Clever idea (Score: 2, Funny)
by prospectacle@pipedot.org in Non-profit plan to deploy ocean barriers to collect plastic debris on 2015-06-05 12:57 (#AG1T)
Now we just need one for air pollution and the party can continue unabated.
Impressive rate of progress (Score: 3, Insightful)
by prospectacle@pipedot.org in Weekly Update on 2014-04-14 11:14 (#12C)
How many people are developing this site? That's a good set of features for one week. I will maintain an active interest and try to comment more often as I think this is a worthy endeavour with a good foundation and great potential.
Those approval-voting "What features do you want" polls are also a great idea and I think everyone would win if you ran them regularly.
Those approval-voting "What features do you want" polls are also a great idea and I think everyone would win if you ran them regularly.
Approval Voting is Under-Rated (Score: 5, Insightful)
by prospectacle@pipedot.org in Approval voting on 2014-03-16 07:22 (#KH)
Good work on choosing approval voting!
Single-vote (first past the post) methods are terrible methods of translating voter will into meaningful results. They discourage most people from voting and most candidates from running, and produce divisive results (see american presidential elections). If most people dislike a particular candidate, it can still win, because the vote against it may be split between the other options, since people can only express their first preference, and nothing else.
Preferential (ranked) voting systems can be ok, but it gets complicated when you decide how to count the preferences. If you use instant-runoff (eliminate the least popular candidate if there is no majority, then re-distribute the second-preferences from those votes. Repeat until someone has a majority) is divisive, because most people who didn't vote for whoever ends up winning, do not get their preferences counted at all. This is because their first-preference option doesn't get eliminated before a majority is reached by another candidate.
There are some decent preferential systems (e.g. borda count, kemeny-young), but they all suffer from arrow's impossibility theorem (which shows that they're all flawed in some key aspects).
Approval voting is simple to use, simple to count, and tends to produce consensus results.
This site doesn't appear to have a whole team of volunteers like SoylentNews (which I also like), so progress is slower, but I very much like and admire the effort. Consider me sold.
Single-vote (first past the post) methods are terrible methods of translating voter will into meaningful results. They discourage most people from voting and most candidates from running, and produce divisive results (see american presidential elections). If most people dislike a particular candidate, it can still win, because the vote against it may be split between the other options, since people can only express their first preference, and nothing else.
Preferential (ranked) voting systems can be ok, but it gets complicated when you decide how to count the preferences. If you use instant-runoff (eliminate the least popular candidate if there is no majority, then re-distribute the second-preferences from those votes. Repeat until someone has a majority) is divisive, because most people who didn't vote for whoever ends up winning, do not get their preferences counted at all. This is because their first-preference option doesn't get eliminated before a majority is reached by another candidate.
There are some decent preferential systems (e.g. borda count, kemeny-young), but they all suffer from arrow's impossibility theorem (which shows that they're all flawed in some key aspects).
Approval voting is simple to use, simple to count, and tends to produce consensus results.
This site doesn't appear to have a whole team of volunteers like SoylentNews (which I also like), so progress is slower, but I very much like and admire the effort. Consider me sold.
I think the answer is more inertia (Score: 1)
by prospectacle@pipedot.org in Munich standardizes on Kolab for its groupware on 2014-03-07 09:44 (#AJ)
Inertia cuts both ways. When android eventually offers a "windowed apps" mode (perhaps inspired by samsung's tizen os which has a similar feature), then people will suddenly realise they have a (linux) system they're familiar with, in their pocket, which they can plug into a screen/keyboard/mouse dock when necessary.
Then maybe they'll think twice before switching to a different computer when they get to work, especially if all they're doing is web pages, documents, spreadsheets, and emails.
Then maybe they'll think twice before switching to a different computer when they get to work, especially if all they're doing is web pages, documents, spreadsheets, and emails.
1