Talk:Limitations of spatial models of voting
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Welcome back!
Welcome back, User:Lucasvb! I have a couple of comments below that I've split up because the conversations they could inspire probably lead in different directions. Regardless, I appreciate seeing a familiar name contributing to electowiki again! -- RobLa (talk) 05:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Needs better summary
The lead section of the article should provide a better summary of the remainder of the article. It shouldn't be necessary for the reader to read paragraphs of prose to figure out what the point of the page is. The lead paragraph(s) should easily be copied to other articles, without relying on the prose of the article (per electowiki:Summary style). As it stands, the "Spatial model of voting#Limitations" section states "The following article discusses this limitation and some implications" as its very last statement. While that is my fault for sloppy copy/pasting, you'll have to concede that a three-sentence summary for such a long article should use that sentence wisely. An article this long should have a better summary (possibly longer, but certainly use its words wisely if there are going to use that few). Could you provide a bit more of a summary at the top of this? -- RobLa (talk) 05:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Take "dimensional" out of the name
Earlier (at Spatial model of voting#Merging the "Dimensional limitations of the spatial model" article into this one) I suggested that Dimensional limitations of the spatial model get merged into the "Spatial model of voting]]" article. After having spent a lot of time editing late at night and early into the morning, I ended up adding a lot of material from the "Political spectrum" into the "Spatial model of voting" article (and deleting it from the former). The title doesn't need both "dimensional" and "spatial" in it. It also seems to me that there are multiple spatial models, so referring to "the spatial model" see a bit out of place. Assuming we rename it, what should we rename this article to: "Limitations of the spatial model" or "Limitations of spatial models"? -- RobLa (talk) 05:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
- It does feel at first glance that the term "dimensional" is redundant in the title, but if we simply said "limitations of the spatial model" it may imply that the article refers to its empirical accuracy or some sort of epistemic criticism of the model (like those already mentioned in Spatial_model_of_voting), of which there are plenty. For example, it could also refer to criticisms comparing it to directional models. The article I wrote is specifically about how even working within the assumptions of a spatial model, the dimension of the space used imposes limitations that are usually not even recognized. The spatial model article lists 1/2/3-d cases as increasing "refinements", but my article highlights how certain structure is inherent in the choice of dimensions and number of candidates. It's a limitation that is far more fundamental, and covers any Euclidean spatial model. So I think that strictly from a technical point of view the "dimensional" qualifier is essential to warrant an article of its own. Merging it to the spatial model may be possible, but when I was editing it ends up larger than the rest of the article. lucasvb (talk} 03:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for responding. It seems to me we need an article titled "Limitations of the spatial model of voting" before we need an article titled "Dimensinoal limitations of the spatial model". We need the general article before we need the more specific article. I'm going to make the change, and then you can decide how to alter the prose to fit the title if you don't agree with my changes. It's actually preferable that there is redundancy between "Limitations of spatial models of voting" and "Spatial model of voting", since the former needs to be a subarticle of the latter, rather than a standalone piece of literature. This is a wiki, and as such, all of the articles should be tightly linked with one another. -- RobLa (talk) 08:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)