Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Abd (talk | contribs) at 21:05, 14 December 2007 (→Is "Simple majority voting" the same as "Plurality voting"?: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The text on this page, besides containing wildly irrelevant paragraphs and pretty much incomprehensible ones, discusses a distinction between absolute and simple majority voting, a distinction which I can't find anywhere else as being a common one (under the terms that it uses). I am going to suggest the page be redirected to Plurality or some such page, unless somebody can clean it up to a point of usefulness.

I added some interlinks, but it is a bit confusing (btw, I added article for May's Theorem so perhaps it doesn't have to be here?) I suggest people from Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Voting Systems deal with it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:33, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If you vote and have a majority of votes you win to be a Prime Minister or a senator for the Senate.

Do not delete this article without completed AfD

I'm contesting the unilateral deletion and no-content-transfer redirect of this article without discussion by User:Yellowbeard, who is a blatant sock puppet (see his contributions, from the beginning) who has removed many articles relevant to voting systems from Misplaced Pages; some were, in fact, ripe for removal, vanity, etc., but quite a few others were, in fact, notable, if in need of cleanup.

If Yellowbeard thinks that this article should be removed, he should deal with it piecemeal, so that we can be assured that any valuable content is not lost. I'm not arguing at this time that the content here should remain, but that contributed content should not be removed without thought and time for those who might be interested to comment and participate. Yellowbeard has depended on specialist articles not being regularly monitored by sufficiently active Misplaced Pages editors, so that stubs and other article cores get removed when a few editors with no knowledge of voting systems comment "Delete," who don't necessarily know the relevance and importance of the article topic, but only google the term, as if google were "reliable source for non-notability." It's evidence, not reliable source. Not everything is on Google under the name in English. Gradually, as I have time, I'll be undoing the wreckage that Yellowbeard has left behind. As part of this process, Checkuser is going to be requested, which might identify the puppet master, or might not. But the sock puppet tag I'm using is obvious from contributions. Yellowbeard registered and immedately began, same day, an AfD that was part of a political agenda, and all this will come out in detail, the record shows it clearly to anyone familiar with the political situation.

Right now, I'm simply acting to slow down the destruction. Helpful would be attempts to contact those who had edited these articles, and, if possible, to solicit their help in deciding if the article should stay, in cleaning it up, or in integrating any valuable content into merged articles. Yellowbeard is a pure destroyer of content, look at his history. --Abd (talk) 19:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Is "Simple majority voting" the same as "Plurality voting"?

Simple majority is Plurality in the two-option case, most commonly Yes or No. Unless the Plurality Voting article covers the special characteristics and history of Simple Majority, this article serves a purpose by being separate. However, Plurality Voting is generally considered in the case where there may be more than two candidates, plus, technically, an election with candidates A and B actually has, always, three outcomes: A, B, or no result (depending on rules). Now, that election, if the rules permit "no result," isn't a Simple Majority election, which is restricted to two possible outcomes; rather, a better example of a Simple Majority election would be a ballot with a single candidate, who must get a majority of votes to win. (Details would depend on rules).

It's important to understand that deliberative process depends on Simple Majority, and, deliberately, the vast majority of votes in a deliberative body are Simple Majority: there is one "candidate," a motion presented, and two choices: Yes or No. When the Yes votes exceed the No votes, the motion passes, otherwise it fails. Abstentions are not counted. (If they are, i.e., if they reduce the base for majority, it is not Simple Majority, I think).

Quite simply, "plurality" is never used as a name for this.

Definitely, this article needs cleanup, a lot of cleanup. The "needs sources" tag has been there for a long time. However, most of the material is well-known, so it's a matter of finding editors who can do the work of finding actual sources. If some particular statement offends an editor, and it is not sourced, the editor is welcome to take it out, given that there has been a citation needed tag for a long time. But a citation tag on an article is different from a citation tag on a particular claimed fact. Taking out the article is not a proper remedy. Instead, tag individual claims that are suspect, for starters. Taking out correct material based on simple lack of source is not civil and not helping to build the encyclopedia; often articles start as unsourced stubs, or sometimes an article written by an expert who simply writes from personal knowledge -- or from a student of the subject, similarly. --Abd (talk) 21:05, 14 December 2007 (UTC)