We should probably have a status update at some point

Marylander

It's been quite a while since we have held any sort of meeting about the forum. Now, obviously we shouldn't just hold meetings just for the sake of it, but one of the points of some of the later meetings I recall was ensuring that people fill various roles. Some of these people I have not seen here in a long time, i.e. several months to a year. I propose we hold a meeting on the following topics:

What day-to-day responsibilities have we assigned, and are they currently being filled? If not, do we need to recruit new volunteers?
What goals had we set for the forum at launch, and have we achieved them?
What new goals should we have for the forum?

Officially I think we turned 1 year old about a month ago, so it seems like a good time to start planning a meeting like this. I'm not in a huge hurry to hold this meeting, but I do want people thinking about it. People seem quite busy at the moment, so I'll plan for it to happen some time in May.

In this doc you can suggest things to cover at the meeting.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YMhr1PRCKOAeLn4gZ4Nnqhm0dbCNBdfANrl5KF-ctPA/edit?usp=sharing

You don't have to have a leadership position on the forum to attend or make suggestions, but I am specifically notifying the council members.

@cfrank , @micahscopes , @Jack-Waugh , @SaraWolk . (For completion I'll note I am also on the council.)

SaraWolk

Hi Forum Leaders,

Jack recently sent out a doodle poll for a next forum meeting. Unfortunately it looks like it was flagged as spam, (I just unflagged it.) Also, it listed times on pretty short notice. Generally these things take longer than that to allow everyone time to read the email, respond, and then confirm a date. I'm not available any of those times, so I'd like to propose a few new options.

Monday Aug 29th, 9am-7pm pacific
Tuesday Aug 30th, 9am-6pm pacific
Wednesday Aug 31st 9am-4:30pm pacific
Thursday Sept 1st 9am-4:30pm pacific
Friday Sept 2nd 9am-4:30pm pacific

Jack, can you share some more info on what you hope to cover at this meeting or any action items or agenda items we might have? It looks like Marylander had a list of things to check in on and discuss.

"I propose we hold a meeting on the following topics:

What day-to-day responsibilities have we assigned, and are they currently being filled? If not, do we need to recruit new volunteers?

What goals had we set for the forum at launch, and have we achieved them?

What new goals should we have for the forum?
Officially I think we turned 1 year old about a month ago, so it seems like a good time to start planning a meeting like this... In this doc you can suggest things to cover at the meeting.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YMhr1PRCKOAeLn4gZ4Nnqhm0dbCNBdfANrl5KF-ctPA/edit?usp=sharing"

Please share your availability the week of 8/29 to help narrow down a time that works for as many of us as possible. Thanks!

cfrank

@marylander @SaraWolk I added a few of my own suggestions to the document, and I contacted @Jack-Waugh about having a council meeting relatively soon.

My availability is very open as of now, I am free to meet virtually any time. Let's try to keep as many people in the loop as possible, so definitely notify anybody you think would be a good addition to the meeting.

@rob @Andy-Dienes @micahscopes

Jack Waugh

I wrote directly to David H. to try to get his attention.

rob

I see this in the document, I wanted to clarify a couple things about my thoughts on this since it is mostly my initiative (and something I've been talking about doing since the forum was first proposed). (TLDR: most or all of these things don't need to be dealt with at the council meeting, as it should be an open process, where anyone can post a vote and anyone can run tabulations or create visualizations or analysis and post them)

Forum-wide election: most preferred single-winner voting system
Which systems should be nominated as candidates?
Which systems should be used to conduct the election?
Deliverable question: Is there a Condorcet winner?

One, I hoped this vote is not any sort of official thing, especially not the first one. There aren't plans to do anything with the results, other than display them. It will be done as a regular discussion thread where people just post their ballots within a message.... no separate database entries or anything like that. It's all public and open.

People should probably suggest candidates to be nominated in this thread: https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/237/proposed-options-for-voting-on-voting-methods/23 , rather than decide at council meeting. I proposed some and took some suggestions, but nothing is written in stone. Propose away. If anyone is particularly passionate about a method, even if it might seem to be fit under a more general category, I have no problem with putting it in there.

I was going to wait a while to post it unless anyone is in a hurry. I wanted to get at least a bit of work done in Codepens, but I do have an actual job as well. In the meantime, I encourage anyone to post your preliminary ballot in your signature, using my suggested voting methods and abbreviations if they work for you, or make up your own if you want. (no one is tabulating them so it doesn't matter) I've been enjoying watching as people adjust their signatures following discussions.

As for which methods are used to tabulate the results.... well, any that anyone wants to do. I planned to do some, using Codepens that are available to all (you can fork them if you want), but you can tabulate them using whatever you want and post your results and any visualizations or whatnot. I really don't want the tabulation method and process to be centrally controlled, especially not for the first time doing it. And if the results differ in different systems, no big deal. Maybe we can say "STAR won in Score, and Score won in STAR. Neat."

I had suggested we do it with cardinal ballots (see my signature), 0-10, with decimal places allowed so it is effectively infinite resolution. You can also put an approval threshold if you want, since that is the one method that cardinal ballots alone don't really handle.

Also, I wanted to allow people in other forums (EndFPTP and election methods mailing list) join in as well, just by posting their vote to a thread in their own forum (which I or someone else can start). If anyone wants to tabulate them independently (i.e. just votingtheory, just reddit, etc), they can, or they can all be done together. I hope this can bring some people from those forums into ours, but they don't have to join to vote.

As big on Condorcet as I am, the question of whether there will be a Condorcet winner is interesting, but not something to worry about ahead of time. We'll see the answer to that when we tabulate the ballots.

cfrank

@rob said in We should probably have a status update at some point:

One, I hoped this vote is not any sort of official thing, especially not the first one. There aren't plans to do anything with the results, other than display them. It will be done as a regular discussion thread where people just post their ballots within a message.... no separate database entries or anything like that. It's all public and open.

certainly, it's just an informal vote/discussion would not be intended for use as anything else. Definitely not official in any way other than being well-defined and formal. I think we want to stay as neutral and cooperative as possible in the landscape of voting theory platforms.

Definitely not everything needs to be addressed at once or solely in the council meetings, but it would be good to have some outline or direction for the projects we might want to accomplish. I think the council can look at the proposed candidates for such a vote and come to an agreement about the systems that should be on the ballot. For example, I don't think we should make the systems too specific by including various different score weightings or splitting Condorcet methods based on tie-breaking procedures unless it's clear that there is a significant reason to do that.

The tabulation method cannot be centrally controlled as long as the votes are public. The only thing I want the council to possibly do is make an effort to verify, organize and present the results. We do definitely want a way to organize and separately analyze different groups of ballots.

The only reason for asking whether or not there is a Condorcet winner is to have a concrete deliverable yes/no question. It is not to say that the Condorcet winner is the "best" winner, but just to see whether or not there is one, seeing as it is possible that a Condorcet winner does not exist. The construct of a Condorcet winner is a topic of central importance in voting theory literature in general whether or not Condorcet methods are preferred.

rob

@cfrank said in We should probably have a status update at some point:

The tabulation method cannot be centrally controlled as long as the votes are public. The only thing I want the council to possibly do is make an effort to verify, organize and present the results. We do definitely want a way to organize and separately analyze different groups of ballots.

I hear ya, I'd just hope that could all happen transparently in the forum threads. Any results I posted would link to something like this, where people can paste in ballots, analyze the code, fork the code, etc, so any forum user could check my work (and if they wantm retabulate them in different methods or filtering voters by origin, etc). https://codepen.io/karmatics/pen/ExKZVjM

I mean, I don't care if council members want to come in and verify them, but I honestly doubt they'd want to do it as anything other than regular forum participants. This stuff just seems to lend itself to forums

I could see this leading to something more official.... built in widgets and visualizers, pinned threads, permanent pages, etc, and in that case it makes some sense for the council to be able to approve things, but let's just see how this goes first.

Hopefully if the council does meet soon, they can concentrate on the issues such as entry point, categories/tags, etc... changes that @Jack-Waugh will need to make and I think he wants others to make the decisions before doing so.