[Icehouse] Publishing only a winner and a runner up

[Dale Sheldon]

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, Jorge Arroyo wrote:

> I only say that one voter has too much power to change the final ratings 
> (from first to last). I'm not asking the winner to step off. Never said 
> that. In fact, if one thing is totally clear from the votings is that 
> M12 is the winner and MG is the looser. As it has been stated before 
> (not by me) the rest was very close. I just say we cannot make a 
> reliable order from first to last because a small difference in one or 
> two votes would change it dramatically. (as proven).

To be pedantic, all the Condorcet criteria can tell us is that MG lost, 
and that the other 7 were "tied".

And you keep using "unreliable" as some kind of pejorative attack on the 
system.  That's silly, as there isn't any method that's any more reliable 
(objectively).  If this had been a simple plurality vote, 15 voters on 8 
choices, 2nd place WreckTangle would have tied for 5th with Timberland, 
and Virus Fight would have come in third.  By which I mean this:

IT WAS A VERY CLOSE VOTE!

There is no "fix" for that.  Look at the votes: 2 people put M12 first and 
VF 7th, and 2 people put M12 7th and VF 1st.  Opinions are ALL OVER the 
place.  Teasing some kind of aggregate order out of the chaos is not going 
to create an answer that everyone "feels in their gut" to be right.  It's 
like you came in 7th in a marathon by half a second; photo finish.  It was 
close.  The end.

Two, up to five, posts complaining about how unfair and insulting this 
"loss" was I can understand, but this is getting silly.

-- 
Dale Sheldon
dales at digitalfreaks.org