From: Erland Sommarskog (sommar@algonet.se)
Date: Sun Nov 10 2002 - 08:00:26 CST
"Charles Lindsey" <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
> And if someone has a particular dislike to one of the #1-4, then he might
> even place #5 in the middle somewhere.
And if someone has a certain dislike for any of the alternatives that #5
may lead to, he might prefer to vote for a unencoded UTF-8 solution, so
this cuts both ways.
> The method of counting such votes was devised by the Marquis de Condorcet
> at the time of the French Revolution (he lost his head, naturally :-( ). I
> can explain further if people are interested, but he was able to prove
> that there was no other system that could accurately reflect the
> preferences of people in this sort of multi-option situation.
The method I'm mainly accustomed to use for these situations is that
you keep multiple votes putting various proposals against each other,
until you eventually have two remaining. And finally you put what appears
to be the winner to an approve/disprove vote. But this method is best
suited for assemblies that are gathered together in a room, and the
votes can be held in rapid order directly after each other.
But if it's possible to declare a tie between 1-4 in your poll, I can
agree with it.
-- Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se