Mailing List Archive

2009/8/26 Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org>:
> Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data
> being released, since it allows vote-buying.

I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to
releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this
information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count?

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On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org>wrote:

> Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data
> being released, since it allows vote-buying. Even if the numbers given
> by voters are reduced to the smallest values which still give the same
> rankings, with 18 candidates there are 18 factorial possible
> orderings. That number is sufficiently higher than the number of
> voters that a party wishing to buy votes can specify a voter-specific
> ticket with some random rankings, and be reasonably assured that if
> that ticket appears in the final unencrypted dump, then the contract
> was fulfilled and money can be transferred to the voter.
>
> In 2008 the unencrypted votes were rapidly released, but I was not
> involved in that decision.
>
> This year, I don't think I have been asked directly to provide this
> data, but it seems that the Board and election committee is in favour
> of it being released, and nobody else has offerred to produce the
> data. So I just wrote the relevant script, and am now testing it, so
> the results will be available to the committee and the Board shortly.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of
the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design
a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote.
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Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies.

First, calling a project as "zero quality project", whether it belongs to WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all of the discussion links in your "boycott" section took place in 2005 and 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae).

We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor:

"Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys."

Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any details from ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects.

Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy?

Andrew

"Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."




On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com>wrote:

> I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> is a zero quality project. See
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
>
> Klaus Graf
>

Propose it be closed at Meta then.

--
Alex
(User:Majorly)


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Opps, used wrong subject line. So here's what I said about Wikispecies.

> From: andrewcleung@hotmail.com
> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:49:36 -0400
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
>
>
> Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies.
>
> First, calling a project as "zero quality project", whether it belongs to WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all of the discussion links in your "boycott" section took place in 2005 and 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae).
>
> We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor:
>
> "Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys."
>
> Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any details from ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects.
>
> Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy?
>
> Andrew
>
> "Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com>wrote:
>
> > I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> > is a zero quality project. See
> >
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
> >
> > Klaus Graf
> >
>
> Propose it be closed at Meta then.
>
> --
> Alex
> (User:Majorly)
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Stay on top of things, check email from other accounts!
> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671355
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Hoi,
When people put forward their opinion that a project is of low or no
quality, there is no reason at all to hold back. The only thing that you may
hope for is that the person expressing this opinion is honest. That is the
good faith that you have to assume. There is no reason at all, to hold back
on a bad opinion of a project when you can argue why a project is awful. The
only thing you ask for is that the opinion is expressed with arguments.
Without arguments good or bad opinions about a project are hardly relevant.
Thanks,
GerardM

2009/8/26 Andrew Leung <andrewcleung@hotmail.com>

>
> Opps, used wrong subject line. So here's what I said about Wikispecies.
>
> > From: andrewcleung@hotmail.com
> > To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:49:36 -0400
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Raw data of 2009 Board election ballots
> >
> >
> > Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies.
> >
> > First, calling a project as "zero quality project", whether it belongs to
> WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all
> of the discussion links in your "boycott" section took place in 2005 and
> 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably
> had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated
> multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have
> to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new
> species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the
> paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English
> version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first
> published Systema Naturae).
> >
> > We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a
> correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies
> (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting
> this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species,
> publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor:
> >
> > "Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae
> page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus
> paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even
> have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys."
> >
> > Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any
> details from ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in
> mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even
> from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep
> in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is
> unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects.
> >
> > Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality
> project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see
> hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We
> are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei
> Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their
> otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate
> articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without
> a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations
> to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy?
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> > "Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> > > I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> > > is a zero quality project. See
> > >
> > > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in
> English)
> > >
> > > Klaus Graf
> > >
> >
> > Propose it be closed at Meta then.
> >
> > --
> > Alex
> > (User:Majorly)
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Stay on top of things, check email from other accounts!
> > http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671355
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Send and receive email from all of your webmail accounts.
> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671356
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
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On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Brian<Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:
> This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of
> the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design
> a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote.

What on earth are you talking about?

Tim is concerned about legitimate risk. I don't share Tim's opinion
on the matter but I certainly don't consider it "fear mongering".
Like anything else it's a decision where benefits must be weighed vs
costs. Fortunately the decision to disclose ballots isn't one that
interacts heavily with making the voting system open to many people.


On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/26 Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org>:
>> Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data
>> being released, since it allows vote-buying.
>
> I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to
> releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this
> information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count?

Benefit: Increased resistance to tampering by the vote operators
Benefit: Increased community confidence in the process (because of the above)
Benefit: Increased information available to voting system researchers
(I think we're the only source of "real" ranked preferential ballots)
Benefit: Increased information to inform future campaigns (knowing
that ~10% of the voters last year only ranked Ting is very useful
information, for candidates and for everyone contributing to the
election process)
Cost: Increased risk of compromising voter confidentiality (leaking
information through ballot ordering)
Cost: Increased risk of external manipulation (via vote buying)
Cost: The actual effort required to post the data

Thomas, can you tell me the names of the *people* who could have
completely rigged the election in the absence of ballot disclosures?
(Here is a hint: It's not the election committee) How can you trust
these people absolutely when you can't even name them? Can anyone
here not employed by the foundation or on the election committee do
so? Even if you can trust them to be honest, can you trust them not to
make mistakes? Why? They have made mistakes in the past.

I have no reason to believe anyone trusted would screw with the
election results intentionally. But why trust when we can verify?

Vote buying is a real risk but there are many ways to catch it and the
secrecy of vote buying is likely to be inversely proportional to its
effects, moreover, preventing ballot disclosure only stops one form of
vote buying. It would be more effective, but more development costly,
to buy votes by paying people to either run some browser extension
that fills out and submits the ballot for them, or give them your
authentication-cookies and act as a proxy for them to open the HTTPS
connection to the back-end server and vote as you. In the latter case
the voter couldn't even fake out the payer.

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On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Brian<Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:
> > This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members
> of
> > the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than
> design
> > a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote.
>
> What on earth are you talking about?
>
> Tim is concerned about legitimate risk. I don't share Tim's opinion
> on the matter but I certainly don't consider it "fear mongering".
> Like anything else it's a decision where benefits must be weighed vs
> costs. Fortunately the decision to disclose ballots isn't one that
> interacts heavily with making the voting system open to many people.
>

The reason we let such a tiny fraction of the community vote is because of
an irrational and inflated fear of fraudulent votes. The risk has been blown
entirely out of proportion and absolutely no technical measures have been
been pursued. The Board and those who they coordinate with technically sit
around and drum up the scariest possible situations they can think of and
then develop a policy which prevents it from happening without even
considering technologies that would allow more people to vote. You say its a
legitimate risk, but you do not quantify how risky you believe it is. The
answer is that it is almost zero.
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Brian wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org>wrote:
>
>> Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data
>> being released, since it allows vote-buying. Even if the numbers given
>> by voters are reduced to the smallest values which still give the same
>> rankings, with 18 candidates there are 18 factorial possible
>> orderings. That number is sufficiently higher than the number of
>> voters that a party wishing to buy votes can specify a voter-specific
>> ticket with some random rankings, and be reasonably assured that if
>> that ticket appears in the final unencrypted dump, then the contract
>> was fulfilled and money can be transferred to the voter.
[...]
>
> This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members of
> the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than design
> a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote.

My hope is that the opposite is true. I'm interested in building
protections against attacks such as vote-buying into our software, so
that we can have wider participation in elections without leaving the
system open to subversion. Ultimately the decision is not up to me,
but I don't want technical deficiencies to be used as arguments
against wider participation.

-- Tim Starling


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On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org>wrote:

> Brian wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Let me say for the record that I'm not at all happy with this data
> >> being released, since it allows vote-buying. Even if the numbers given
> >> by voters are reduced to the smallest values which still give the same
> >> rankings, with 18 candidates there are 18 factorial possible
> >> orderings. That number is sufficiently higher than the number of
> >> voters that a party wishing to buy votes can specify a voter-specific
> >> ticket with some random rankings, and be reasonably assured that if
> >> that ticket appears in the final unencrypted dump, then the contract
> >> was fulfilled and money can be transferred to the voter.
> [...]
> >
> > This kind of fear mongering attitude is why we can't allow more members
> of
> > the community to vote. You'd rather spread FUD about vote buying than
> design
> > a system that allows the largest number of community members to vote.
>
> My hope is that the opposite is true. I'm interested in building
> protections against attacks such as vote-buying into our software, so
> that we can have wider participation in elections without leaving the
> system open to subversion. Ultimately the decision is not up to me,
> but I don't want technical deficiencies to be used as arguments
> against wider participation.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

That is great to hear, and I do apologize.
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On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Brian<Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:
> The reason we let such a tiny fraction of the community vote is because of
> an irrational and inflated fear of fraudulent votes. The risk has been blown
> entirely out of proportion and absolutely no technical measures have been
> been pursued. The Board and those who they coordinate with technically sit
> around and drum up the scariest possible situations they can think of and
> then develop a policy which prevents it from happening without even
> considering technologies that would allow more people to vote. You say its a
> legitimate risk, but you do not quantify how risky you believe it is. The
> answer is that it is almost zero.

You've conflated issues.
Regardless how how eligibility works the decision to release ballots
or not has implications. It's a separate issue.
I'm not sure how to make it more clear that were not discussing voter
eligibility here.

So instead lets discuss eligibility some: Can you provide the
eligibility criteria you'd like to apply? Please be precise and
actionable, i.e. make sure that I could write a program using the
publicly available data to determine eligibility. I think this would
be most enlightening.


(Oh, and in the future please provide citations when you make claims
like 'the board is drumming up scary situations', because as far as I
know it's not correct and you're just ranting.)

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On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:52 AM, Andrew Leung<andrewcleung@hotmail.com> wrote:
>..
> We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor:
>
> "Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei  Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which   links to ZooKeys."

:-)

Wikispecies will have a niche if it can prove to be regularly on the
leading edge.

Has there been any discussions about putting newly described species
onto the front page? If the information is made accessible, Wikinews
editors could write up stories about new discoveries.

> Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy?

What is the "2-year delay" ? I have looked at the AEMNP website, and
all of their articles appear to be availabl on their website. What is
their open access policy?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Acta_Entomologica_Musei_Nationalis_Pragae

--
John Vandenberg

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Andrew,

This is a great response and anecdote.

I have regularly run across people working on EOL, which has a broad
staff one of whose tasks is to keep an eye on species-data resources
around the web; and they are generally quite positive about
wikispecies, and thinking about ways to better collaborate with the
project.

So there is certainly no consensus among the field experts that there
is anything wrong with the project -- to the contrary, there is a
certain sense that wikispecies may one day become a place to find the
largest mutually collaborating community (in contrast to many other
places that accept submissions of formally structured data but don't
have much in the way of discussion or meta-analysis -- for instance on
how to display disputed classificaitons; many sources simply make an
executive choice and don't highlight the fact of the dispute at all).

That said, it's true that many things could be done improve
wikispecies -- for instance better translations of the main page and
information about the site, and a move to its own domain name, for
better stats tracking if nothing else.

--SJ

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Andrew Leung<andrewcleung@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies.
>>
>> First, calling a project as "zero quality project", whether it belongs to WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all of the discussion links in your "boycott" section took place in 2005 and 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae).
>>
>> We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor:
>>
>> "Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei  Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which   links to ZooKeys."
>>
>> Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any details from  ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects.
>>
>> Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy?
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> "Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com>wrote:
>>
>> > I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
>> > is a zero quality project. See
>> >
>> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
>> >
>> > Klaus Graf
>> >
>>
>> Propose it be closed at Meta then.
>>
>> --
>> Alex
>> (User:Majorly)
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Stay on top of things, check email from other accounts!
>> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671355
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Send and receive email from all of your webmail accounts.
> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671356
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>

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On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:26 AM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to
> releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this
> information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count?

Because they know in their hearts that the Schulze method is stupid,
and their heads just want to make sure.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@gmail.com

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2009/8/28 Stephen Bain <stephen.bain@gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:26 AM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to
>> releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this
>> information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count?
>
> Because they know in their hearts that the Schulze method is stupid,
> and their heads just want to make sure.

Could you elaborate on that?

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Stephen Bain wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:26 AM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm inclined to agree. I just don't see any sufficient benefit to
>> releasing the data to make it worth the risk. Why do people want this
>> information? Is it just because they don't trust the vote count?
>
> Because they know in their hearts that the Schulze method is stupid,
> and their heads just want to make sure.

Note that it's possible to run a number of different voting methods on
the election just from the pairwise defeats matrix, which was released
from the start. I can release results aggregated in a few other ways,
if that would make people happier, especially if someone is prepared
to write the code.

Also, it's possible to set up a web page which lets you check if a
given encrypted record (receipt) was included in the final count. From
a vote-buying prevention perspective, we can't automatically confirm
to the voter what the contents of that vote was, but we can do some
random spot checks.

The Schulze method is indeed non-ideal for a multi-winner election, I
don't think anyone who understands the cloneproof property disputes
that. Multi-winner elections should use a proportional method such as
STV. Markus Schulze himself has been developing a multi-winner
election method which combines STV with Condorcet winner concepts. But
that's a discussion for the next election, what's done is done.

-- Tim Starling


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