Talk:Negative responsiveness

Tone

There's a "message board argument" tone to many sentences in the latter half of the article. "And not, as claimed by earlier versions of this wikipedia article, X" sounds childish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.44.227 (talk) 13:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I just removed ", contrary to common sense." for exactly the same reason. A lot of this seems to be in response to the many Ranked Choice Voting initiatives in several U.S. states this November 2024. These reflect a lot of political debates going on. I suggest locking this page out from lower-level editors, at least until after the election. die Familie Heimwerker (talk) 22:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction, and I agree with the removal of that phrasing.

For context, I think a lot of these tone issues are coming from a (singular) very dedicated author and are not necessarily related to U.S. elections. see: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Bold, or disruptive? Affinepplan (talk) 22:58, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Rights on the text

From the page:

Some parts of this article are derived from text at http://condorcet.org/emr/criteria.shtml

Some other pages have stated this, and said "used by permission". Can someone confirm that this use is by permission?

I did not seek explicit permission (though I may get around to sending a thank-you email). The linked page, at the very bottom, gives more than enough permission to re-distribute under the GFDL. Indeed, the way that he phrased it there was no need to explicitly acknowledge his work, but I thought it would be good to do so, both to thank him, and because his site is a useful resource to link to. DanKeshet 21:23 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! That's good news. -- Anon.

Don't confuse Condorcet criterion and monotonicity criterion

The comment that "several variants of the Condorcet method (including Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping and Maximize Affirmed Majorities) are monotonic" is misleading since there is no connection between the Condorcet criterion and the Monotonicity criterion. If you only want to say that the Condorcet criterion and the Monotonicity criterion are compatible, then it is sufficient to say that Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping and Maximize Affirmed Majorities are monotonic. -- Markus Schulze

Hmm, I don't think the para as it was asserts a connection between the Condorcet Criterion and MC. And though CSSD and MAM are different, they really are minor tweaks on the Condorcet Method and usually make the same decision, so it seems weird to write about them as if they were as different as Plurality and Borda. Is there any wording which mentions that these two are both Condorcet methods that would be acceptable to you? — ciphergoth 14:05, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

ciphergoth asked: "Is there any wording which mentions that these two are both Condorcet methods that would be acceptable to you?" No. The fact that CSSD and MAM satisfy the Monotonicity criterion must only be used to promote CSSD or MAM. But it must not be used to promote Condorcet methods in general or even a concrete Condorcet method that doesn't satisfy the Monotonicity criterion. -- Markus Schulze 21 Nov 2004

As ciphergoth, I fail to see how the sentence you talk about promotes Condorcet methods in general.--Chealer 03:36, 2004 Dec 10 (UTC)

Old edit war

I've reverted from a lot of edits by user:polytope. Polytope: you are wellcome to contribute to articles, but your material was really not appropriate, for at least the following reasons:

1) Wikipedia has a strict Neutral point of view policy which your discussion of the CVD definitely did not fit under. Please read that link for more information on how to construct NPOV pages.

2) It was very technical and frankly incomprehensible to me. You have to do a much better job of explaining your terms.

DanKeshet

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Your decision is unfair, wrong, and unreasonable, so I intend to upload the page again, after at least 1/2 of a day or so. The spirit of fairness would be more present if I was the person editing the definitions. I expected details comments. Here are problems with your decision. My reasoning is more carefully done than yours. Note that the edit that you did is here: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Monotonicity_criterion&diff=0&oldid=1126285

I assume you do not want to even read this, but do however wish to keep censoring with an indifference to how thoroughly an audience moves against you if publicity shows up. I find your decision to be unreasonable since it has been made without an obvious relationship to the facts or evidence. That is plain since except for the mention of the CVD, no other comment relates back to the text of the page. That refers to grounds #1 and #2. The decision to replace the page instead of editing it is found by me to be unreasonable in respect of ground #2 since it seems that you could have satisfied yourself by altering one or both of the words "[IRV is] promoted [in USA]" and "[the CVD] complains [about...]". Also you refused to provide reasoning by e-mail after I requested that. You had two grounds but the weights were missing so the significance of your failure to comprehend what I wrote is something that I now do not have. Any of my text could lucid and optimal though may misunderstand. You may refer to this for the theory of how to make decisions about me: <A HREF="http://www.ijs.co.nz/fairness-standards.htm"></A>.

Decisions should be accompanied with reasoning and reasoning is too inadequate to be present. I do very much suspect that you had an improper purpose for taking such a strong action over that article. I had not used a wikipedia before. I note that your initial friendliness fast became a lockout where I could not get fuller information about your reasoning. Your website is remarkable in carefully censoring out the idea of monontonicity (http://www.channel1.com/users/dkesh/green/voting/), yet it seems to aim to describe principles of preferential voting (and fails completely since none of those can be ported over to mathematics in my opinion). The fact censoring of censoring out that same anti-CVD topic is indicative of a consideration of an irrelevant factor (categorized under improper purpose). I requested (using private e-mail) a statement of the reasoning that was fuller and I never got any. Your argument was that I should write here at this page; that I now write to, and your grounds were "I don't read my e-mail very often." (you wrote on about 10-July-2003). That was a harassing decision. You intended to communicate only using private e-mail and you explained that since you receive and read your e-mail quite well (but a little slowly), then I must therefore avoid using e-mail (and use the wikipedia). That can not be followed and it is unreasonable. I was later? clear in stating that e-mail should be used and the wikipedia must not be. Why didn't you identify your error of telling me to use this wikipedia page ?. Ground #2 implied that you did not understand my mathematics page.

As I wrote at the Election Methods List, you made a mistake at your website indicating that you lack a knowledge of the principles of 2 candidate preferential methods. It was about "representation" in 2 candidate elections. I assume that you test is oppressive and harsh since setting an impossible hard standard for me: a requirement that you understand me when I write for the public with the plainest clarity I can achieve. I only have your word for it that you failed to understand my page. I reject the idea that you could not understand all of the page. Perhaps your 1st ground was oppressive since it told me to look at a policy document but it unreasonably failed to identify a problem or error in my text (or my behaviour) that would be guided to a better state by the policy document. I.e. you warned of how I could improve under policy without identifying what should get better. The CVD comment about non-neutrality with the CVD appeared to be untrue.

I accuse you of making an improperly discriminatory decision because you have worse reasoning and harsher actions for authors of monotonicity pages and me (so far). You maybe do not want your Green party to keep losing. Your decision was more adverse to the public interest than this: you made a lot of major changes. I have a diff program and it is convenient for me to undo only some of changes. Most of my complaint is about your lack of reasoning rather than the decision to erase the document and restore a worse one. Nowhere do you give an opinion on the difference between the documents. You decision was wrong to replace one document with another and have no consideration for the 2nd new document. The reasoning is required by me and there was consideration of you preferred version. I don't know why you prefer it. It is certainly less useful. The http://www.condorcet.org/ text does not reject the Alternative Vote (you wrongly opted for that), since mysteriously Mr B.C. confuses a preference with a candidate. That is unexplained. I have asked Mr B.C. to tell the Election Methods List and not enough time has passed. It seemed to be deliberate since the word "alternative" was used. So there is some improper purpose to the text you prefer (in addition to the possible improper purpose of not letting a monotonicity page harm Greens across USA over an unknown period of time). Greens should not be advanced by unthinkable definitions of others. That is a bit neutral on Greens and able to cause harm to members of the Election Methods List. Already Mr Eric Gorr has been confused by a definition from the condorcet.org website. My new version that I will upload is here, only in the box at the top: http://www.ijs.co.nz/irv-wrong-winners.htm The topic is mathematics and they are detailed. If you aer not, then you should quite withdraw. There is also a private dispute where I intend to comment adversely on your personal website but only fairly and accurately.

Craig Carey, New Zealand (no advice that I be anonymous) 'research at ijs.co.nz'. Wed 16-Jul-2003

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Craig,

Responding to just a few of your points: I was perfectly reasonable in refusing to provide additional reasoning by e-mail; there is nothing that says I should spend my time responding to personal e-mails about wikipedia, especially not after you accused me of being "perverted" and "corrupt" and suggested I was taking bribes from user:RobLa. Also, judge my contributions on their merit, not on my supposed political views about voting systems. In any case, your assumptions about my views are inaccurate, sometimes wildly so.

On to your actual contribution. Here are my specific problems:

1) In your definition, you introduce the concept of a "weighted vote", without any explanation whatsoever of what that is. Also, your text is gramatically incorrect, ambiguous, and frankly incoherent.

2) The section titled "Centuries of fair voting ideals lost as use of IRV and STV spread" is chock full of hyperbole, and inappropriately placed. If you want to discuss the results of IRV, it would be better placed on the Instant-runoff voting page. But don't be surprised if your section is heavily edited there, too. In addition, you introduce the concept of "vote-negating" with barely any explanation.

3) The section titled "A human right to have a vote" is pure hyperbole, and belongs nowhere in an encyclopedia. If this were an actual tact that some people had taken, appealing for changes in voting systems to the UN under the "equal suffrage" clause, then we could as an encyclopedia, report that. We can not engage in pure rhetoric, though.

4) The section titled "Parameterized 3 candidate method has IRV/AV be 33% outside of the fair region" has more unexplained jargon, as does the section "Dual of shadowing stays-losing polytope is a normal vector constraining polytope".

5) The section titled "Monotonicity is not best for theoreticians" is inappropriate for an encyclopedia, because we are here to report on how people study the monotonicity criterion, not argue that they should study it another way.

These are not all the problems I have with your text, but they are a start.

DanKeshet 13:51 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm not so sure the page move was a good one

Hi Closed Limelike Curves, I see you've moved this from monotonicity criterion a few weeks back, which by the edit summary seems to be because you wanted to reflect a focus on violations of the criterion. While this is a valid reason to boldly move a page, the new title may not necessarily fit our WP:CRITERIA as well. For example, piecemeal moves cause the series of articles in the category do no longer be WP:CONSISTENT. Ignoring naming conventions, having paradox at the end of the title may also be WP:OVERPRECISION, and negative responsiveness seems to have no other page relevant to it, meaning that it is sufficient to identify this subject.

Since you seem to be interested in moving multiple pages in the topic (I see Majority loser criterion was also moved, but reverted) I would highly recommend reverting and opening an WP:RM discussion instead, so that the naming conventions of the category can be discussed as a group (which would help maintain consistency). Thanks! Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this renaming probably should not have occurred. "Monotonicity" is a bit of a subtle word in social choice and deserves a full article beyond just being a "paradox" Affinepplan (talk) 14:42, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

No objections to considering other names. Decent potential titles that have all been used in the literature would be:

1. Positive/negative responsiveness/response
2. Less-is-more paradox
3. Additional support paradox

I lean towards one of the latter two, both for consistency with no-show paradox and multiple districts paradox, and because I'd rather use small/familiar words instead of complicated ones. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:47, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I think "Monotonicity" was fine and descriptive. although I would not call it neither a "criterion" nor a "pathology" nor "paradox".

IMO I would title the article something like "Monotonicity (Social Choice)" and write an exposition on all the various definitions of monotonicity of which there are several, maybe nearing a dozen, subtly-but-meaningfully different variations Affinepplan (talk) 18:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

You're right that there's a lot of different kinds of monotonicity floating around, which is part of why I changed the title. Lots of these "criteria" titles, like "Monotonicity criterion", are due to EM-list contributors and differ from some of the more-common names in the literature. "Positive response" and "positive association" are the terms I'm more familiar with from my economics background, and I believe are more common in published literature, whereas "monotonicity criterion" is common on the EM list and has been used in Voting Matters. However, that term can easily clash with others like "population monotonicity" and "Maskin monotonicity" from social choice and mechanism design. This article is about "Positive responsiveness/association", which is unambiguously used for cases where increasing the utility/rating of X, holding all else constant, causes X to lose. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 22:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

that's fine, but then the article should be titled `Positive responsiveness` and not `Negative responsiveness paradox`

also in that case it is not true that all quota apportionment rules fail. D'Hondt is (technically) a quota rule... Affinepplan (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I know Gallagher pointed out somewhere that "Divisors" in highest averages methods have the same interpretation as the "Quota" in quota rules, but "Quota method" generally refers to rules that keep both the quota and the house-size fixed. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 23:59, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

as defined by Quota method, which is what this page links to, D'Hondt is unambiguously a quota method; it is in fact characterized as the only divisor rule which is also a quota rule.

at the absolute bare minimum, the language in this article should be qualified to "some" quota rules or "many" quota rules. Affinepplan (talk) 00:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I suppose we could make the title "positive responsiveness", but I went for "negative responsiveness paradox" to be consistent with other articles (namely no-show paradox and multiple districts paradox). If the issue is WP:OVERPRECISION, "Negative responsiveness" is fine. I generally suggest the negative interpretation because I find in my classes/explanations, most people have an easier time grasping paradoxes than "criteria". If I give the definition of positive responsiveness they have a lot of trouble understanding it, but when I show people an example of how increasing a candidate's score can make them lose, everyone suddenly jolts up in their seats and goes "What?" – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 00:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

tbh I'd rename both of those as well to "Participation (social choice)" and "Consistency (social choice)"

thinking in terms of "paradoxes" just comes across as amateurish to me. maybe I'm alone in that though. Affinepplan (talk) 00:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Given there are multiple good options, I am inclined to move the page back to the old title until things can be narrowed down to two or three, after which an RM can decide things. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:20, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

works for me Affinepplan (talk) 12:29, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

As I said before, I don't think the old title is a great idea, because it's ambiguous. ("Monotonicity" is used for a bunch of things, and it's already easy to conflate with the pages Monotonicity (mechanism design) and Maskin monotonicity.) Affinepplan seems to be ok with "Positive/negative responsiveness", and I'd be fine with "Negative responsiveness" too. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

To be honest I can't be bothered reverting the move, I'm just going to start the RM while the page is at the current title, though if there's no consensus it normally gets reverted back. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:42, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

In true voting nerd fashion, can I submit a ranked ballot ordering my name suggestions? :p It would save us multiple rounds of voting.

The vote can close with the majority-preferred candidate as winner (or close as "no consensus"/"relist" in the unlikely event there isn't one). – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:27, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

You can write whatever you like in a bolded comment, but the more complicated it is the more likely it will confuse the closer. Technically, it's not a vote, so you should explain how well your suggestions fit WP:CRITERIA as well, as that would be taken into account. Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

section "Frequency of Violations" discusses only IRV

this article is about positive responsiveness and monotonicity in general, so why is so much discussion specifically about IRV? surely there are plenty of other examples to draw from including party-list elections, participatory budgeting, non-political contexts, etc.

I would almost nominate this article for deletion entirely. it seems like it is taking a mathematical concept and using it as a pretext for politically-motivated soapboxing

tagging @David_Eppstein and @Jannikp97 for feedback as I have seen you provide many high-quality edits on related pages. Affinepplan (talk) 16:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The section on frequency of violations focuses on IRV because additional support paradoxes are only very common in IRV/two-round systems. However, I'd have no objections to retitling the section to reflect the focus on IRV, or to adding a brief discussion of other rules. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:36, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

> additional support paradoxes are only really common in IRV/two-round systems.

this is not true whatsoever. as the article even mentions, quota based apportionment rules can fail monotonicity, and I would be willing to be there have been far more of these elections exhibiting nonmonotonicity affecting a far greater number of seats and constituents than there are for IRV, for which there are at best a few dozen examples so far in modern history.

although it should be noted that this is (population) monotonicity aka positive/negative involvement or "participation", which is distinct from (support) monotonicity, which itself is distinct from Positive Responsiveness. as a side note, this article should be much more clear and technical about which exact forms of monotonicity are being reference for any given statement

I want to be clear that I am not trying to whitewash IRV's behavior on certain preference profiles, most notably (and as you have made sure to repeat over and over on every single wiki article relating to IRV, spoiler effects, Arrow's theorem, and monotonicity) center squeeze. It is certainly an objective truth that center squeeze & nonmonotonicity can and does happen sometimes with IRV, and is a notable behavioral defect that Wikipedia should not censor. But all that being said, I really don't think it is appropriate for every technical article about what are in essence mathematical algorithms to be constantly barking about this failure. Affinepplan (talk) 18:46, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

this is not true whatsoever. as the article even mentions, quota based apportionment rules can fail monotonicity, and I would be willing to be there have been far more of these elections exhibiting nonmonotonicity affecting a far greater number of seats and constituents than there are for IRV, for which there are at best a few dozen examples so far in modern history.

If you're aware of statistics on this, please go ahead and add them. But as the person who added the information on quota methods, I'm very doubtful that monotonicity failures are more common than in IRV.

although it should be noted that this is (population) monotonicity aka positive/negative involvement or "participation", which is distinct from (support) monotonicity,

No, it's about positive responsiveness. The voters in this case switched their votes from the CDU/CSU to the FDP. (I've never heard the term "support monotonicity", and if it's different from Arrow's positive association/responsiveness I'm not sure what it is.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I think one other reason why there might be a lot of literature on IRV specifically is that it's a very commonly proposed reform to FPTP. It's like, the vanilla icecream of voting reforms, so to speak. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:18, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 27 October 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. There is currently more support in favor of moving to the proposed title. Whether to discuss alternatives is a separate discussion, but one that is worthwhile. (non-admin closure) 𝚈𝚘𝚟𝚝 (𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚟𝚝) 17:36, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

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Negative responsiveness paradox → Negative responsiveness – Opening this up for discussion to refine a previous bold move from monotonicity criterion a few weeks back, see also previous section discussion other possible options, which include Additional support paradox, Less-is-more paradox, reverting back to the old title, or possibly inverted versions of the suggested titles (e.g. monotonicity failure/anomaly or positive response/iveness). There is an argument from Closed Limelike Curves to favour the negative as it seems more intuitive, and no consensus on whether there is a clear common name in literature. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:49, 27 October 2024 (UTC)— Relisting. FOARP (talk) 15:44, 4 November 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 02:34, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Elections and Referendums has been notified of this discussion. Alpha3031 (t • c) 00:10, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Monotonicity criterion

I'd say go back to the original name of monotonicity criterion. That was the stable name, and reading through the talk page on here half of the reasoning for the change was because the mover wanted consistency with the names of the pages no show paradox and multiple districts paradox, which upon further investigation into their own edit histories were also moved by the same person from their original names of participation criterion and consistency criterion respectively, which makes it a move that is based on their own previous undiscussed moves. Considering that this user is currently facing an WP:AN/I created by User:SarekOfVulcan in large part due to their practice of moving pages with minimal discussion, and that, by their own admission there, that they did not know that there was a different policy for moving than for regular edits, I would say that all three articles should be moved back to their original names. 180 Degree Open Angedre (talk) 11:37, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I support returning to the monotonicity criterion with "negative responsiveness paradox" as a redirect, as well. Wotwotwoot (talk) 14:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Move to either negative responsiveness or additional support paradox. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 01:04, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Monotonicity (social choice)

I think monotonicity is the most common term used for this. I would prefer a more general & constructive article about monotonicity in social choice, hence the (social choice) disambiguation, rather than framing it specifically as a paradox or pathology or even criterion.

It could certainly be worth a mention of the other terms that rules without monotonicity are sometimes said to exhibit "negative responsiveness" or even that it is called a "paradox" sometimes, but I would not title the article this. redirects from negative responsiveness as suggested by @Wotwotwoot look fine by me as well. Affinepplan (talk) 03:02, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.