@SimplyBeautifulArt Well, if anyone jumps in the next 4 hours I will not be happy, and I'll let the candidate and everyone else know that I am not happy!! :P
@SchrodingersCat On the election page, in the right margin, at the top. Starts with "nomination period began" (Oct 2 20:00), after that comes "election begins", currently says "in 43 minutes".
@SimplyBeautifulArt There is actually no need to look for users deleting a lot of posts. The site software will detect that automatically, and raise a mod flag. It still might make an interesting question for candidates. Because the consequences depend a lot on how a moderator sees the action. OTOH, in a doubtful case the mods can discuss the case in moderator chatroom.
@SimplyBeautifulArt, @SchrodingersCat Good luck to you, too. You are also viable candidates (which is all my "Good luck"-messages attempt to convey - I try not to meddle too much here). SBA is very active in taking care of site hygiene. The reservation about the feline candidate is that it's hard to tell whether they are dead or alive.
The system is STV which means Single Transferrable Vote. You have one vote. This is assigned to your first choice as long as this candidate is in the running.
Only once the top choice is eliminated, later preferences come into play. Details of elimination are a bit complex but you have already a link for this.
@JyrkiLahtonen Well I am very much alive... As much as the site requires.. ;) And I try keeping things clean ... only thing is that I dont visit any chats.. giving the impression that I am dead whereas I am very much alive doing some cleaning...
@quid What is this thing about elimination that you are talking of? Since there is no primary this year, we are directly in election and the election portal does not mention any elimination in the election phase.
@SchrodingersCat Since (calculus) and (sequences-and-series) are fairly relevant tags to you, you may be interested in the question I posed in the main chat.
@SchrodingersCat underestimate?! Who are you trying to fool. By now it is well-known cats are plotting for world domination via the internet. :-)
@SchrodingersCat it is the voting mechanics that is used for the main election. The result is computed over several rounds. See the link that Daniel gave.
@quid Well, my cat, Shai, is a pacifist, and only dominates me in terms of "meow" (get up and feed me). "Meow" (I here you talking on the phone! You're ignoring me!) etc.
Super roughly. Take the first choices. Eliminate the lowest. Distribute the lowest's votes to the rest according to second choice. Repeat until only two remain.
But all this is done at the end of the election. See opavote.com/results/5757331467927552/0 for the process last election (this is only about the main phase, unrelated to primary) @SchrodingersCat
@amWhy ah, I recall you told about Shai some time ago. Glad to know all is still well. :-)
Next election: Can we block (as a site, not individually) any nominee with a "score" less than 5? (I'm being very generous here.) Or is it that "all scores are game"? (I.e. users are to be trusted to consider a candidate's score, or not?)
Question: I should know this: Is it required of all voters that they select all of the following: first choice, second choice and third choice? And why can't a candidate be both my first choice and second choice, e.g.?
@amWhy I am almost sure it is not required you make all choices. But the way the system work I think there'd be no point in having the same candidate multiple times.
I just wish voting was more like weighted voting. If you feel strongest about first and second choice, e.g., and don't feel much about other candidates, we'd be able to assign two votes for our first choice, one for the second choice. Or three all on one. Or 1 on three. Total votes: two highest vote counts (in this election) win.
@quid: ofcourse, but what seems outrageous about archimedes is that he was perhaps the only truly original researcher in his century, with Euclid and Apollonius resembling compilers of information
Gauss said that Archimedes already had worked out the differential calculus to some great extent, and we know that he had a knowledge of continued fractions, diophantine equations...etc
@Fine There are many, many, many valid and good answers to this; and deciding the best of them is a subjective evaluation (in part based on one's mathematical field one is in, whether breadth of excellence, or narrowly focused excellence, is one's preference, etc.
@amWhy: it is not subjective if one chooses a certain criteria: such as how influential their work was, or how much ahead of time they were, and how superior to contemporary mathematicians they were...etc and so on
i must mention that choosing the best mathematician on just one criteria would be a disservice. as if we were to select the best mathematician on the sole basis of being ahead in time and being superior to his peers, archimedes would blow everyone out of the water
@Fine Again, I focus on breadth of excellence/mastery/even genius in mathematics, across the board (and beyond), and less on the mere genius of one rather narrow field of the discipline.
@amWhy: it's surely ridiculous to say that this is a wholly subjective matter and no certain answer to this can be given. everyone knows that Gauss is superior to Spivak and Tao, and if we agree on this, then perhaps we can generalize this properly.
@Fine In any case, time will tell. 200 years from now, 500 years from now, do you not believe that "the greatest all time" may be rethought a number of times by thousands and thousands of mathematicians?
@Fine The only problem @Fine, is that if all users presuppose that quid will win, and so direct their first, second, third vote on others, you undermine quid's success. So assume nothing, and vote for who you think is most qualified, 2nd, and 3rd.
@Fine I believe to be well-prepared to be a moderator. However I would not say it is a given that I will become one. And this is not just me engaging in understatement to be polite. The dynamics of such a process can be tricky.
@amWhy: many still thought Archimedes was the greatest despite the fact that 2000 years passed, the only difference was that he gained some opposition from Newton. certainly if someone were to make a range of absolutely profound discoveries across several mathematical branches of primary importance such as analysis, number theory, algebra, topology...etc, then the question would deserve a rethinking.
i guess that one can only ask who remains unsurpassed still to this date
@quid: you are indeed correct to some degree. your earlier campaign was dented by the rather unusual (and somewhat silly) criticism that since you had asked no question, you had no experience on "that" side of the matter and therefore you were unsuitable for the job of a moderator. but now everyone seems to have forgotten that
if we are to judge the current state of this election by the questionnaire, then certainly you'll win it. you stand far above the opposition with the leading 48 upvotes, the second person in line is distanced from you by 26 upvotes.
The only problem @Fine, is that if all users presuppose that quid will win, and feel that's a given, and then direct their first, second, third vote on others, they undermine quid's success. So assume nothing, and vote for who you think is most qualified, 2nd, and 3rd.
@amWhy: if all users presuppose that quid will win and then proceed to direct their first vote to somebody else, are you not implying that those who as of this moment have casted their first votes to quid have done it without any reason?
@Fine Indeed I cannot complain about the initial feedback. But to show that it is complicated, note that by upvotes Jack (31) is ahead of Zack. He just also has many downvotes. But for the actual election this plays less of a role. Also what @DanielFischer said. And this is especially true for me, as I am much more meta-active than most other candidates.
certainly those who have voted for quid feel that he is better than the rest and that he has shown this more distinctly. why would they then, sensing that quid shall win (which is what they want and hence why they voted in the first place), rob quid of their vote and proceed to give it to someone that they previously thought didn't deserve it?
@Fine No that's not what I said. I'll quit trying to explain or comment to you; you're reading far too far into what I did say. It was hypothetical... "if......"
@Fine I find it somewhat interesting that the voting system used in this election is chosen to minimize the effectiveness of that problem. If one's first vote is a user named Archibald, and if Archibald wins by a landslide, then those user's second votes count almost as much as a full vote.
@mixedmath I don't fully get the election logic. My only point was no user should presume, at the outset, that they needn't vote for their top choice, if they think it's "obvious" that their top choice is a shoe-in. If everyone voted according to their genuine preferences, all is fine.
@Fine You're replying not to me here. An up-vote on meta, given on the candidates-questionnaire page, does not transfer as an actual election vote. My only point is to those folks who have an overall favorite candidate vote in the election for that candidate, whomever that may be. Period.
I just noticed that I probably have the most controversial status (the upvotes and downvotes on my questionnaire answer are decently large and closer than any others)
