three

Three and

Since the last vote, I've decided that somehow the average is unfair to the numbers on either end-- namely three and six.

Which are the only 2 nubers that make any sense to me.

See, I was going to compose a post like Gar's #245, but I was going to make it funny. Damn.

I'm not going to be a pusher for Prffmmmg again. I'm not. But could someone explain to me why a runoff would be better than doing it in one swoop? I really want to know! And don't just say "It's complicated." Three options. Ask people to vote for their runoff choice in advance, should their first choice get the least number of votes. I do not accept that that is complicated.

t edited to add I understood the objections when there were 6 choices (like with the secondses question). I didn't agree, but I understood. Three choices? NSM.

I do not accept that that is complicated.

Jon, it's not complicated for you. But it might be complicated for me or for anyone else who has proposed a runoff. In general, I proposed just voting and having a runoff if necessary because it seems to bother fewere people.

Real life Buffista example of when we have used preferential voting: Choosing a F2F site. We had poll after poll and it was "All Rank Your Choice" which ended up being not as clear as we would have liked.

THAT is why it is complicated in my head. It didn't work cleanly then. Prior experience.

I do not accept that that is complicated.

I don't think you get a choice. Really. Because it's subjective, and it's about the amount of energy & effort that folk have to invest in both understanding and explaining it.

What seems to be clear is that it has taken a lot of explanation. Which implies it will keep taking a lot of explanation, with new voters, and the like.

From that you have to accept something, don't you?

Real life Buffista example of when we have used preferential voting: Choosing a F2F site. We had poll after poll and it was "All Rank Your Choice" which ended up being not as clear as we would have liked.

That wasn't exactly preferential voting. We had stats as to how many people prefered each city as a first choice, and how many prefered each as a second choice, but no way of seeing how individual people voted. It wasn't the same type of data.

No, Hil, you're right. It wasn't exactly the same kind of data. Though I would think, if we did preferential voting at the end of the day, in aggregate, the data would be remarkably similar.

But it was still a ranking system that people used to make their preferences known. And it was painful at the time.

I don't think you get a choice. Really. Because it's subjective

I get that. Really. But:

Three options. Ask people to vote for their runoff choice in advance, should their first choice get the least number of votes.

Is it possible for someone to explain to me why they think that's complicated? Again, 6 choices? I understand. This is different.

it seems to bother fewer people.

Does it bother you? Or does it just bother you that it bothers other people? I'd like to hear from someone who doesn't like it for itself. Not for meta-reasons.

which ended up being not as clear as we would have liked.

I would argue that it wasn't clear because we had no defined system to interpret the results, and there were more than three choices.

Does it bother you? Or does it just bother you that it bothers other people? I'd like to hear from someone who doesn't like it for itself. Not for meta-reasons.

No Jon, it doesn't bother me now. And I'll tell you why. Because I am at the end of my line with caring about it. And because I tend to be flexible about things like wording and how things are voted on. Sure I'll discuss them, but I'm not married to any single way of doing things and because I'm willing to be flexible.

Yet when it first came up, it did bother me because it caused a conversation that lasted over many posts for many hours that seemed to go around in circles. It bothered me that instead of listening to what people had to say about it, people who were pro-preferential voting kept insisting that people who didn't like it obviously didn't get it. I can NOT like things and still get it. The two aren't mutually exclusive. There is no One True Way to vote for me. So it irks when people act like my dislike of something is because I'm too stupid to understand it clearly.

In fairness, though, a lot of the people who said they didn't want preferential said that they didn't want it because it seemed too complicated, or because they didn't get it. Not all though, and I'm sorry if you felt slighted.

The final ballot for the F2F was preferential, though without that name attached, and I thought it gave us a fairly clear and simple result. (FTR, I wrote the ballot on that one, so take that with a grain of salt if you wish. OTOH, the result was not what I voted for, so I can't have been that biased in seeing the results.)

I'm having a little trouble believing that choosing between 3 and 4 as a ballot option has gotten this complicated, though. I'd rather see us campaign a bit between these numbers and see if we can't come to some agreement, as I think we did with (rejecting) 12 and (accepting) 6.