Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unified Primary

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Despite the lengthy discussion here, at this time there's no consensus to delete or retain the article. (Non-administrator closure.) Northamerica1000^(talk) 20:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unified Primary (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Delete This kind of primary isn't used anywhere. The fact that approval voting could be used for primaries doesn't justify its own Wikipedia article. Markus Schulze 08:50, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:48, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Delete - this is essentially an ad. Honj Adrek (talk) 23:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep First, I removed the speedy tag--it does not seem an advertisement of promotion for the method, just a description. Second, that "this kind of primary isn;t used any more" is not a reason for deletion. WP is an encyclopedia, and it covers historical as well as current topics. What the article seems to need is expansion. DGG ( talk ) 23:21, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't mean to say that "this kind of primary isn't used anymore". I meant to say that this method isn't used anywhere. Actually, this method also wasn't used anywhere. Markus Schulze 06:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This type of primary has already gone through the first round of Oregon's ballot initiative procedure and is being referenced by this name, unified primary, by third party sources and the Oregon secretary of state. The name is also helpful by distinguishing it from other means by which approval voting can be implemented within a primary. This is not merely an article describing a procedure that "could" take place. Thanks for your attention. schoolglutton 23:23, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then this article should be deleted. It can come back if and when this ballot initiative has actually been adopted in Oregon. Markus Schulze 13:10, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The method's current position is noteworthy enough for Wikipedia's guidelines (see comment by Nardopolo below). The article itself uses numerous references from multiple sources to support its current standing. Note again the inconsistency this would raise among existing voting method entries by arbitrarily creating a new threshold of government use. schoolglutton 03:29, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • In my opinion, a voting system is notable only if it meets at least one of the following conditions:
        1. It is used or was used in public elections or in a notable organization.
        2. It has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

      Unified Primary meets none of these conditions.

      However, being mentioned in some newspapers is not enough. Newspapers frequently promote ad hoc methods (i.e. methods without any historic or theoretic justification) for tendentious reasons, e.g. to discredit the winner of a certain election or to help a certain politician.

      Being mentioned on some websites or in some self-published books is not enough since anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published media, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), Internet forum postings, and tweets, are largely not acceptable as sources.

      Therefore, Unified Primary is not notable. I recommend that this article should be deleted. It can come back if and when this ballot measure has actually been adopted. Markus Schulze 19:07, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Markus, a few thoughts. First, thank you for clarifying that your comments are reflective of your opinion of what is notable, versus Wikipedia's actual notability criteria, as well as what in your opinion qualifies as a verifiable source versus Wikipedia's actual verifiable source policy, specifically, earlier in the Verifiability page you quoted: Editors may also use material from reliable non-academic sources, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include:university-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, magazines, journals, mainstream newspapers. Editors may also use electronic media, subject to the same criteria. The statement that "Newspapers frequently promote ad hoc methods [of voting]" seems at the very least hyperbolic, if not totally unsupportable. Finally, this voting method is not, as you imply, an ad-hoc method without any historic or theoretic justification. It was characterized and found to be most efficient for simple two-stage voting systems by Fishburn and Gehrlein in a journal paper published in 1976, as cited in the article. Therefore it passes both your stated opinion of what ought to constitute notability as well as Wikipedia's actual policy. Please reconsider your recommendation of deletion.Nardopolo (talk) 22:02, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Nardopolo, I doubt that the mentioned paper by Fishburn and Gehrlein recommends a method identical to Unified Primary. The abstract of this paper rather gives the impression that the number x of votes that each voter submits should be 2. (Abstract: "The best system usually has x = 2.") Sorry, but I believe that you are lying. Markus Schulze 19:45, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• MarkusSchulze, Reality always ends up being a little more complex. The abstract on the web is actually a mis-scan: the "=" is a ">=" in the real paper. The full conclusion was, "Perhaps the most interesting result was that the most efficient two-stage system has the form [x,2,1]. This indicates that there is no advantage in keeping more than two candidates for the second ballot. Moreover, the most efficient value of x for the two-stage system [x,2,1] is equal to or one more than the number of candidates that a voter is to vote for on the single ballot of the most efficient one-stage system." Upon reflection, the source citation is an overstatement, and I have adjusted the article entry accordingly. Though the Fishburn paper does not make a concrete conclusion about x=m (number of candidates), the table data presented indicate that variations of x above the "best two-stage" for each sample (which varies between 2 and 4 depending on simulation parameters) have minimal impact on efficiency relative to a double-plurality (Open Primary) type system. Thus this article is still supportive of the basic thesis that approval voting with a top-two is a highly performing voting system. The more contemporary and complete simulation results by Smith of this method further validate this claim. Nardopolo (talk) 23:10, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep This article appears to meet Wikipedia's general notability guidelines: Coverage in local, state and national press, description by independent voting science and voter advocacy organizations and Oregon's Attorney General constitute significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject; significant certainly relative to other voting methods. I could not find notability guidelines specific to voting methods or election systems where the test of "in current use" or "was used in the past" are stated as requirements for voting systems notability. If such a criteria were to exist, other voting systems would fall under the scythe: Anti-plurality voting, Wright system and Dodgson's method have no current nor former use, yet provide still provide encyclopedic value. If the threshold is "in current use" or "was used in the past" at the level of a state or national parliamentary election (as the statement about Oregon adoption seems to suggest), then even more methods would have to be nixed. I was also unable to find any specific notability guidelines regarding ballot initiatives and their potential outcomes that would suggest passage is a requirement for notability - see Oregon ballot measure: all failed 2008 measures and measure 80 in 2012 have articles in the encyclopedia. Though the unified primary is under petition currently, the notability of the system is not transitory. It describes a voting system that is distinct in character from both approval voting and other forms of primaries. Per DGG's request, I have edited the Unified Primary article to expand the sourcing and context. To make a clear declaration of interest, I am the originator of the concept and chief petitioner of the initiative drive in Oregon. Nardopolo (talk) 23:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I opened an SPI on Nardopolo and schoolglutton --Guerillero | My Talk 06:13, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 08:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment There seems to be some question about the real-world importance and validity of the method. WP does not go by that--we are not experts, and have no way of judging intrinsic significance of things like this. The articles saying it is and is not significant in reality are equally irrelevant. I have a somewhat more limited belief than many WPedians in the absolute usefulness of the GNG in all cases whatsoever, but it is articles of this sort where we must fall back on it, for lack of anything else. DGG ( talk ) 21:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC) ,[reply]
• Comment As a thought of how to move towards a consensus - perhaps the issue of real concern is more about how primary systems are categorized within the Primary Election article. If that article's primary types were broken into "Current and historic primary systems" and "Contemporary primary election reform efforts" that referenced the efforts at nonpartisan reform in CA and elsewhere as well as proposed methods of primary election reform (Unified Primary, FairVote's Top 4 and any others - for example see this article that popped up just today on my twitter feed: http://ivn.us/2014/01/16/what-are-the-different-types-of-primary-elections/) and current initiatives, it might help readers understand the context better.Nardopolo (talk) 20:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Delete The Frohnmayers, backers of the Oregon ballot measure, which has not cleared any significant hurdles (any registered voter could have filed such an initiative and gotten the measures this far) have used Wikipedia's article as the first hit on google for "unified primary" as a self-referencing reason in an official comment to the Oregon Supreme Court on why they should be able to use the neologism "unified primary" in the "ballot title" in Oregon. Here ironically they cite the ballot title process as for why this article needs to stay. This circular reasoning is simply circular reasoning and underscores how weak of a standing this neologism has. This is a huge disservice to Oregon voters who are unfamiliar with such a vague, new, unused, nonacademic term. Their unifiedprimary.org website has so few inbound links it gets a score of 1/100 on opensiteexplorer. The two article contributors (who are under investigation for being sock puppets) are essentially those behind "keeping" this page. The corporate-backed campaign may likely be somewhat-funded (although petitioning time is near running out and there's probably only a slim chance they can collect enough this election cycle to qualify), coming from a rich family, but that doesn't give their neologisms any importance on Wikipedia until they actually become notable. In 2008 an almost identically-worded initiative without fancy neologisms was proposed (sans approval voting) and qualified as Measure 65 and was turned down by Oregon voters by a 2 to 1 margin (I was part of the debate team against M65 and ran the main website opposing it). The official comment also says actual election science experts use this term with no references given. Wikipedia itself, if it used its own existing terms would simply describe the system as an "approval voting" "non-partisan blanket primary". The advocates are trying to pull a fast one on Wikipedia by creating a new term for a minor addition to a non-partisan blanket primary. Furthermore, there's no reason why "unified" is any more accurate than the existing well-accepted term "blanket". Wikipedia should recognize the meddling for what it is and simply delete it. Further, that one just came up with a random collection of positive sounding terms doesn't make it notable. I could go off and create the "best ballot measure ever" and "bestballotmeasureever.org" and start pushing the term for whatever my random idea was, and under the weak criteria that could be used to keep this article here, you'd have to keep a created page for the "best ballot measure ever", edited and created solely by advocates for the measure, so long as I filed paperwork on it that costs nothing (I've filed such paperwork before). Full disclosure: I have a long history in election reform and personally filed arguments against the draft ballot title for many of these reasons (they used the vague and confusing term "unified primary") and opposed the previous version filed in 2008. I have already officially informed the Oregon Supreme Court of the circular arguments being made here (regarding Oregon petition number 38) and will do it again in the comments for the next ballot-title-shopping version they filed (Oregon petition number 51, having the same defects), with a hope the Supreme Court will accept the term "Unified Primary" by actually using the term more often, sprinkled about in it. I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be free of what is essentially ad PR (NPOV) and they are just trying to create a new positive sounding name for approval voting in two rounds using a non-partisan blanket primary, actually using Wikipedia as the primary source. It violates all sorts of accepted Wikipedia conventions. Ironically in 2008 they tried to co-opt the term "open primary" for their "top two" blanket primary proposal and I spent a lot of time in debates educating people on what actual open primaries were (actual partisan primaries where one can choose their membership at the moment of voting). Oregon law allows parties to choose the level of openness of party primaries -- whether one run by the state (major party primaries) or privately funded (minor parties and independents), but our 100% mail-in balloting makes 'preregistering' rather necessary, making real "open primaries" a rather moot concept (the Republicans tried to open their primary for a few offices last time around, but the Democratic Secretary of State refused to send preprinted Republican ballots to everybody who was unaffiliated before the election (what the Republicans wanted). Instead, they sent a notice to everybody that they could request a Republican ballot if they wanted to. That long aside is just to demonstrate how these campaigners have abused language in the past and look to be up to the same tricks as last time. At least they made up a new word rather than muddied up a perfectly fine phrase like last time. Sethwoolley (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personal attacks aside, Woolley actually does a good job here explaining why the page ought to stay. A common practice by opponents of ballot measures in Oregon is to try to stick them with bad titles that make it more difficult for voters to understand the nature of proposed reforms. The lay voter reading an opaque ballot caption that includes "non-partisan blanket primary with approval voting" would have to conduct searches on two separate terms (neither of which individually even come close to capturing the essence of the reform proposed) then figure out by the definitions of both what is actually meant by their combination. This suggestion is not accidental: in the ballot measure 65 campaign Woolley references, opponents were successful in saddling that measure with a completely non-informative ballot title, and thus doomed it to defeat. The petitioner of that measure found in post-election polling that Oregon voters actually supported that proposed reform, but were confused by the caption on the ballot and by default voted against. The suggestion that the unified primary is simply a minor addition to a non-partisan blanket primary is not accurate. As a voting system the combination of approval voting with a top-two has fundamentally different performance characteristics than plurality voting with a top-two, as both of the voting science references that underpin this reform confirm. Finally, petitioners did not "make up" the word unified. Rather that word has a literal definition that fits this system exactly, and it was proposed by Oregon's Attorney General prior to its adoption as the moniker for the reform by petitioners. The comment about not muddying up a perfectly fine phrase is well taken. That is exactly why it is important for this reform to have an unambiguous name and an easily accessible definition that is not under the control of any one party but rather is deliberately neutral in nature and open to peer review. Since it's a little buried above, I'll state again my declaration of interest. I am the originator of the concept and chief petitioner of the initiative drive in Oregon.Nardopolo (talk) 16:10, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Nardopolo, can you point to specific evidence of independent reliable sources (newspaper articles, for example) making substantial use of the "unified primary" name to refer to this proposed system? --Arxiloxos (talk) 16:22, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Arxiloxos, Independent Voter News - ivn.us - has written two articles using this moniker for the system since the beginning of the year, http://ivn.us/2014/01/16/what-are-the-different-types-of-primary-elections/ and http://ivn.us/2014/01/03/unified-primary-new-way-conduct-nonpartisan-elections/ . I'm not sure their internal subscriber count, but from a quick search they have > 60,000 followers on the social networks (which seems like a lot for a news org), and their articles have had multiple reposts from other orgs. The Center for Election Science, which has been a proponent of various voting system reforms (approval voting, prominently) has adopted the pairing as well.Nardopolo (talk) 17:05, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.