About the complicatedness:

I am not mathy, but I am pretty smart.

I took a course on voting once.

I always read Bureacracy and participate.

It has taken me 2 weeks to understanf how preferential voting works. When John said the thing about there being NO POINTS, that's when it was all clear to me.

Buffistas who are less interested in participating in bureacratic matters (I am becuase I feel like I can't give coding expertise or a lot of money, and I want to give something that I am fairly good at)-- may not have the time to understand this.

In order to participate in Bureacracy the past couple of weeks, I haven't really been posting on the rest of the board. People don't want to do that. Whatever we do should take less time that what we did previously. That's mainly why we voted on it, I think.

Why don't the two main proponants of the two different systems we're talking about write up a little blurb about the strengths of their system, and we put them to a vote?

Many of them, I'm sure, don't really know how it works from there

Speaking just for myself, I am strongly against using any system here where the math can't be easily explained. I'm gonna want to know how the votes are counted.

Why don't the two main proponants of the two different systems we're talking about write up a little blurb about the strengths of their system, and we put them to a vote?

This discussion is about hashing the pros and cons so we can possibly come to a consensus. Voting now would be premature.

Okay, wait a minute - aren't we already using a most-votes-takes-all system with Mr. Poll when we choose thread names? Has that bothered people? (The answer may well be yes - I'm just asking.)

It's not just about how I vote. It's about what my vote means.

I was a math major. I can understand this stuff. But I think it's an unreasonably high barrier to entry, and had I known I was opening the door to this with my pro-vote pro-"simple majority" vote, I'd have voted differently.

The balance for quick and simple can't be tilted too far away from simple, or it's like work.

Speaking just for myself, I am strongly against using any system here where the math can't be easily explained. I'm gonna want to know how the votes are counted.

It can be easily explained. This is not a 'can't get it' barrier, it's a 'can't be bothered' barrier. (In Australia. I just realised this could be taken as referring to here, which is not the case.)

Procedure:

1. Each voter ranks all the candidates in order of preference.
2. The system works out the two most popular candidates, and then finds which one of them most voters prefer. That candidate wins.

Explanation:

The election is like a whole series of runoffs. Each round, people vote for who they like best and the candidate with the lowest number of votes gets eliminated.

In the next round, everyone who voted for him/her/it votes for which of the remaining candidates they like best. The candidate with the lowest number of votes gets eliminated. And so on until:

Eventually you're left with only two candidates. Everyone votes for one or the other, and whoever gets over 50% of the vote wins.

But because all the voters provided a full ranking at the start, these runoffs can happen automatically. You only have to vote once.

The balance for quick and simple can't be tilted too far away from simple, or it's like work.

go simple. choose simple.

Do people get what I'm saying about using up the good will of the board and spending capital voting? I think ita expresses it succintly.

Okay...I now understand the system, and I'm still against it.

Honestly, I thought we were only going to use this voting system thing for pro/anti type issues, not things where we'd need to rank multiple optons. I thought that we explicitly excluded thread-naming for that very reason.

OK now I'm at work, but I'm not going to get any done, am I?

Whose suggestion was this:

On the ballot the question reads: Do you think 10 Buffistas should constitute the minimum number for each vote to count? yes/no

On the ballot the question reads: Do you think 30 Buffistas should constitute the minimum number for each vote to count? yes/no

I don't get how that would work, if I were allowed to vote for both. Now that's a confusing system...

When John said the thing about there being NO POINTS, that's when it was all clear to me.

I wonder if we're coming up against some wholly other system of voting -- the "vote for three candidates out of ten for school board" system, which seems to assign three points around somehow -- and that's muddying the waters.

I am strongly against using any system here where the math can't be easily explained. I'm gonna want to know how the votes are counted.

Jessica, are you saying you didn't understand the Whedon/Monkey/Cheese Man "mathy if it needs to be" examples above? [edit: ignore this now Jessica's posted again]

billytea, you know I love you but your explanation may have confused people more, plus disagrees with what I thought Jon and I hashed out earlier in this thread.