We made it to the front page of Reddit

[Clay Shentrup]

http://www.reddit.com/r/rpac/comments/r8idf/how_about_we_push_for_the_approval_voting_not_to/

Unfortunately, it looks like no voting theory experts showed up to clear up the massive misinformation. But some people who were somewhat knowledgable did help.

Arrow's Theorem has clearly screwed up this field very badly. Because no one understands it.

[Jameson Quinn]

I'm actually pretty impressed with the level of knowledge that got demonstrated in the comments there, though clearly pretty much anyone on this list could have raised it even further.

Jameson

2013/5/17 Clay Shentrup <cl...@electology.org>

http://www.reddit.com/r/rpac/comments/r8idf/how_about_we_push_for_the_approval_voting_not_to/

Unfortunately, it looks like no voting theory experts showed up to clear up the massive misinformation. But some people who were somewhat knowledgable did help.

Arrow's Theorem has clearly screwed up this field very badly. Because no one understands it.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Center for Election Science" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to electionscien...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Leon Smith]

I'm curious why you posted a link to a story that is over a year old...   I still appreciate it though, as I hadn't seen this thread.

[Clay Shentrup]

On Saturday, May 18, 2013 2:38:56 PM UTC-7, Leon Smith wrote:

I'm curious why you posted a link to a story that is over a year old...   I still appreciate it though, as I hadn't seen this thread.

I assumed this was what you were referring to here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/approvalaction/hLmrnFiR3Fw/W0RBmB1ThQAJ 

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 08:21 AM 5/18/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>I'm actually pretty impressed with the level of knowledge that got
>demonstrated in the comments there, though clearly pretty much
>anyone on this list could have raised it even further.

I thought the same.

[Clay Shentrup]

On Saturday, May 18, 2013 3:49:17 PM UTC-7, Clay Shentrup wrote:

I assumed this was what you were referring to here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/approvalaction/hLmrnFiR3Fw/W0RBmB1ThQAJ 

And apparently you're not going to correct me. 

[Leon Smith]

Oh, no, I was just away from email for a spell.   To the best of my knowledge,  we've made the front page of /r/politics twice so far this year.   The first time:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1e4jmb/plurality_voting_elects_inferior_candidates/

And the second time:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1asm10/approval_voting_advocates_are_in_the_midst_of_the/

We did slightly better the second time,  but all in all the performance was very similar.   I don't have as good as of data as I'd like for how much traffic that generated,  but it was on the order of 1000 views for the first link.   I don't have any real data for the second link,  but it seems to have generated a few hundred views of the video,  suggesting that a majority of people who clicked the second link didn't actually watch the video,  assuming a similar audience.    But this assumption probably isn't entirely safe,  because the first article was posted on a weekday whereas the second was posted on a Saturday.  Of course I don't know how many of those actually read the article(s) either.

The real win seems to have been when one of the Upworthy curators posted a link to Thought Bubble's copy of the video,  which generated somewhere on the order of 20,000 views in about 24 hours.   The idea didn't really go viral though,  as (to the best of my knowledge) people didn't keep posting it elsewhere.  But still,  we are probably too early in this campaign to have much chance of going viral,  as the audience has not been primed for the idea.

As far as Reddit,  I'm hoping that eventually we'll have a decent chance to get to the top of /r/politics,  and I imagine those links would generate disproportionately more traffic,  especially because then we'd be hitting the front page of many people's overall reddit page,  instead of the front page for that particular subreddit.   More people need to be primed for accepting these ideas first though,  which is not easy and is going to take time if it happens at all.

Best,

Leon

--

[Leon Smith]

Oh, here's the post that generated 20,000 video views:

http://www.upworthy.com/how-al-gore-could-have-won-the-2000-presidential-election-with-ease-2

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

This is mysterious. First of all, Clay had written:

><http://www.reddit.com/r/rpac/comments/r8idf/how_about_we_push_for_the_approval_voting_not_to/>http://www.reddit.com/r/rpac/comments/r8idf/how_about_we_push_for_the_approval_voting_not_to/

>Unfortunately, it looks like no voting theory experts showed up to
>clear up the massive misinformation. But some people who were
>somewhat knowledgable did help.
>Arrow's Theorem has clearly screwed up this field very badly.
>Because no one understands it.

While Arrow's Theorem was mentioned, the mention was reasonably
accurate, though possibly misleading; it wasn't clear to me that the
person misunderstood the Theorem. The discussion was indeed a year old.

Clay has now linked to a googlegroup that cannot be read by
non-subscribers, the "approvalaction" group.

And then:

>At 02:42 PM 5/19/2013, Clay Shentrup wrote:
>>On Saturday, May 18, 2013 3:49:17 PM UTC-7, Clay Shentrup wrote:

>>I assumed this was what you were referring to here:

>><https://groups.google.com/d/msg/approvalaction/hLmrnFiR3Fw/W0RBmB1ThQAJ>https://groups.google.com/d/msg/approvalaction/hLmrnFiR3Fw/W0RBmB1ThQAJ

>>
>
>And apparently you're not going to correct me.

Unless Leon is a subscriber to that list, he's not even going to know
what Clay is talking about. In another post today, Clay wrote:

>From: Clay Shentrup <cl...@electology.org>
>To: electio...@googlegroups.com
>Cc: [Michael Ossipoff email address redacted]
>Subject: [CES #8325] Re: Unsubscribing. Have completed voting system project.
>
>If you click on the little person/gear icon in the upper-right, you
>can select "Leave this group".
>
> From Prague,
>Clay

This was in response to a post from Michael Ossipoff, who had written:

>On Sunday, May 19, 2013 1:28:31 PM UTC-4, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>True, I said before that I'd completed my voting system project. But
>there were, at that time, still a few e-mails that I wanted to send.
>
>Now I've completed my voting-system project, and am, therefore,
>unsubscribing from this forum.
>
>I've done my part.
>
>Michael Ossipoff
>
>I can't find a link, or other facility, for unsubscribing. Maybe
>someone more computer-savvy than I can explain how it's done.
>
>Michael Ossipoff

It's not clear why Clay copied this to the list. However, previously,
when Michael had asked for help voting on the CES video, he'd been
given information apparently useless to him because it did not
consider the possibilities, and did not provide specific links.

(Clay seemed to think it was enough that a needed link was at the
"top of the thread." We still don't know what happened wtih Michael.
What he had done to find the video should have worked, but he
probably never saw my mail explaining it in detail. But that belief
seems to correspond to an assumption that Clay is making that is
probably not true for most subscribers. This is a mailing list, and
we read it in an email program.

Clay is apparently reading the list from the googlegroups page. Most
of us don't do that. I'd guess that Michael is reading through the
gmail interface. In which case that "little person/gear icon" has
nothing to do with this list, if it's even there. To see it, one must
not only be a subscriber, but be logged into google with an account
google links with the subscription. And it's not the gear icon, it is
the "little person."

I am a moderator of this list, and I checked for Michael's
subscription. It's not there. One of my complaints about googlegroups
is that, if there is an activity log, I don't know where it is. So I
couldn't verify that either Clay or Michael actually removed the
subscription....

Michael, I don't know if you will read this. However, as a moderator,
I'm obligated to assist you. I'm taking you off of my filter, so that
I'll see messages you send me. Had it been there, I would have
removed the subscription because of your request.

Clay seems a tad ... distracted. Not surprising. Happy honeymoon, Clay.