Talk:Essential Questions

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"Must" vs. "Should"

I'd rather replace "must" with "should" on a lot of the questions... James Green-Armytage 06:34, 11 Jun 2005 (PDT)

I chose to formulate the questions as "sharp" as possible, e.g. using "must" instead of "should", in order to make them as discriminating as possible. I hoped that the distinction between full (++) and partial (+) agreement suffices to distinguish between a "must" and a "should". User:Jobst Heitzig

Or, maybe it could be worded as "should", and a ++ could indicate that the participant feels that it "must"? I've made the change and explained it on EM. Feel free to revert it you prefer. James Green-Armytage 02:30, 14 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Confusing items

I found a number of items confusing:
to make people vote "honestly": Does this mean "permit people to vote honestly," or does it really mean to force honest voting somehow?
to give both majorities and minorities a fair amount of power: What can this mean, other than a Random Ballot component?
Approval information (e.g. cutoffs) should be used: I prefer to get Approval information by using limited ranks, rather than having a cutoff along with a ranking.
Approval information should be interpreted as cardinal rates of, say, 0 or 1: Not sure what the alternative is.
Ranking X and Y equal means X and Y should get the same probability of winning: I get the feeling that this is an effort at describing the WV justification. I'd rather say that "ranking X and Y equal means that neither should get in the way of the other winning."
Freedom of preference expression is more important than anti-strategic properties: What can this mean? What kind of "freedom"? It seems to me that if you can safely express preferences, then this is already an anti-strategic property.
Efficiency is more important than simplicity: Does "efficiency" mean "general goodness"?

Kevin Venzke 20:12, 11 Jun 2005 (PDT)

By "make people vote honestly" I did not mean "force" but rather meant "make it probable that people vote honestly".

A "fair amount of power" need not mean a proportional amount of power as would be introduced by Random Ballot.

Suggesting approval cutoffs was really just an example for approval information, slots could be another, so you could add them as a second example in that statement.

An interpretation of "approved" as "rate 1" would in my view imply that all approved candidates are considered equally good.

The formulation with "ranking X and Y equal" was not an effort at whatever - feel free to add your alternative statement to the list.

As for "freedom of preference expression": It has been stated several times that allowing voters to express, say, cyclic preferences would increase strategic vulnerabilities and should therefore not be allowed.

As for "efficiency", I agree that this term is vage - perhaps we should replace it by "quality of the result" or something along that line.

User:Jobst Heitzig

"Ranking X and Y equal in first-place means neither should prevent the other from winning": How could a candidate do such a thing when they have no power but to vote themselves? Heitzig-j 15:36, 16 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Sorry about the confusion. Consider a method in which the Condorcet winner is always elected. Suppose X and Y are my favorite candidates. It could be that Y would have been the Condorcet winner, if only I had lowered X beneath Y. But since I didn't, someone else entirely is elected. ...I'll try to reword this item. Kevin Venzke 15:54, 16 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Essential Question or not?

I think the question whether "It is preferable to measure defeat strength in pairwise methods by winning votes rather than margins" is important but still not essential in the sense I intended this list to be since it seems to depend mainly on other questions (how to interpret equal ranks, the importance of anti-strategic properties, etc.). Heitzig-j 15:23, 14 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Honestly, it is not clear to me how one's answer to this item can be deduced from other items. Why not have it? There seem to be a number of items whose inclusion seems arbitrary, or which could be broken down into underlying principles. (What's the principle behind approval cutoffs, for instance.) Kevin Venzke 16:32, 15 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Well, I put it there, so obviously I think that it belongs. Actually, I'm quite interested in people's answer to that question. Anyway, I don't see how it's less essential that a lot of the other questions there. It's certainly too general to be asked in the method evaluation poll. James Green-Armytage 01:38, 16 Jun 2005 (PDT)