What are you reading today?

[eefara]

Each person voting shouldn’t be a single round though, right? And it looks like we’re still on round 1…

[seanblue]

The whole point of ranked voting is that it’s an automatic, instantaneous runoff. As @Naphthalene said, it will only go to a round 2 if there’s no majority in round 1. Since Fantasy got a majority using everyone’s rank 1 vote, it was only one round.

[eefara]

How does it decide what the cutoff is for round 1 though?

[nikoru]

I changed my vote slightly (producing a tie between Mystery and Fantasy in #1 picks), and now we got:

which means it went through three rounds of elimination but in the end everything was gone (it eliminated 5 options in round 1, one in round 2, and the remaining 2 in round 3) and the tie still remained.

[seanblue]

I just changed my vote as well to create a single winner. Hopefully these two examples help.

[暁のルナ]

@eefara

I wonder if the ranked choice could be a new way to poll for book club reads?

I reaaaaally hope not. That was torture. Also jsyk it wouldn’t let me use the Abstain option.

Would only be useful for tie-breakers with like 3 or less items (maybe 5, if you really wanna push it)

[暁のルナ]

@nikoru

Hmmm, I’m a bit puzzled regarding the genre poll… I selected everything, but I cannot cast my vote?! Send hälp

It’s an ordered poll. Each number can only be picked once. Edit: nm, looks like u got it

[nikoru]

@暁のルナ

Would only be useful for tie-breakers with like 3 or less items

That sounds like a good use case, but honestly for the real polls I also think it’s a bit too complicated tbh…

[seanblue]

I agree that it’s too complicated. I also think a top 5 vote is better anyway. I care more about what books you’re okay reading, not just your top pick. If more people are okay reading Book X even though Book Y is the top ranked choice, imo it’s better to read Book X (which is what the current process allows for).

[Legato]

@eefara

This is a ranked poll, I believe. So 1 is your top choice, 2 is your second favorite choice, etc. You can only use one number once, otherwise it won’t let you submit.

What an awful and unintuitive user experience.

[暁のルナ]

@Legato

@eefara

This is a ranked poll, I believe. So 1 is your top choice, 2 is your second favorite choice, etc. You can only use one number once, otherwise it won’t let you submit.

What an awful and unintuitive user experience

So what you’re saying is I voted backwards…

[Legato]

@seanblue

If this is truly ranked voting, it works like this:

1. Count up all the #1 rank votes
2. If one option has a majority, it wins (plurality does not count)
3. If one option does not have a majority, eliminate the option with the lowest number of votes
4. Count up all the #1 rank votes, except if the #1 rank vote for a user was eliminated, in which case count their #2 rank votes
5. Repeat above steps until a majority is found

So, either I’m misunderstanding step 2 or this isn’t “truly ranked voting”. Right now there are 12 voters. 5 have voted for Fantasy as #1, so not a majority (I’d expect that to need at least 7, which is “more than half than 12”), yet fantasy wins in round 1.

edit: Ah, I kind of intuitively assumed a new round starts after an elimination happens because a recount has to happen afterwards, but if elimination and recount is still part of the first round, it can work. There are lots of options with only one #1 vote, which will probably all be eliminated in step 3. This might free up at least the two #2 votes for fantasy, and if we have 7 votes now, it’s a majority.

edit: Actually, scratch that. It says

Round	Majority	Eliminated
1	Fantasy	None

so it seems that 5 #1 votes for fantasy out of 12 voters is indeed a “majority” and nothing needed to be eliminated?

[Legato]

@暁のルナ

So what you’re saying is I voted backwards…

You know, I was curious about your newfound love for Belles-lettres and your distaste for fantasy in the “Votes” section…

[seanblue]

Where are you seeing that 5 people voted for fantasy? I can’t find that on mobile at least.

[Legato]

On Desktop there’s a “Votes” section:

[seanblue]

Hmm, yeah that seems wrong then.

[catbus]

If I understand correctly, it’s not looking for the majority among voters, it’s looking at all the #1 picks and if one choice has a greater number of votes, it wins. If there was a tie, say fantasy and mystery both had 5 people voting it as their #1, then it would trigger the next round.

[Legato]

That would be sad, because it would render the advantages listed here moot:

@seanblue

The first round works like a normal single vote system (using everyone’s rank 1 choice), and each subsequent round takes place after one option has been eliminated. In the real world, this type of voting system attempts to reduce “lesser of two evils” voting that locks in a two party system because people think voting for a third party candidate that has no chance of winning is “wasted”. Now you can vote for a third party candidate as rank 1 and know that if/when they get eliminated you still get to vote for one of the two main candidates. It’s done via a ranked voting instead of run-offs to make the process more efficient.

If the system is not eliminating until there is a majority, #1 votes for a low-probability third party candidate are likely wasted unless coincidentally there are multiple winning candidates with exactly the same amount of #1 votes.

[seanblue]

Honestly it’s probably a bug.

[Legato]

Let’s hope so! (And let’s hope the bad UX will also improve.)