Dear Mike Ossipoff,
you wrote (18 May 2005):
At that time I thought that BeatpathWinner was your method, not
realizing at that time what "Schulze's method" actually means.
And, as I said yesterday, and as I said last month, in reply to
the same repeated statement, I, at that earlier time, carelessly
said that SSD is equivalent to BeatpathWinner, because it's
equivalent to BeatpathWinner when there are no pairwise
ties. When there are pairwise ties, SSD is not equivalent to
BeatpathWinner. CSSD is equivalent to BeatpathWinner, but SSD
is not. I've admitted that error last month, and yesterday,
but you keep repeating that quote. I knew of BeatpathWinner
when I and Eppley devised SSD. I at that time thought that
BeatpathWinner was you rmethod, because at that time I didn't
realiize that, as you said last month, "Schulze's method"
means something different. I didn't know of your CSSD
definition, because I hadn't read those postings, and didn't
know what count rule they described. At that time I mistakenly
believed that 'Schulze's method" meant the count rule that I
call "BeatpathWinner". I've only explained that about five
times in the last 24 hours, and at least a dozen times last
month.
Well, although you have been pointed to this error dozens of
times in the last 5 years and although you have admitted this
error several times, you keep on using this error as an argument.
Russ Paielli proposed "Ranked Approval Voting" (RAV). Then he was
pointed to the fact that presumably this method had already been
proposed by Kevin Venzke. Russ Paielli immediately stopped claiming
that he had invented RAV. Russ Paielli didn't say something like:
"I hadn't read Kevin's proposal when I proposed RAV. Therefore,
I can rightly claim that I invented RAV."
On the other side, you keep on using your claim, that you hadn't
completely understood the Schulze method when you proposed SSD,
as an argument to claim that you "devised" SSD.
By the way: Already in 2001, Norman Petry complained that you try to
take credit for this method. He wrote (6 Feb 2001):
Regardless of what names we use when referring to these methods during
our committee discussions, I think it is appropriate that if one of
these variants is recommended to Debian that it be named SCHULZE'S
METHOD. This is because:
1. Schulze, version 1: The 'Beat-Or-Tie-path' method was first proposed by
Markus Schulze on Sat, 4 Oct 1997 (see EM Archives, "Re: Condorect sub-cycle
rule"). Unfortunately, eGroups has not archived this message, but it can
be found at Rob's site, in this text file (but mistakenly referred to there
as "Tideman's Method"): http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em/archive/em.97q4
2. Schulze, version 2: The 'Schwartz Sequential Dropping' (SSD) method was
first proposed by Markus Schulze on Mon, 10 Aug 1998. His description can
be found here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/673
3. Schulze, version 3: The 'Cloneproof SSD' method was first proposed by
Markus Schulze on Sat, 14 Nov 1998. See:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/2291 As noted
above, Markus' version of 'Cloneproof SSD' uses a slightly different (and
imo better) tiebreaker than Mike's version, but the two methods are
otherwise identical.
4. Beatpath Winner: This was not specifically proposed by Markus Schulze,
but it is equivalent in terms of results to Cloneproof SSD. It is the
same as 'Beat-or-tie-path' winner, except that pairties in the matrix are
zeroed out before paths are computed, so that tied values cannot be part
of the paths used to determine the winner.
Since Markus was the originator of the first three of these methods, and
usually refers to all of them as "Schulze's Method", it seems appropriate
to name them as he has done.
************
You wrote (17 May 2005):
Where did SSD come from? In individual e-mail, Steve Eppley suggested a
method that successively drops the weakest defeat among the smallest set
of candidates that is unbeaten from without. SSD is an Eppley-Ossipoff
method.
I wrote (17 May 2005):
Please forward this communication between Steve Eppley and you. I would
like to know why (although you considered neither independence of clones
nor reversal symmetry important and although Steve Eppley decided to
promote Tideman's ranked pairs method) you decided to promote SSD.
You wrote (18 May 2005):
I don't save e-mail back to those days. But my mention of SSD on EM is
in the EM archives. That's really all you need.
Well, the very first time that the term "Schwartz Sequential Dropping"
(SSD) was being used was on 18 Feb 2000 in a mail by you. In that mail,
you wrote that "SSD is equivalent to Schulze's method". Actually, the
fact that "SSD is equivalent to Schulze's method" was your main argument
for proposing SSD. Therefore, the EM archives don't support your claim
that "SSD is an Eppley-Ossipoff method".
You wrote (18 May 2005):
You ask why I decided to promote SSD. Because it's clone-independent
in public elections, and because it meets SFC, GSFC, WDSC, and SDSC.
Nope. You didn't consider independence of clones important when you
proposed SSD. Nor did you mention clones in that mail.
************
You wrote (18 May 2005):
You seem surprised that I'd promote SSD when Steve prefers MAM.
Why do you expect me to copy Steve on that? Actually, Ranked-Pairs
has a very brief definition, if we ignore the rules for equal defeats.
But those equal defeat rules can't be completely left out. And RP's
definition, directly or indirectly, mentions cycles. So I consider
SSD to be a better public proposal.
In the matter of SSD vs RP, in terms of pure merit, in public
elections, RP might very well be _very slightly_ more aesthetically
appealing, because RP, unlike BeatpathWinner, CSSD, or SSD, never
lets a nullilfied defeat participate in the nullification of other
defeats.
But I consider the merit differences between RP and SSD completely
negligible in public elections. That's where Steve and I disagree.
What's wrong with disagreeing?
You want to know what's wrong with that? Well, on the one side
you claim that you are having quite productive discussions with
other people off-list. And on the other side, you neither forward
nor save such discussions. Do you have some kind of politics
like "discuss in a constructive manner only off-list"?
Markus Schulze
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