Talk:Sockpuppet

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Unanimity

@Kristomun: — I'm probably going to revert your most recent change to "Sockpuppet". The way that you wrote it doesn't make it obvious. In fact, I had to read it three or four times to understand what I think you were trying to state, and even then, I'm still not confident. The words "unanimity" and "anonymity" are similar enough that readers may get confused, so it makes the article as a whole more confusing. Could you explain why that point needs to be made as the only statement in a brand new section? Why is it important to make this point at all? I don't even think you're correct. -- RobLa (talk) 23:11, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Suppose that you're doing an online yes/no vote where a single no vote is enough to veto the decision. Then the yes voters have no incentive to create fake users to vote in the election because if the vote is all yes, they get what they want, and if there's a no, then no amount of additional yeses will cancel the no. The no voters have no incentive either, because if a no voter wants to vote no, there's no need to create fake users who also vote no, because a single no suffices to block the decision. The secret ballot part is just to cover problems where a no voter may otherwise lose face and thus prefer creating a fake user. (I remember reading a paper that states that veto/unanimity is essentially the only voting method that can handle an arbitrary amount of socks or fake users, but I can't seem to find it.)
As for relevance, I was mainly thinking that since this is a wiki about voting methods, adding some voting method-related information would be relevant. Kristomun (talk) 10:44, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
What if the voter wants their real-life identity to be associated with a "yes" vote (so they vote "yes" with the account associated with their identity), but privately, they want to reject the measure being voted on? -- RobLa (talk) 23:51, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
That's why I say "secret ballot" (used to be "anonymous", but secret ballot is a better term). If nobody knows who voted yes or no, the user can just pretend to be a yes voter while secretly voting no. If who voted what is public, then you're right: a voter may want to have one sock. Kristomun (talk) 07:26, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Even the voter is even a little concerned about their privacy in an online poll, they might try setting up a sockpuppet rather than use an account that might be tied to their personal identity to cast the single "no" vote in an election for a popular measure that requires unanimity. Is it deeply important to you to make that point on this page, even though you haven't convinced the only other person participating in this disucssion? Also, please don't set up sockpuppets to outnumber me in this debate. :-) -- RobLa (talk) 03:29, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
I must clearly be too deeply invested in keeping my edit to the page, so I think this is where I bow out :-P Kristomun (talk) 09:07, 11 September 2022 (UTC)