User talk:RobLa/Old Voting methods category

Cleaning up categories
See Electowiki:The_caucus Psephomancy (talk) 13:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Naming
User:Psephomancy, now I see why you were eager to use Categories as names. I remember User:Homunq believed pretty strongly that we should start calling them "Voting systems" rather than "Electoral systems". But "electoral system" won on Wikipedia, and I'm guessing that's the mainstream academic name. "Electoral system" makes way more sense to me as a name.

Regardless of what we decide to rename the Voting system article to, I think we should make that article the main article for this category, and only have a brief category description here, in a style similar to Wikipedia. But category renames are such a pain to do, I'm happy with leaving Category:Voting methods in its current location. Thoughts? -- RobLa (talk) 23:55, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

NOTE - I'm reformatting to make it clear who is saying what -- RobLa (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Categories as names?
eager to use Categories as names - (RobLa, 2020-04-12)
 * I'm not sure what you mean? — Psephomancy (talk) 02:56, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That was a thinko. I meant to say "eager to use Category pages as articles", but then I don't remember exactly what I was driving at. -- RobLa (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Voting systems or voting methods?
I remember User:Homunq believed pretty strongly that we should start calling them "Voting systems" - (RobLa, 2020-04-12)
 * I thought it was "voting methods" that he liked, because "systems" includes electronic vs paper ballots, etc.? — Psephomancy (talk) 02:56, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That could be. My main recollection was the push for "voting __" rather than "election __" or "electoral __". I prefer using "election __" or "electoral __", and that seems to be what Wikipedia has settled on. -- RobLa (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking at this mess: w:Talk:Electoral_system/Archive_7 w:Talk:Electoral_system/Archive_8 and the beginning of


 * Homunq is in favor of "method" and against "system", and said 'As to "voting", "election", or "electoral", I'm agnostic'.
 * Someone else said "Voting method" and "voting system" both carry a plain English primary meaning of the process of casting a vote, i.e. paper, mechanical or electronic.' which makes sense to me.  — Psephomancy (talk) 20:05, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Length of category articles
I think we should make that article the main article for this category, and only have a brief category description here, in a style similar to Wikipedia. - (RobLa, 2020-04-12)


 * Yeah, I'll just assume they debated that to death and decided that method was better for some reason. :D  (Psephomancy


 * resolved, then! -- RobLa (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Category renaming: easy or hard?
But category renames are such a pain to do - (RobLa, 2020-04-12)


 * They're easy to do with the mass edit extension, I did one yesterday:
 * Move Category:Preferential voting methods to Category:Ranked voting methods
 * On Category:Preferential voting methods, click the "Edit all" tab (I'm not sure if it's visible for all users, but it should be visible to you)
 * In the "Search for:" box, put
 * In the "Replace with:" box, put
 * Make an edit summary
 * Press Preview to make sure it's not going to clobber anything
 * Press Execute
 * — Psephomancy (talk) 02:56, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, ok! I may refer back to this if we decide to rename the category. -- RobLa (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Voting or electoral
A "voting method" to me sounds like a method for filling out a ballot. Back in 2017, wikipedia:User:Homunq tried to rename "Voting system" to "Voting method". The consensus (which I think was a better conclusion) as to rename the article to "Electoral system". That seems good enough to me. Could we rename this category to "Electoral methods", so as to reserve the term "voting" for the actual thing that voters do on election day? -- RobLa (talk) 03:10, 22 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I would ask whether the EPOV supports RobLa's request to make "voting method" be used to describe the way people fill out their ballots on election day. Personally, I think the term "voting method" has pretty unambiguously been used by everyone to mean "method of electing representatives". In fact, given the current debate over mail-in balloting during the pandemic, I'd like to create an article discussing exactly the concept that you refer to as "voting method", but I'd strongly prefer to use a different term (such as "balloting method") to name it. BetterVotingAdvocacy (talk) 21:21, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Electoral systems
Barring compelling objection, I intend to rename this category to "Electoral systems" in June 2020. Comments still welcome at Category_talk:Voting methods, but to we've been discussing this for months, and it's time to align ourselves with Wikipedia's chosen terminology. Additionally, most of the prose from this article will be moved to Electoral system, and the category page will become a much more succinct description of what "electoral systems" are. -- RobLa (talk) 02:55, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you have any sources where the major North American voting reform organizations use "voting method" to mean something other than "electoral system"? I'm not objecting to this change, but I'm curious. BetterVotingAdvocacy (talk) 05:42, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not planning on gathering evidence. English Wikipedia clearly went through years of discussion arriving at the current terminology. I don't agree with everything that gets consensus in that community, but that Voting method redirects to prose about the mechanisms+logistics of voting (e.g. paper ballots, machine voting, online voting, postal voting and other methods), it seems self-defeating to try to redefine the term on electowiki. -- RobLa (talk) 21:45, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Rename happened
I wasn't planning on making the move today, but the discrepancy with English Wikipedia was driving me nuts. Moreover, this is "electowiki", not "votiwiki".

As anticipated, the move was messy. The history of the old Category:Voting methods page can now be found at Electowiki:Electoral systems. At least, that's where it is right now. I *might* merge the history back in with the Category:Voting methods, or I might move it to Electowiki:Voting methods. TBD. I just want to wrap things up for tonight. -- RobLa (talk) 06:54, 15 June 2020 (UTC)