Wikipedia:WikiProject Social choice and voting systems
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First, an important note for everyone to remember:
A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about Voting systems. These are only suggestions, things to give us focus and to get us going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
For info on voting systems used by English Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, see meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections.
Scope
[edit]This WikiProject's primary focuses are:
- Defining a standard format for editing pages on individual voting systems
- Editing information about voting systems not specific to any one voting system, especially criteria for evaluating voting systems
- Importing and editing the large amount of public domain information that exists on the internet on voting theory
Structure
[edit]There is an overview of voting systems on the "Electoral system" page on English Wikipedia.
Ensure that every article has a category:
- Category:Electoral systems e.g. Single Transferable Vote
- Category:Voting theory e.g. Tactical voting
- Category:Voting theorists e.g. Marquis de Condorcet
- Category:Voting system criteria e.g. Monotonicity criterion
Avoid putting an article in multiple categories.
Issues to consider
[edit]Voting systems (more commonly known as "electoral systems") are a domain that has been analyzed from sharply different and contrasting disciplines: game theory, sociology, political science, decision science, cognitive science and economics. Our articles should give a clear summary of the analysis from as many of these domains as we can get, without overly relying on jargon from any. Where there is jargon, find the article that explains the jargon, and link to it. If there isn't yet an article, perhaps it's time time to create an article (see Help:Your first article to learn how to do this). If you do create an article, make sure that the terms of art are clearly explained.
Style rules
[edit]Numbers
[edit]- Ballots should not be "dropped", and vote totals should not be "normalized", halfway through a voting process. This means you should avoid deleting exhausted ballots should be included in any vote totals, as should ballots that indicate no preference between two candidates. There's good reasons for this:
- For many voting rules, these two measures of defeat strength are different and can produce different results.
- A 60:40 win is very different from a 30:50:20 win (the latter indicates most voters are indifferent).
- Vote totals can always be renormalized by readers, but it is impossible to calculate the total number of exhausted ballots from a normalized vote total.
- Per this discussion, the Droop quota is defined as exactly . Try to avoid alternate quotas created by rounding or adding one extra vote. However, if you do choose to round, be sure to round up (not down) to keep an admissible quota.
Advice
[edit]Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so avoid minor details about the mechanics of counting or obscure criteria.
Try to make mentions of prominent places where the system is used. In general, avoid comparisons with other systems (and POV advocacy, in particular), however contrasting notable differences to similar systems and clarifying names is usually ok.
Try to describe how a voter interacts with the system, and what ballots look like. What the voter expresses (e.g. approval, disapproval, a ranked preference per candidate) and what they are told the mark means. Also describe how the winners are determined. Give one or more examples if they help, and feel free to copy sample data from articles such as Instant runoff - for single-winner systems, the example using the state of Tennessee and this map can be used quite effectively. Examples should strive to demonstrate possibilities for tactical voting, to be explained in the section below. They should also strive to demonstrate differences in outcomes between this system and other, similar systems, as well as unusual rules for the system.
A section on controversy, issues, and advocacy is usually appropriate. This may be related to other sections, in particular information about tactical voting, the effect on factions, candidates, and the jurisdiction, as well as information on the voting system criteria the method passes and fails. Tactical voting can usually be explained fairly well in a short section.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting systems/Included methods and criteria for a discussion of criteria to use. In general, criteria worthy of mentioning on Wikipedia are likely worthy of mentioning in a voting system article, however they may best be moved into a sub-article if the voting system article becomes too long.
Articles that are currently a mess
[edit]- Duggan–Schwartz theorem
- Plurality voting
- First past the post (Not the same as plurality?!)
- Majority rule
- Condorcet methods
These articles are in need of some sweet, sweet cleanup and love.
Requested articles
[edit]These articles would be useful to have.
Similar Wikiprojects
[edit]Electowiki has fantastic, detailed information on voting systems, both new, old, and obscure. Be aware, however, that much of the content on Electowiki is either POV or original research, which are not appropriate for Wikipedia. Electowiki uses the CC BY-SA license like Wikipedia does, however, so when you see some worthy content there that can be made encyclopedic feel free to copy it.
Some voting concepts, e.g. majority of the entire membership, fall within the purview of WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure.
See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Democracy (on votings within the Wikiverse).
Participants
[edit]Please add yourself to Category:WikiProject Voting systems participants if you would like to participate in Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting systems. Known active members:
- CRGreathouse (talk · contribs) - voting theory from a mathematical perspective
- Jasavina (talk · contribs) - I can't be given responsibility, but I do try to improve articles as strikes my fancy
- MarkusSchulze (talk · contribs)
- Closed Limelike Curves (talk · contribs) - supports dictatorship by a cat
- Motzarcik (talk · contribs) - a university professor specialised in computational social choice
- Choucas Bleu (talk · contribs) - Willing to help, trying to evaluate what is needed where
- Rankedchoicevoter (talk · contribs) - despite my name, not a huge fan of IRV comparared to other options. Know a few things about mixed systems, combinations, but try to visit other articles too when I have time
Alternatively, you may add yourself to the outdated list below, which contains users that haven't been editing English Wikipedia for years:
Possibly-inactive users
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