Talk:Rob Richie

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 16:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Important to cover what Richie is not

Besides being written like a resumé, this page's content gives credibility to the CEO of a voting reform advocacy organization. What it doesn't cover is whether Richie has any experience with public choice theory, or if he has a non-expert fascination. This is important. From an expert view, instant runoff voting only satisfies mutual majority, and a lot of the claims made by FairVote and supported by Richie are trivially undermined, e.g. the claim that IRV finds a winner with a majority is true insomuch as every candidate has a majority against some other candidate, except possibly one Condorcet loser. Qualifying this by citing the mutual majority criterion only raises questions about what majority rule *is*, which is a core question in public choice. That Richie has testified and written legislation doesn't tell us if he has credible expert knowledge of public choice. The article needs detail of what he has and hasn't studied and published, or else we're all speculating on his knowledge based on what he's said in public. --John Moser (talk) 03:59, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Vague claims

The statement, "election reforms that increase voter turnout, accountable governance, and fair representation, including reforms such as instant runoff voting and the National Popular Vote plan," implies that these reforms increase turnout, accountable governance, and fair representation. This lacks research, and most current research shows these reforms do no such thing. Many of FairVote's claims on reducing polarization and negative campaigning, for example, reference Australia as evidence, where the media often claims negative campaigning has gotten so bad it's destroying Australian democracy with toxic polarization. Ongoing research is studying IRV's well-known "center-squeeze effect," and spatial modeling shows it's prone to lean far from representative; but fair representation itself requires some normative ideal, which technically is reduced to spatial modeling concepts, coming down to Black's median voter theorem or Plott's majority rule equilibrium theorem and the concept that an alternative inside a policy core can't be disturbed by one outside the core—more simply, that you can't get consensus for one option (which IRV can elect) if some other options exist which have better consensus (but they may potentially have similar consensus, such that which is *the* consensus is unclear, while it is clear that all other alternatives are *not* the consensus). Because public elections don't have a quorum, you can always force an outcome by agenda-setting; IRV runs down to two winners, essentially setting the agenda to selecting one or the other.

IRV also discards a group who collect around a non-mutual-majority candidate, entirely, such that if the election is close, they may be able to guarantee a better outcome by voting for a candidate who they don't like, but who they dislike less than the potential winner. For example, if it's going to be between 49% and 51% Republican voters and a majority of Republicans vote for Trump above the runner-up Republican, then in a group of several Republicans and Democrats, if there's 51% Republican turn-out, Trump wins, and Democrats would be better off voting for the least-bad Republicans in order rather than Democrats; while if if it's 51% Democrat turn-out, bailing out on the risk by ranking the least-bad Republicans first will guarantee a Republican win despite a Democratic majority of voters. Claims that voters are more free to cast their vote how they want are misleading at best: IRV suffers the same problems as first past the post, but in a fancier mechanism. The same can be said of party primary elections, selecting candidates who are then pitted together in a national popular vote, requiring that each voter only vote in a single party's primary and so excluding information about voter's choice from the final result. National popular vote can, theoretically, throw out a candidate who wins a majority of first-choice votes by prohibiting voters from voting for them (e.g. if they want to select their party's nominee yet feel the other party's most moderate candidate fits their own views better, back to the whole spatial modeling thing), thus eliminating them before the final round. IRV does the same with the Condorcet candidate, who doesn't usually get a majority of first-choice votes.

That's not to say there's a better alternative to single transferable vote; STV is more responsive to a diverse voting body because it can redistribute them to different coalitions. IRV is STV electing one, which creates exactly one quota-reaching coalition, and voters can only be redistributed to the losing coalition. That implies STV has this damage as well, to a smaller degree; we just don't happen to have a better alternative at this time (list proportional, for example, makes the election about parties rather than voter choice between alternatives, and party is a synthetic construct that doesn't change the fact that a voter placed their preferences in a particular order). This is a matter of ongoing research, with everything from STV-CPO and Schulze-STV to methods using an alternate elimination method such as Geller's STV-B, Nauru-STV, and some kind of reverse-Bucklin system; they all have flaws (RNB-STV, which I invented, has amusing flaws that bother me in what should be but in practice probably won't be corner cases, even though as a single-winner method it always elects from the uncovered set). It converges to its natural consequences in IRV. --John Moser (talk) 04:32, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

COI Editing

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#User:RRichie and FairVote, instant runoff voting, et cetera –Sincerely, A Lime 20:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

From the documentation for {{COI}} (emphasis is original):

Like the other neutrality-related tags, if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article. If you do not start a discussion, any editor will be justified in removing the tag without warning.

Furthermore, {{BLP sources}} and {{BLP unsourced}} should not be used together (in this case the latter is false). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

The page is visibly copy-pasted from the guy's resume:

Richie has published a commentary in New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Roll Call, Nation, National Civic Review, Boston Review, Christian Science Monitor and Legal Times.[citation needed] His writings have appeared in eight books since 1999, including the feature essay in Whose Votes Count (Beacon Press, 2001).

That said, you're right about the unsourced tag being an error. –Sincerely, A Lime 21:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

If so, that's a copyright issue. It does not justify the use of {{COI}}, and neither do your comments here meet the requirements for the use of that template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:15, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

For the avoidance of doubt, I removed the quoted copyvio immediately after I posted the above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:22, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: There's a rather long post at the COI noticeboard, which is linked to from the very start of this talk page section, and which explains in some detail what's going on with this article. Did you read it? Let me know if there are any problems with what it says there. jp×g🗯️ 21:51, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I hate to be a dick about this, but it kind of bothers me to see a relatively inexperienced editor get a response like this. Especially after doing the work of figuring out a complicated bureaucratic process to do unpaid detective work for the project -- I had a conversation with Lime about this prior to them making the posts, where they asked me for guidance on what to do, and I have to seriously question what kind of editing environment we're trying to create when "having an extended conversation with an administrator and getting specific advice prior to tagging an article" still gets you yelled at for not having read every word of the COI policy, the maintenance tag guidelines, and the specific documentation for the specific maintenance tag you're adding! jp×g🗯️ 21:54, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, of course I read it. It was linked at the top of this section and referred to in the edit summary of the edit I reverted. I have again removed the {{COI}} template, because the requirements for its use are still not met. I quoted those requirements above. Did you read them? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:20, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay, so to be clear: you are saying that linking to the COI noticeboard thread where the COI is explained is insufficient, because the actual wikitext from this thread has to be itself copied directly to this talk page? jp×g🗯️ 23:52, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that there is nothing here which explains what is non-neutral about the article. Neither linking to the COIN discussion nor reposting it here dies that, because that discussion also does not explain what is non-neutral about the article. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:18, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Repost of COI noticeboard thread topic "User:RRichie and FairVote, instant runoff voting, et cetera" from 2 May 2024, per request

On May 2, 2024, I posted this text to the conflict-of-interest noticeboard, under the section heading "User:RRichie and FairVote, instant runoff voting, et cetera". Since it has been requested, based on the text "if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article" in the {{COI}} template documentation indicates that the entire text of the post must be reproduced here in full, I will now do so.

Cut & paste copy

FairVote is a political advocacy organization that supports instant runoff voting. For the record, I happen to believe IRV is a neat idea. At any rate, we list this group's founder as Robert Richie. A buddy of mine tipped me off about something rather curious in the edit history of a few IRV-related articles: The FairVote article's history has quite a few edits from RRichie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), whose other edits are predominantly to articles like Instant-runoff voting, Ranked-choice voting in the United States, FairVote, et cetera. Edits to other pages often involve events related to IRV. It seems to be the case that this person's COI editing has been done under their real name since 2008, making this a somewhat strange case; nevertheless, I think something should be done about it, so I am opening a thread here. jp×g🗯️ 14:06, 2 May 2024 (UTC) I think technically we're supposed to ask them to identify to info-en per WP:IMPERSONATE. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:56, 2 May 2024 (UTC) His personal Wikipedia article over at Rob Richie seems... off. It's a resumé, includes at least one edit from User:RRichie, and was created from scratch by an anonymous Wiki user. Several edits appear to be clear conflicts of interest, all relating to a campaign that User:RRichie was paid to work on: Attempting to downplay a ballot initiative that caused a substantial electoral defeat. Attempting to paint said ballot initiative as being motivated by a single sole loser. ...Attempting to delete information about controversy surrounding IRV. Deleting information about the Maine Supreme Court finding IRV unconstitutional. This also raises questions about whether this is just one person, or something FairVote has been doing more broadly. How do we know other editors to articles like instant-runoff voting aren't also being paid? It definitely seems unusually light on criticism, given the poor reputation IRV has with social choice theorists... –Maximum Limelihood Estimator 20:45, 2 May 2024 (UTC) This edit suggests a clear COI with FairVote. "...check out FairVote's link on universities and colleges. We now know of at least 41 colleges and universities where student governments use instant runoff voting, as documented on our site..." - Boardwalk.Koi (talk) 17:55, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Let me know if you're okay with me going ahead and replacing the COI template on the article, or if you would like any additional details. jp×g🗯️ 23:56, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG I am not. The above, redundant, cut & paste largely addresses a different article or articles. The only text about this article is "His personal Wikipedia article over at Rob Richie seems... off. It's a resumé, includes at least one edit from User:RRichie, and was created from scratch by an anonymous Wiki user." That single edit was made several years ago and the text says nothing about what is non-neutral about the article now. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:24, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing I'm saying I suspect User:RRichie wrote this page himself, anonymously, by copy-pasting directly from his resume (which would be a very weird thing for someone else to do).

Right now the page includes nothing but a list of talks he's given and events he's been invited to; it's a puff piece. –Sincerely, A Lime 16:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

We regularly see drafts that are based on third parties' resumes; that is not evidence of COI. A single edit made in 2008 (sixteen years ago!), making only minor and uncontroversial changes, does not warrant a COI tag. There is a lot that may be wrong with the article, but we have other methods - up to and including deletion nomination - for dealing with that (if you have evidence of further copyright violation you should follow the process for dealing with that), but you have not made a case that the article as it stands is not written neutrally. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:36, 15 May 2024 (UTC)