On 06/21/2012 01:42 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
There's been a recent discussion on the mailing list for the Election
Science Foundation (the organization which promotes range and approval
voting) about what to call the category of cardinal voting systems.
"Cardinal" itself is too technical, and doesn't suggest any real meaning
to a nonmathematician. Various options were considered, but the options
with the most support are "graded voting", "grade voting", or
"evaluative voting". These would contrast with "ranked voting", "rank
voting", or "comparative voting" for ordinal systems.
Personally, I favor "Evaluative" / "Comparative". "grade" and "rank"
both have many different possible meanings (some of which are
confusingly synonymous, or discouragingly negative-valence), and "grade"
is also used differently between the US and UK. "Evaluative" and
"comparative" are immediately understandable, as the refer to how you
have to think in order to vote, not just the marks you make on the
paper. They translate well to Spanish, French, or other Romance
languages. They are generally positive-valence words. On the down side,
they have a lot of syllables; but on the whole, I think they're the best
words.
But of course terminology only works if it's shared. So what do other
people here think about this?
I'd say "ranked voting" and "rated voting". The words are similar but
distinct, yet the meaning, and the difference between the two, should be
quite obvious.
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