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Wikipedia:WikiProject Social choice and voting systems

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First, an important note for everyone to remember:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about Voting systems. These are only suggestions, things to give us focus and to get us going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!

For info on voting systems used by English Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, see meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections.

Scope

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This WikiProject's primary focuses are:

  • Defining a standard format for editing pages on individual voting systems
  • Editing information about voting systems not specific to any one voting system, especially criteria for evaluating voting systems
  • Importing and editing the large amount of public domain information that exists on the internet on voting theory

Structure

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There is an overview of voting systems on the "Electoral system" page on English Wikipedia.

Ensure that every article has a category:

Avoid putting an article in multiple categories.

Issues to consider

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Voting systems (more commonly known as "electoral systems") are a domain that has been analyzed from sharply different and contrasting disciplines: game theory, sociology, political science, decision science, cognitive science and economics. Our articles should give a clear summary of the analysis from as many of these domains as we can get, without overly relying on jargon from any. Where there is jargon, find the article that explains the jargon, and link to it. If there isn't yet an article, perhaps it's time time to create an article (see Help:Your first article to learn how to do this). If you do create an article, make sure that the terms of art are clearly explained.

A note on English

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In general, avoid using terms that are ambiguous when it comes to describing a voting system. The Australian English term elector, for example, should be replaced with the more general voter so it is not confused with special "electors" such as the electoral college or the electors of the Holy Roman Empire.

If there are multiple synonymous terms used to describe something, prefer the one that is the title of a Wikipedia article. So, use tactical voting instead of strategic voting, and plurality instead of first past the post or FPTP.

Wikipedia style is to decapitalize things that do not explicitly need to be capitalized. This conflicts somewhat with the style often used in writing about voting systems, in which names of systems and criteria have every word capitalized. Make things lowercase whenever this makes sense. Observe that one page was moved from Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping to cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to Schulze method.

Advice

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Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so avoid minor specific details about the mechanics of counting or obscure criteria.

Try to make mentions of prominent places where the system is used. In general, avoid comparisons with other systems (and POV advocacy, in particular), however contrasting notable differences to similar systems and clarifying names is usually ok.

Try to describe how a voter interacts with the system, and what ballots look like. What the voter expresses (e.g. approval, disapproval, a ranked preference per candidate) and what they are told the mark means. Also describe how the winners are determined. Give one or more examples if they help, and feel free to copy sample data from articles such as Instant runoff - for single-winner systems, the example using the state of Tennessee and this map can be used quite effectively. Examples should strive to demonstrate possibilities for tactical voting, to be explained in the section below. They should also strive to demonstrate differences in outcomes between this system and other, similar systems, as well as unusual rules for the system.

A section on controversy, issues, and advocacy is usually appropriate. This may be related to other sections, in particular information about tactical voting, the effect on factions, candidates, and the jurisdiction, as well as information on the voting system criteria the method passes and fails. Tactical voting can usually be explained fairly well in a short section.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting systems/Included methods and criteria for a discussion of criteria to use. In general, criteria worthy of mentioning on Wikipedia are likely worthy of mentioning in a voting system article, however they may best be moved into a sub-article if the voting system article becomes too long.

Articles that are currently a mess

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These articles are in need of some sweet, sweet cleanup and love.

Requested articles

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These articles would be useful to have.

Similar Wikiprojects

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Electowiki has fantastic, detailed information on voting systems, both new, old, and obscure. Be aware, however, that much of the content on Electowiki is either POV or original research, which are not appropriate for Wikipedia. Electowiki uses the CC BY-SA license like Wikipedia does, however, so when you see some worthy content there that can be made encyclopedic feel free to copy it.

Some voting concepts, e.g. majority of the entire membership, fall within the purview of WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure.

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Democracy (on votings within the Wikiverse).

Participants

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Please add yourself to Category:WikiProject Voting systems participants if you would like to participate in Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting systems. Known active members:

Alternatively, you may add yourself to the outdated list below, which contains users that haven't been editing English Wikipedia for years:

Possibly-inactive users
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