Hi folks,
As some of you may know, I've been hosting a monthly "office hours" call
every Tuesday at 2pm Pacific:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Tuesday_at_2
It's often a small crowd and seldom more than show up for Sass's weekly
call:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sass_Open_Democracy_Discussion
One semi-regular attendee at my monthly call is Kristofer Musterhjelm,
though he's not the only electoral-reform person who has dropped by. The
conversation on my call frequently gets DEEP in the weeds with respect to
oddball corner cases when elections can go off the rails (as well as the
interplay between geography and democracy, and other math-y/computer-y
topics). It also sometimes ends up being a bit of a gossip session about
the various people in the electoral reform movement, though I sometimes
feel guilty for letting it go that way. Sometimes.
Anyway, things can get a little awkward when alumni from Wikimedia
Foundation or other former co-workers and friends/family of mine show up,
because I can suddenly lose interest in talking about electoral.reform
stuff (especially if it's someone I haven't seen in a while). Folks that I
know from electoral reform stuff frequently want to talk about mathematical
concepts that I barely understand, let alone my friends who haven't been
mildly aware of many of these concepts for the past 30+ years. Also,
Kristofer (and probably other Europeans) would like a time for the call
that doesn't involve staying up until way-too-late to attend. My "Tuesday
at 2" time was chosen because it VERY VAGUELY works for folks in western
Europe, the US west coast, and Australia (among others), but rumor has it
the globe is spherical, and there are times that suck for some folks in the
global electoral community. Who knew?
I see the community of folks that subscribe to this list (who I'll refer to
as the "Electorama community") as the target audience for this call.
Kristofer is less cardinal-tolerant than I am, and thus also doesn't want
to stay up until 3am to talk to folks who tend to be biased toward cardinal
methods (as many folks on Sass's call are). Though I find STAR to be an
acceptable (even "very good") reform, Condorcet methods are my first love,
and I find myself "flipping the idiot bit" on people who make specious
arguments against Condorcet tallying (even if I don't say so out loud).
Given how much many cardinal advocates like to hear the sound of their own
voice and how often they make said specious arguments (mistaking
"assertiveness" for "correctness"), I find myself frequently biting my
tongue/stepping away from the keyboard when I read/hear their arguments.
I've been promising Kristofer I'd send this email for weeks if not months
now. I've been dragging my feet because I'm ambivalent about
having another periodic call that I feel semi-obligated to attend. I'm
hoping if we have another call, it'll be complementary to Sass's weekly
call (not explicitly competitive to it). I'm not sure if the Electorama
call should be weekly, fortnightly, monthly or some other time increment.
For now, let's assume this will be fortnightly (i.e. every other week), but
let's use when2meet to come to initial consensus:
https://www.when2meet.com/?32866470-TyG8q
Note that the host (me, for now) gets to choose the time, regardless what
the vote on when2meet is. I've created a temporary electowiki page here
for this call:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Electorama_call
If you're interested in joining this call, please let your opinion be known
at the when2meet link above. when2meet is optimized for weekly meetings,
but this is only a straw to get vague availability for everyone. I was
very liberal about the times I said that I'm available, but I imagine if
the group consensus seems to be at an awful time for me, I may ask someone
else to host the call. We can use the "Talk:" page for the
"User:RobLa/Electorama_call" page to discuss whether this should be weekly,
fortnightly, or monthly.
TIA!
Rob
