relevant considerations, those are my findings in support. Perhaps a little wordy... Oh well. :-) --Tsavage 17:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow - you could just say "support" ;) -- ALoan (Talk) 19:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I could. (I guess "Cool" on the front page is still fresh in my mind.) --Tsavage 20:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the feedback! I'll work on some of your suggestions. And I nominate this for FFACC: Featured Featured Article Candidates Comments. :) rspeer 05:05, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• Support - however I agree that at least some of the subheadings need to go back into the history section. Scott Ritchie 22:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment. Very well written and informative overall, but I have a couple of issues:

• The comparison table lists Range Voting as ambiguous under 'Clone Independence', but Range voting itself says that it fulfills this criteria. I'm unclear as to which it is. Also, the 'ambiguous' listings in the chart could use a link to somewhere explaining the amibuity.

  • The "Ambiguous" listing was a compromise. There's a whole complicated issue here that I don't know where to discuss - it might involve splitting Independence of Clones off from strategic nomination into its own article.

    The problem is whether to assume that every ballot is a lossy view of the actual preferences of the voter, and those preferences should be taken into account for criteria, or whether all that matters is the votes on the ballot. If you pick either option and stick to it as a hard rule, you run into flagrant violations of common sense.

    Criteria based on ranked preferences don't make much sense on an Approval ballot, and you get really stupid hypothetical situations like "what if candidates A and B are exactly the same, but a voter approves one and disapproves of the other because they approved of C even more and had already decided to only approve their top 2 candidates?". The same objection applies to rated ballots if you see them as a superset of Approval ballots.

    If you go by the votes only, though, you get Plurality passing just about everything in vacuous ways, simply because so little information is provided by a plurality ballot. And the best method ever, in that view, would be one where everyone submitted blank ballots and the winner was chosen at random.

    I'm sure there's a third way in between, a common sense way to apply such criteria, but even if someone here figured out what it is, it couldn't go in an article because it would be original research. Phew, that was a lot. So, in summary, this is a relevant issue that should probably appear on Wikipedia, but it will involve fleshing out other articles. rspeer 01:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

    • I didn't realize the extent of this issue. It should probably be addressed at some point, but shouldn't affect this FAC. The Catfish 03:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
• The lead should mention the history of voting systems so the section doesn't come as a surprise
  • Sure - I'll think about how to work that in. rspeer 01:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
    • How's this? 03:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
• The history section could use a bit more expansion under ===Early Democracy===
  • Probably true, but not too much more - this part of the history mostly belongs in history of democracy when it doesn't deal with different voting systems. rspeer 01:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
• I think that the history should come first, as that makes better sense and seems to be the standard procedure IIRC
  • I disagree. It would involve terms that weren't yet defined, and make it really hard to get to the meat of the article. rspeer 01:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I see your point, disregard that suggestion The Catfish 03:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
• ==Majority Rule== seems to fit better as the first subsection under ==Aspects of Voting Systems==
  • After some consideration, I disagree here too. Majority rule is a motivation for these systems, not a parameter of the system that you tweak like the other aspects are. rspeer 01:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Good point. Perhaps the section should be rearranged as ==Motivations for Voting Systems== or somesuch The Catfish 03:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Overall, these concerns are relatively minor and I look forward to seeing this make FA The Catfish 00:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Support My issues have all been addressed. The Catfish 03:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)