Though I've retired from voting systems, I'd like to reply to e-mail that I received yesterday, about permission to copy or use my voting system material. It was pointed out to me in that e-mail that I haven't posted anything about that, and of course I should--especially since I believe that good information is more useful if it's made available to more people.
So: I encourage anyone, other than Russ Paiellil, to freely use, however they wish, any web article of mine on voting systems, any mailing-list posting of mine on voting systems, or any private e-mail from me about voting systems. Use it entire or in part. By "use", I mean use it in any way. That includes, but is not necessarily limited to, : Put it up at a website, distribute it via any medium, copy it, quote from it. Have I left anything out? Try not to change the wording, because when precision is important, changing the wording tends to lose the meaning. But, if you do change the wording, please indicate that you've changed the wording. That's my only requirement. I have voting system articles at: http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html Jan mentioned that articles from the old electionmethods.org website (before I withdrew permission for Russ to host my articles) is available in an archive. Jan could tell you how to find it. One caution, if you use articles from electionmethods: Russ heavily reworded my articles that I sent to him. That often or usually changed the meaning, or made the meaning vague and ambiguous. Several people have written to EM to complain about that ambiguity or incorrect meanings. That was why I said that Russ was (and is) unfit to host my articles. So: If you use articles from elecionmethods.org, be warned that the wording may be all messed-up by Russ's rewording. I recommend, instead, my articles at the barnsdle website: http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html Yes, I know I gave that URL above, but no harm in stating it twice. The only articles that are as good or better at the pre-falling-out electionmethods website, as compared to the barnsdle website, are the Approval strategy articles. That's because the more recent electionmethods versions of those articles are the latest version. I invite the owner of the barnsdle website to copy those articles to his website, from the archive that Jan referred to, or to link to them there. Other than that, the articles at the barnsdle website are the better ones, because their wording hasn't been messed up. But I've posted things to EM about Approval strategy that didn't make it into a web article. Same with other topics too, which is why I include mailing list postings, such as EM postings, among the material that I invite you to use anytime any way. It was brought to my attention that, some time after Russ's angry EM postings about me, maybe even after my retirement from voting systems, Russ Paielli put up, at his website, an angry message about me. I haven't looked at it, and I've been told that he's since removed it, and so I can't comment on it directly. But Russ tends to repeat his false statements, and so I can guess what a few of them might have been. I was the one who sent to Russ a Condorcet algorithm, in the form of a Python program. I'd bought a book on Python, believing that I should send the algorithm in a programming language. In hindsight, it would have been easier, and just as good, to send it in pseudocode. When Russ was angry because of my withdrawal of permission to host my articles, he made a few false statements on EM about the Python program that I'd sent to him. He said that he had explained to me that, by starting a line with a certain symbol, that line becomes a comment, and the compiler or interpreter doesn 't interpret that line as a program line. He said that, after he'd taught that to me, I'd included with my Python program that I sent to him, a long message, obviously a message to Russ, that was written with the program and marked with the comment marker. 1. The "message" was not something obviously to Russ. It was something that was obvioiusly to the user of the program. It was instructions to the user of the program. That was obvious. But, in case it wasn't obvious, I'd explicitly told Russ that that was what it was. But Russ isn't very truthful, and I guess he felt that his incorrect account would make a good story. 2. Russ didn't teach me about comment markers in program listings. Every programming language has a symbol that it uses, at the beginning of a line, to indicate that what is on that line is a comment, and that that line is not a program line. I'd used a number of programming languages prior to that time, and taken courses on some. I'd read that Python book, and, on pretty much every page of that book were sample programs, with comments marked with Python's comment marker. Russ did not teach me about comment markers. After the falling-out, Russ said that the "amateur" algorithm (the one I'd sent) had been replaced at his website with a "professional" one, one copied from the Floyd algorithm and sent by Markus. What was the difference between the amateur version and the professional version? I used the obvious, intuitive, natural index ordering. The Floyd algorithm changes the order of the index numbers in a few program lines. It does that in order to greatly improve the execution speed, by allowing the algorithm to need only one pass through the permutations. When I found out that the Floyd algorithm was different from what I'd sent to Russ, and that the Floyd algorithm was faster, I immediatrely e-mailed Russ, and told him what I'd found out. I suggested leaving the algorithm as-is, because 1) Execution time won't be a problem, and the obviousness and natualness of the algorithm that I'd sent seemed more important; and 2)No one had, at that time, demonstated to me that that Floyd algorithm is faster in that way. I'd repeatedly asked Markus to demonstrate that, but he didn't, and neither did anyone else. Yes, now he might find the proof somewhere, and copy it and post it here. During discussion on a different mailing list, just before my retirement, I posted to that mailing list a demonstration that the Floyd algorithm needs only one pass through the permutations. Markus was on that mailing list, and so now he presumably knows why the Floyd algorithm is faster. Anyway, not having heard a demonstration, when I first heard that the Floyd algorithm was different from, and faster than, what I'd sent to Russ, that was one reason why I recommended to Russ that he leave the algorithm as-is. That was a long time before the falling-out. But then, all of a sudden, Russ acted as if he'd discovered that the Floyd algorithm was better, though he'd been told about it long previous. One other thing about the Python program that I'd sent to Russ: The Python book that I'd bought was vague about how to use the multidimensional arrays. Programming language books should be written either by the designer of the programming language, or by a mathematician. Russ experimented till he found how the multidemensional arrays are used. I didn't have Python, and so I didn't use Python multidimensional arrays. I made multidimensional arrays using Python's 1-dimensional array, and a function. Speaking of new discoveries by Russ, made right after I withdrew permission for him to host my articles, he also "discovered", at that time, that everything I'd written was wrong. And, as I'd predicted in advance, he even reversed his Condorcet advocacy, switching to a different Condorcet version. As soon as I told him that I was the first proponent of winning-votes, Russ began saying, for the first time, that margins was better than winning votes. And no, Markus, I won't debate, again, with you whether I was was the first proponent of winning-votes. (But I was). Before the falling-out, Russ had said that I was a world-class expert on voting systems, and maybe a genius. Immediately after the falling-out, Russ began saying that I was a pathetic amateur. I mention that because it demonstrates Russ's complete lack of honesty. I realize that this is difficult to believe, because it's rare for someone to be like that, but there's no reason to believe that Russ believes anything that he says. Maybe he actually doesn't know the difference, doesn't know what honesty is. You've heard of pathological liars, and, with Russ, now you've met one. While calling me all the names he could think of, Russ grandly praised himself. I suggest to you that the great things that Russ said about himself should be interpreted with reference to the fact that Russ has demonstrated himself to be someone with no honesty, a pathalogical liar. And no, the "flame-war" was not symmetrically two-sided. Though I occasionally used namecalling, during legitimate voting system discussion, when someone showed himself to be an ill-mannered idiot, Russ's namecalling was of an entirely different nature. Russ used namecalling as a substitute for valid argument, and that's a whold different thing. And it was not I who devoted long postings (except just for this one) to evaluating another list member, with no voting system comment in the posting. That was what I wanted to say. Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
