2012/6/21 Kevin Venzke <[email protected]> > Hi Jameson, > > > >Why do I think new terms are worthwhile? I think that choosing the right > term is > > >an important part of activism. Neither pro-life nor pro-choice activists > are > > >satisfied with the more-descriptive "anti-abortion" or "abortion rights". > Similarly, > > >Republicans made no headway against the inheritance tax until they termed > it the > > >"death tax". And FairVote has done very well with "instant runoff". > > Do you really want to advocate a ballot format, instead of a specific > method? Or > is it a tool to help advocate "Range" (which will be a seemingly redundant > name > once you've made the effort to separately explain what ratings ballots are) > > These are intended as umbrella terms. So "evaluative" would cover various ballot formats: - approval (mark all you approve) - range (write a number) - majority judgment (grades as in school - in the US, that would mean A-F letter grades)
> > >Cardinal/Ordinal: yes, I know that pretty much everyone learns these > terms somewhere > > around 2nd grade. But then they don't really use them again. Imagine you > didn't know > > anything about voting theory, and you heard just one of the terms; > "cardinal voting" or > "ordinal voting", but not both. For me at least, these would be > meaningless jargon. > > "Cardinal", in isolation, is more likely to mean "principal" than "on an > absolute > > scale"; and even "ordinal", which has no other confusing meaning, takes > some thought > > to relate to voting; you have to translate the adjective to a verb in your > head. > > I never use cardinal/ordinal when talking to non-EM people. Only rankings > and ratings. > The only confusion I recall is when they are familiar with the idea of > specifying > numbers in order to indicate a ranking, and seem unsure that this isn't > also rating. > > > >Ranked/rated: To me, these work fine as neutral terms. But they're not so > good for > > activism. Again, if I heard the term "rated voting" for the first time, > I'd have to > > think a bit to understand what it meant. Has the voting process itself > been rated, > > or does it involve using ratings? What would it be like to use ratings to > vote? None > > of these leap to mind; they must be explained. > > > >That's why I like evaluative/comparative. Just hearing the words already > puts you > > into the process of casting a ballot. > > I find those names less descriptive than rank/rate of what you are > actually doing. > I think they could describe almost any method. I also don't like how > "evaluative" > seems to presuppose what one is using the ballot to do. But if the > activist's goal is > a specific method then I guess that makes sense. > > "Comparative" makes me think of comparing two options at a time. Because > I'm familiar > with pairwise matrices, that makes sense for ranking. Would it make any > intuitive > sense to someone familiar with IRV? I'm not too sure. I can't though, for > the life > of me, imagine Condorcet or IRV advocates thinking they will get an > advantage out of > using that term over, say, "preferential." > OK, you caught me. I'm not an ordinal advocate. "Preferential" is, as you say, the best marketing term for "ordinal"; but there's no corresponding term for cardinal systems. That's the motivation for using a word like "evaluative". So "comparative" is just the contrast word for "evaluative", not something that would be used on its own. Jameson > > Kevin > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info >
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