User talk:Baylink

Welcome Wagon

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~~~~

snoyes 18:33, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've Been Found. :-) Thanks for the Welcome Wagon note. I'm, personally, having fun poking around and getting the feel of the infrastructure that's grown up around the pages; stealing design ideas for future website development, but just as much fun poking around pages as topics occur to me, and occasionally contributing something here or there. Hopefully, such contributions will be regarded as comprehensible, rather than compost.

-- jra

Oops

Well, made my first big mistake. Apparently, Konqueror 3 has some major page-caching issues; I made a change to OS Advocacy, went and wrote a stub, then came back to make another change... and inadvertantly replaced *the entire advocacy article* with my stub.

Hoo boy, is that embarrassing. (And have I been reading too many Fletch novels lately, or what? :-)

In any event, thanks to Two Halves for wiping my butt, and I'll try to be more careful in the foo-ture.

-- Baylink 01:34, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi. This may help: Wikipedia:Browser_notes. Secretlondon 23:18, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

Charlene

What am I gonna tell you, I don't know why, just did it by accident. Just bring it all back. Bye Bye. Chrzcline1961 23:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Boobs

About "Minor enhancement" on List of big-bust models and performers: Heh heh heh, "enhancement"... :) I actually read your weblog occasionally; good to see someone local and sort-of familiar around here. —tregoweth 18:54, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Would you believe that was an accident. Nice to know someone local, um, shares my tastes. ;-) Baylink 00:36, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nah, not following you—coincidental interests, I guess. :) As for the Dave Barry quote, it is a touch frivolous and POV for an encyclopedia. Even one with extensive collections of information about porn stars and Pokémon characters. :) —tregoweth 22:10, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

I know. I just couldn't resist. Baylink 22:14, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RHPS

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I looked it up. I would have thot IMDB, but a quick look here indicates otherwise. I'd guess from the map the number is around 30-50--still down quite a bit. I know it played in Seattle for at least 20-25 years, but no longer... [sniff]. Not sure how to get a usable number--might have to just change to something like 'fewer theaters than at the peak of its popularity'. Huh, I just looked at the RHPS Talk page, and I cite the IMDb article as the source for "7"--I guess it depends on what day you load the page [sigh]. Niteowlneils 22:40, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That list is inherently incorrect as it does not list the Beach Theatre in St Pete, my own home theatre, which is certainly showing tonight. Given that, I can't help but wonder what others aren't there... Baylink 22:44, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Don't Understand About Charlene

Honey, I don't understand what you are talking about deleting information for Charlene. It's all there. If you feel more information should go into the article, by all means go and do so. She might have been just a One-hit wonder, but she was important to Pop and R&B music. Chrzcline1961 20:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More Boobs

I think Sam Spade is either a crank or trying too hard to make a point. I mean, if even we think the picture is inappropriate... :) —tregoweth 22:19, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Not Boobs

:) -- RyanFreisling @ 19:31, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, where's the fun in that? :) —tregoweth 20:14, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

:) Hehe! -- RyanFreisling @ 20:24, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

/me snickers. -- Baylink 20:49, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikibooks

Hi Baylink -- I'm pretty skeptical about wikibooks. I think one of the reasons for Wikipedia's huge (partial) success is that it provides instant gratification. Wikibooks just doesn't do that. But I'd love to be proved wrong! :-) --Bcrowell 03:22, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, my thrust was more that you *have* some... -- Baylink 02:48, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Long and Winding Road

All these years I thought George Harrison played bass guitar for the Beatles. A quick check proved you were right and I was wrong, sorry! (I was also convinced that Johnny Marr played bass for the Smiths but a friend at work put me right on that one, luckily on that occasion I hadn't touched Wikipedia.) Cheers --Etimbo | Talk 12:01, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Enterprise link issue

Good job in handling the Enterprise links issue. I found myself away from the computer today, which is probably a good thing since I might have been in danger of violating the Three-Revert Rule myself by reverting the guy's changes again. Cheers. 23skidoo 04:08, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bakulanews added a bit of "rationality" to some of the post-cancellation reports, so I was glad to cite it in one of the updates to the article. I agree the fat lady hasn't sung yet, but the ratings for last episode were pretty grim. I think a lot of people are under the impression the show is actually off the air (which is what usually happens after a cancellation is announced). It's rather uncommon for a show to get nearly a half-season's notice of cancellation like this. 23skidoo 18:43, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, it looks like we have another revert war underway at the main Star Trek article. Another anonymous user is insisting on removing wikilinks to non-existent articles, which just means someone will have to go through the effort of doing the links again once the articles (i.e. Manny Coto and a few others) are written. If I revert again I'll end up violating the 3-revert rule. 23skidoo 20:22, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: Finale

About making Finale (television) into a redirect: If I was too bold, my apologies. I actually had {{merge}} in the edit window, and changed my mind to be more bold. I did copy your text to the talk page for series finale, though. --Christopherlin 19:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

2005 Florida cluster relocation

Hi Jay. Did you mean to put 2005 Florida cluster relocation in the article namespace at Wikipedia? Perhaps it would be more suited to Meta or Wikinews, but I don't see that it can ever be an encyclopedia article so I have listed it at VfD. Angela . 01:24, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

I-285

The thing is that almost all full beltways change direction at each corner; thus it's not useful to state that in Interstate Highway. --SPUI (talk) 18:53, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

More Sprint Nextel

The reason why I have a habit of saying "exclusively" is because you might have heard about this "Rebanding" controversy that has been plaguing Nextel even before the Merger Plans between Sprint and Nextel went on the way. I actually used this "Tiny URL Website" (https:// tinyurl.com) because there may be times when the HTTP Syntax might have weird extensions and/or page syntaxes, that's why I have a habit to use Tiny URL to make the Syntax simple and presentable, plus I also try to describe what the URL is "bubbling out" when I cite URLs as well.

About this "Reuters" direct linking, I'll give it a try next time, but if I get errors, you might want to encourage people to try using "Tiny URL Redirects" (https:// tinyurl.com) to make the syntaxes a little less weird. -- Vesther 22:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I *desperately* dislike tinyurl, especially in contexts like wp: you're assuming they'll stay alive longer than the local site. I mentioned it only because the story was not locatable. As for "exclusive", that can't be inferred from anything I've read so far, and 2500MHz is a completely new service; all current US cell services are at 1800/1900 MHz. It is therefore something completely new and news, and shouldn't be a throwaway.

Jennings Effect

Check the page history more carefully; it wasn't me who did the actual merging, I just added the {{mergeto}} template. --IByte 11:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry

When I looked into the article I saw 200.81.94.59's edit ('''Hurricane Katrina''' was a powerful [[tropical cyclone]] sent by [[God]] to punish the sinners.), and this IS vandalism. Sitenl 23:45, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Katrinahelp.info

Hey, You'll probably notice that I changed the description of katrinahelp.info. I only did that because I thought the prior label might encourage other people to add links to more link aggregators. I think the katrinahelp.info site is pretty reasonable, which is why I didn't remove it... (thought I don't object to it being removed either.). Keep your eyes on it: there is someone inserting an IP address that mirrors the content of katrinahelp.info but doesn't appear to be run by the same people... and the donate button takes you to a different paypal address. :) 24.165.233.150 20:43, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm staffing over there now, unofficially at least. The mirror is supposed to be official, but I'll keep an eye out for donation scammers. I've put a suggested scammer warning box over there on the Community Portal page for inclusion in the page skin template. I'll check it out. Thanks.
--Baylink 20:49, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Hm. Perhaps I was incorrect on the mirror. In any case, it's good to be carful with such things. In the past the policy on wikipedia during events like this has been to avoid linking to any sites asking for donations.. but since it's pretty clear that katrinahelp.info isn't asking for donations to help victims but rather the site, I think thats okay. --24.165.233.150 20:52, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh; sorry; I understand now. Yes, that link is for bandwidth contributions. I'm going to go chase down Angela or Jimbo and see if they're interested in hosting it at Wikicities, if I can ge ahold of them.
--Baylink 21:29, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hurricane Katrina SST image

Hiya,

Saw your uploaded SST image of Hurricane Katrina. Added caption, added NASA public domain note, then realized that the link you cite is dead (CNET moves around its articles after a few days). I found the image on the NASA website, went to reupload, and assigned it a more descriptive name. That moved it to a new page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NASA_ASMR-E_image_of_average_SSTs_of_Hurricane_Katrina.jpg). I put the old page up for speedy deletion. Hope you don't mind! It's a really fascinating image.

Janet13 06:35, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I not only don't mind, I'm flattered that you like my taste in images well enough to chase that down for me. :-)
--Baylink 22:51, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

hurricane project

The Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tropical_Cyclones page isn't for discussion. Can you move your comment over to the talk page (or the talk page for the template itself)? Jdorje 17:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why that wasn't apparent to me, I couldn't tell you. Sure.

Peer review for The West Wing

I have started a peer review of The West Wing at Wikipedia:Peer review/The West Wing (television) and I invite you to take part in the discussion and help make the necessary changes as the community as a whole reviews the work that we have all done together on this article. Thank you very much for your work on the article! -Scm83x 08:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Heinlein/polyamory

There was some question on Talk:Polyamory about whether RAH had been confirmed as polyamorous - since it was your edit, thought you might be able to give more info about the source? Thanks - --Calair 22:40, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've sourced this on the Polyamory talk page.
--Baylink 21:34, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia meetup:Tampa

I'm writing to let you know that the Tampa meetup has officially been announced -- Wikipedia:Meetup/Tampa2 →Raul654 04:01, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

INfo

All items of such contention need to be well referenced with mainstream sources to really be credible...--MONGO 20:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Neil Sedaka and "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do"

The single from the early 70s definitely began with the doo-wop and then went into the ballad. Maybe the album version does not include the old-style prelude, but I dunno. You can tell what a huge fan I am. Wahkeenah 02:05, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I have it anymore. I was unaware it was the subject of a minor edit war. I thought it was an interesting tidbit, but if it's not done that way on his albums, I had best leave it alone, as it's apparently no longer relevant. :) Wahkeenah 04:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Baylinkbot

What's the deal with Baylinkbot? And how do I get one? -- Calion | Talk 19:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tropical cyclone article formatting

Dear Tropical cyclone editor,

As a member of the Tropical Cyclone Wikiproject, you are receiving this message to describe how you can better tropical cyclone articles. There are hundreds of tropical cyclone articles, though many of them are poorly organized and lacking in information. Using the existing featured articles as a guide line, here is the basic format for the ideal tropical cyclone article.

Infobox- Whenever possible, the infobox should have a picture for the tropical cyclone. The picture can be any uploaded picture about the storm, though ideally it should be a satellite shot of the system. If that is not available, damage pictures, either during the storm or after the storm, are suitable. In the area that says Formed, indicate the date on which the storm first developed into a tropical depression. In the area that says Dissipated, indicate the date on which the storm lost its tropical characteristics. This includes when the storm became extratropical, or if it dissipated. If the storm dissipated and reformed, include the original start date and the final end date. Highest winds should be the local unit of measurement for speed (mph in non-metric countries, km/h in metric countries), with the other unit in parenthesis. The lowest pressure should be in mbars. Damages should, when available, be in the year of impact, then the present year. The unit of currency can be at your discretion, though typically it should be in USD. Fatalities indicate direct deaths first, then indirect deaths. Areas affected should only be major areas of impact. Specific islands or cities should only be mentioned if majority of the cyclone's effects occurred there.
Intro- The intro for every article should be, at a minimum, 2 paragraphs. For more impacting hurricanes, it should be 3. The first should describe the storm in general, including a link to the seasonal article, its number in the season, and other statistics. The second should include a brief storm history, while the third should be impact.
Storm history- The storm history should be a decent length, relatively proportional to the longevity of the storm. Generally speaking, the first paragraph should be the origins of the storm, leading to the system reaching tropical storm status. The second should be the storm reaching its peak. The third should be post-peak until landfall and dissipation. This section is very flexible, depending on meteorological conditions, but it should generally be around 3. Storm histories can be longer than three paragraphs, though they should be less than five. Anything more becomes excessive. Remember, all storm impacts, preparations, and records can go elsewhere. Additional pictures are useful here. If the picture in the infobox is of the storm at its peak, use a landfall picture in the storm history. If the picture in the infobox is of the storm at its landfall, use the peak. If the landfall is its peak, use a secondary peak, or even a random point in the storm's history.
Preparations- The preparations section can be any length, depending on the amount of preparations taken by people for the storm. Hurricane watches and warnings need to be mentioned here, as well as the number of people evacuated from the coast. Include numbers of shelters, and other info you can find on how people prepared for the storm.
Impact- For landfalling storms, the impact section should be the majority of the article. First, if the storm caused deaths in multiple areas, a death table would work well in the top level impact section. A paragraph of the general effects of the storm is also needed. After the intro paragraph, impact should be broken up by each major area. It depends on the information, but sections should be at least one paragraph, if not more. In the major impact areas, the first paragraph should be devoted to meteorological statistics, including rainfall totals, peak wind gusts on land, storm surge, wave heights, beach erosion, and tornadoes. The second should be actual damage. Possible additional paragraphs could be detailed information on crop damage or specifics. Death and damage tolls should be at the end. Pictures are needed, as well. Ideally, there would be at least one picture for each sub-section in the impact, though this sometimes can't happen. For storms that impact the United States or United States territories, this site can be used for rainfall data, including an image of rainfall totals.
Aftermath- The aftermath section should describe foreign aid, national aid, reconstruction, short-term and long-term environmental effects, and disease. Also, the storm's retirement information, whether it happened or not, should be mentioned here.
Records- This is optional, but can't hurt to be included.
Other- The ideal article should have inline sourcing, with the {{cite web}} formatting being preferable. Always double check your writing and make sure it makes sense.

Good luck with future writing, and if you have a question about the above, don't hesitate to ask.

Hurricanehink (talk) 19:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tropical cyclones WikiProject Newsletter #1

Number 1, June 4, 2006

The Hurricane Herald

This is the monthly newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary of the activities of the WikiProject over the past month and upcoming events over the next month. In addition monthly tropical cyclone activity will be summarized.

You have received this as you are a member of the WikiProject, please add your username in the appropriate section on the mailing list. If you do not add your name to that list, the WikiProject will assume you do not wish to receive future versions of The Hurricane Herald.

Storm of the month

Typhoon Chanchu was the first typhoon and first super typhoon of the 2006 Pacific typhoon season. Forming on May 9 over the open western Pacific Ocean, Chanchu moved over the Philippines on the 11th. There, it dropped heavy rainfall, causing mudslides, crop damage, and 41 deaths. It moved into the South China Sea, where it rapidly strengthened to a super typhoon on May 14, one of only two super typhoons recorded in the sea. It turned to the north, weakened, and struck the Fujian province of China as a minimal typhoon on the 17th. The typhoon flooded 192 houses, while heavy rainfall caused deadly mudslides. In China, Chanchu caused at least 25 deaths and $480 million in damage (2006 USD). Elsewhere on its path, strong waves from the typhoon sank eleven Vietnamese ships, killing at least 44 people. In Taiwan, heavy rainfall killed two people, while in Japan, severe waves killed one person and injured another.

Other tropical cyclone activity

Tropical Storm Aletta existed in the eastern Pacific Ocean from May 25 to May 29, peaking as a 45 mph tropical storm.

New and improved articles

New storm articles include: Typhoon Joan (1970), Hurricane Bonnie (1986), Tropical Storm Matthew (2004), Storm of October 1804, Typhoon Chanchu (2006) and Cyclone Olaf.

New non-storm articles include: Tropical cyclone rainfall climatology, Dvorak technique and List of Bangladesh tropical cyclones.

New Featured articles: 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, Hurricane Mitch, Hurricane Irene (2005) and Hurricane Claudette (2003)

Articles which became A/GA class: Hurricane Katrina (A), Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans (A), Hurricane Felix (1995) (GA), Cyclone Percy (A), Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (A), List of New Jersey hurricanes (A), Hurricane John (1994) (A), Tropical Storm Isabel (1985) (GA), Tropical Storm Odette (2003) (GA)

New articles and improvements wanted

An article is requested on subtropical ridge
The current collaboration of the fortnight is Hurricane Gilbert, please help improve this article.
Improvements are requested to Indianola Hurricane of 1886, Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Andrew.
The WikiProject is likely to submit Hurricane John (1994) and Hurricane Katrina to Featured Article Candidates in the near future, so please help improve them to featured standard.

Member of the month

This isn't the generic barnstar, we just don't have a WPTC star yet…

The May member of the month is TitoXD. The WikiProject awards this to him for his brilliant work in improving articles. TitoXD joined the WikiProject in October just after it had been founded. Since then he has contributed substantially to many articles, for example Hurricane Nora (1997), which is currently a Featured Article Candidate. He is also actively involved in the assessment of articles and so helps to improve many more articles.

Explanation of content

If you have a topic which is not directly related to any specific article but is relevant to the WikiProject bring it up on the Newsletters talk page, and it will probably be included in a future edition of The Hurricane Herald.

These two sections are decided by the community on the newsletter's talk page:

Storm of the month: This is determined by a straw poll on the page. While all storms will be mentioned on the newsletter, the selected storm will be described in more detail.
Member of the month: Nominations are made on the talk page, voting is by secret ballot; read the talk page for details. The winner receives the WikiProject's barnstar (when we make it).

Main Page content

2005 Atlantic hurricane season appeared on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article on June 1.
Hurricane Floyd will appear on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article on June 17.
Entries from Dvorak technique, Typhoon Joan (1970), Typhoon Chanchu (2006), and Storm of October 1804 appeared on the Main Page in the Did you know column during May.
Entries from 5 other articles relating to tropical cyclones had appeared in the Did you know column earlier in 2006.

Storm article statistics

Grade	April	May	June
FA	7	7	10
A	4	5	7
GA	0	3	5
B	62	66	82
Start	154	177	168
Stub	13	12	10
Total	240	263	282
percentage ≥Less than B	69.6	71.6	63.1

The assessment scale

The cyclone assessment scale is one of the bases of the new assessment scale for Version 1.0 of Wikipedia. It splits articles into several categories by quality, to identify which articles are "finished" and which ones still need to be improved.
The assessment scale by itself counts of several grades:
- FA: reserved for articles that have been identified as featured content only.
- A: this grade is given to articles that are considered ready for Wikipedia:peer review. The way to get this grade assigned to an article is by asking other cyclone editors at the WikiProject's assessment page.
- GA: reserved for articles that have passed a good article nomination.
- B: these articles are "halfway there", and have most of the details of a complete article, yet it still has significant gaps in its coverage.
- Start: articles that fall in this category have a decent amount of content, yet it is weak in many areas. Be bold and feel free to improve them!
- Stub: these articles are mostly placeholders, and may in some cases be useless for the reader. It needs a lot of work to be brought to A-Class level.
The way to use these assessments is by adding a parameter to the WikiProject template on the articles talk page ({{hurricane|class=B}} as an example). This feeds the article into a category which is read and parsed to create an assessment table, summary and log.

Tropical cyclones WikiProject Newsletter #2

The July issue of the WikiProject Tropical cyclones newsletter is now available. If you wish to receive the full newsletter or no longer be informed of the release of future editions, please add your username to the appropriate section on the mailing list.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tomb sentinals

Referring to your photo, as well as all of the other photos in the article, the sentinals (the ones holding the rifles) are wearing no insignia. The soldier wearing sergeants stripes is not a sentinal, but the watch commander or assistant watch commander and does wear rank insignia. He supervises the changing of the guards. If you go inside the building, you will see a sentinal uniform on display where is tells about the the sentinal's uniform and explains about the absence of rank insignia. --rogerd 00:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Variable Star

Hi! I had an opportunity on Sunday to ask Spider where that book fits into the Future History; the short answer is, it doesn't, really. FWIW, I added some notes to Talk:Variable Star. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 20:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

re [[Diagnosis X and Scrubs (TV series)

The reason i removed it is that it has nothing to do with Scrubs in general, while it can go on the Sacred Heart Page.--Jac16888 08:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WPTC Active Members

User:Hurricanehink/Active

List of Concorde pilots

No, sorry, I don't know how many pilots were ever type-rated for Concorde. It is certainly more than 24 though; the 1986 (an early) edition of Christopher Orlebar's The Concorde Story lists 34 Captains and 28 First Officers in the first ten years of flying, and that's just for British Airways, not including the French pilots. Carbonix (talk) 11:44, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tropical Storm Fay

i'm afraid despite those things you said all it does is either post orignal research or COPY the NHC's line of thought useing the exact same words as the NHC. Theres no point and it is advertising. Itfc+canes=me (talk) 19:45, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for deletion nomination of American RadioWorks

I have nominated American RadioWorks, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American RadioWorks. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Joe Chill (talk) 00:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of Exposition Boy

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Exposition Boy. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Exposition Boy. Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WGBH TVs Signoffs

You might want to keep an eye on this userpage, it has been re-edited a few times the last few days with nonsense and incorrect information and I've reverted them based on the fact your userspace shouldn't be messed with. If it happens again I recommend a trip to RFP. Thanks :)! Nate • (chatter) 19:19, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've noted on Nate's talk page that in this special corner-case of a personal page, I don't especially object if people update the information, given new facts; my thanks to him for noticing, though. --Baylink (talk) 02:50, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Voting systems

I noticed your note to Markus Schulze. The answer is: yes, the Schulze method is summable so there will be no problem with that. (Though I'd personally recommend the system Majority Judgment, which is even easier to sum). Homunq (࿓) 20:31, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take a look at it, Homunq. Why isn't it in the Big Comparison Table? --Baylink. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.65.52.26 (talk) 21:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok; I've looked at it. It's *way* too complicated for voting for President. :-) It might be great for voting for Debian Project Leader... but I believe that enough trouble will be had convincing Murricans to deal with Schulze -- that's already a generation long process, since it has to pass 50 state legislatures (we don't *have* federal elections, remember?) --Baylink — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.65.52.26 (talk) 21:06, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is in the Big Comparison Table. And it's actually simpler to count than Schulze. Especially if you use the variant, Continuous Majority Judgment, as explained here. Take votes above median, subtract votes below median, divide by twice votes at median, and add median. Homunq (࿓) 22:07, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a paragraph simply explaining CMJ that I wrote elsewhere:

Another system called Continuous Majority Judgment would be the next step. Voters grade each candidate A-F and each grade is tallied for each candidate. Then you start out by counting just the A grades. If no candidate gets over 50%, you add in the B grades (as if it were approval voting, and all voters lowered their standards a bit). If there's still no majority, add in the C grades, and so on. If one candidate reaches a majority before any others — in other words, if their median is clearly higher — then they win. If two or more candidates pass 50% together — because they have the same median — then you effectively take an average of the voters nearest the median using the following simple formula: for each candidate, start with the number of voters who voted them above their median, subtract the number of voters who voted them below their median, and divide by twice the number of voters who voted them at their median. This gives each candidate a "remainder" between negative one half and positive one half which, when added to their median (the grade at which they pass 50%), will show a clear winner.

And here's why it's worth it:

This system is a bit more complicated than Score or Approval to explain. But it's actually simpler for voters than either. Unlike in Approval voting, you can give middIe ratings to middling candidates, without agonizing over whether to support them as strongly as your favorite or oppose them as strongly as your worst enemy. Compared to Score, if everyone votes honestly, the two systems will almost always give the same results. But with Continuous Majority Judgment, there's less of a need to watch the polls and calculate your voting strategy, because in most cases exaggeration won't affect the results. That's because, unlike Score, if all the X voters exaggerate (give X an A and Y an F), while all the Y voters vote moderately (give Y a B and X a D), the majority still wins.

I'll stop bugging you now. Cheers, Homunq (࿓) 13:33, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. My target is "the best alternative system *that can actually be sold* to voters and election supes." You get to try to pull this off approximately once every century or two. Electronic voting has already been botched once...
-- Baylink (talk) 14:08, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Every century is about right, since it's been about 90-100 years since an earlier version of the system I described was implemented in over a dozen US cities — and then rolled back by party bosses using a combination of flimsy technical excuses and red-baiting. But yeah, I agree it's important to get it right the first time, as the predictable setbacks of IRV show.

And I actually believe that CMJ is the sweet spot. Easy for voters: grade the candidates like a report card. Unlike Schulze or other Condorcet systems, it gives each candidate a single number, so one-dimensional thinkers can grasp it; I'd say it's actually a fair bit simpler than those systems, though YMMV. Unlike Approval, there's no cognitive dissonance from being forced to give widely different candidates one of the same two ratings. Unlike Score, there's no systematic advantage to more-radical voting factions, and so little chance of a non-majority result in a tight mostly-two-way race. And unlike IRV, it can be counted at the precinct level, and doesn't lead to crazy/nonmonotonic/center-squeeze results.

So, back to working on my behavioral study of these systems... Homunq (࿓) 14:48, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Schulze doesn't give each candidate a single number? It's a ranking system, no? I thought that was the primary characteristic thereof. "Obama is my first choice, Johnson or Roemer my second, Vermin Supreme is third, and Romney is fourth."
--Baylink (talk) 15:08, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it takes as input a single number per candidate per voter. But as output, to understand why X won, you need the full matrix of all the X vs Y pairwise results, not just a list of one final score for each candidate as in CMJ. Similarly, the counting process uses complicated matrices instead of 5 simple tallies per candidate. Homunq (࿓) 15:17, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have given some additional thought to this, Homunq, and I've figured out why I don't like it as well as choice ranking systems. It's hard to phrase, though, so bear with me.

My problem with it is that what people are accustomed to doing is making, usually subconsciously, their integration in their mind of everything they think about a candidate or officeholder's professed policies, what they've *actually* done, and how well they've done it, *and then making their choice*. A system where you give the running candidates a letter grade about *how well you think they've done* effectively moves the "integrate and choose step" out of the voters' heads, and *into the voting system*.

I, personally, don't think that will play in Peoria, and I *know* why I think so; I'm inclined to think it will be even less likely to fly amongst voters who *don't* know why they don't like it.

It also doesn't handle "well, I don't think Obama did all that well. But it was actually the GOP's fault he couldn't get anything done." My judgement of someone's political work will not always be congruent totally with my *choice* about who I want to do that work. And I don't think I'm alone in that. For the moment, I'm going to stick with CSSD/Schulze as my least worst choice. :-)

[ Apologies if you've already read this; I thought I'd already written it, but I can't seem to find it, so I must not have written in here on WP. :-) ]

--Baylink (talk) 02:08, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the ultra-slow response.

You are right that voting is always more of a choice than an evaluation. That's why the grades in CMJ should always have labels like "support" or "A:Support" rather than labels like "excellent" or "A:excellent".

With a reasonable amount of pre-election polling or even just a history of similar elections, it will be easy to understand how a ballot corresponds to a choice. For instance, if grades are ABCDF and you have reason to believe that the winning median will be C, then you know that an A or B will count in favor of a candidate and a D or F will count against them.

There are situations where those conditions are violated. For instance, if there is a question with two basic sides to it, with subfactions within each of the sides, then it's likely that the winning median will be higher or lower than C (depending on how cooperative the subfactions on the larger side are). So in that case, the distinction between (for example) an A and a B could be significant; the B would translate not as its usual "I support this option, though there's something else I prefer" but rather as "I support this general idea, but actually oppose this specific implementation of it, because we can do better".

So it's true that it's a sometimes harder to say exactly what effect voting a certain way will have in CMJ as opposed to Schulze. But once an election is finished, it's easy to say what effect your ballot had; you supported everyone whom you gave a score above the winning median to, and opposed everyone whom you gave a score below. And as I argued above with the "single number" thing, it's much easier to convey or grasp the results.

In the end, any voting system is taking on some of the "integrate and choose" work; that's its job. My simulations and experiments (as yet unpublished) show that in the large majority of cases CMJ and Schulze allow the voters the same expressiveness in practice, and get the same answer. So to me the important question is, which is simpler; and the answer is clearly CMJ. Homunq (࿓) 22:22, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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