Comments on: Tactical Votes http://boakes.org/tactical-votes/ nice of you to drop by. tea? Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:34:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7-hemorrhage hourly 1 By: Jo http://boakes.org/tactical-votes/#comment-2487 Jo Wed, 04 May 2005 14:54:00 +0000 http://boakes.org/tactical-votes#comment-2487 That would be much more interesting - the problem with this kind of thing, though, is that it's incredibly difficult not to ask loaded questions. For example, www.politicalcompass.org has a good idea, but some of the questions are inescapably leading - it asks you to agree or disagree with statements such as 'It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.' or 'The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.' - it's difficult to escape the idea that some of these are effectively asking 'do you consider yourself to be a bad person? tick yes or no' That would be much more interesting - the problem with this kind of thing, though, is that it’s incredibly difficult not to ask loaded questions. For example, http://www.politicalcompass.org has a good idea, but some of the questions are inescapably leading - it asks you to agree or disagree with statements such as ‘It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.’ or ‘The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.’ - it’s difficult to escape the idea that some of these are effectively asking ‘do you consider yourself to be a bad person? tick yes or no’

]]> By: rich boakes http://boakes.org/tactical-votes/#comment-2486 rich boakes Wed, 04 May 2005 13:16:26 +0000 http://boakes.org/tactical-votes#comment-2486 This problem would map nicely into the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic-based_Vector_Space_Model" rel="nofollow">Vector Space Model</a> which could cope with a far more detailed set of statements than this years WSYVF.com. Each statement would define a dimension in v-space. The respondent's acceptance or rejection of each statement is then modeled as a distance along it's vector. The respondent would be free to assign as much or as little value to any statement, from zero to plus or minus anything. When the user is finished, the largest number is normalized to 1.0 and all other numbers are proportionally reduced to other values less than one . This would provide the balancing that Jo quite rightly highlights is missing. P.S. Everyone I know came out Lib Dem / Green too. This problem would map nicely into the Vector Space Model which could cope with a far more detailed set of statements than this years WSYVF.com.

Each statement would define a dimension in v-space. The respondent’s acceptance or rejection of each statement is then modeled as a distance along it’s vector. The respondent would be free to assign as much or as little value to any statement, from zero to plus or minus anything. When the user is finished, the largest number is normalized to 1.0 and all other numbers are proportionally reduced to other values less than one . This would provide the balancing that Jo quite rightly highlights is missing.

P.S. Everyone I know came out Lib Dem / Green too.

]]> By: Jo http://boakes.org/tactical-votes/#comment-2485 Jo Wed, 04 May 2005 11:41:02 +0000 http://boakes.org/tactical-votes#comment-2485 That website is utter rubbish. It's completely biased; everyone I know has come out Lib Dem - yes, including the people who I consider to be alarmingly right wing. I don't know that it's necessarily deliberately biased; more that it's far too simplistic, and makes no allowance for ranking of your opinions, or clarification of answers - eg (I forget what the questions were) 'The UK should not have unlimited immigration' and 'The UK should not refuse entry to legitimate asylum seekers' are two very different ways of phrasing a question dealing with the same very broad issue, which will elicit very different responses (except what the Tories and now everyone else are very cunningly concealing is that immigration and asylum are in fact not the same issue at all... anyway...) Alternatively, someone may consider it to be true that the Iraq war was wrong (thus suggesting Lib Dems) and also believe Labour's other policies outweigh that - the website makes no allowance for this kind of 'balancing'. I do know one person who came out as Green, who is in fact Labour through and through. Holding 'green' opinions does not mean that one would agree with the Green Party's policies - they would need alarmingly high levels of state control to enact the policies they intend to. Anyway. That website is notoriously biased! That website is utter rubbish. It’s completely biased; everyone I know has come out Lib Dem - yes, including the people who I consider to be alarmingly right wing. I don’t know that it’s necessarily deliberately biased; more that it’s far too simplistic, and makes no allowance for ranking of your opinions, or clarification of answers - eg (I forget what the questions were) ‘The UK should not have unlimited immigration’ and ‘The UK should not refuse entry to legitimate asylum seekers’ are two very different ways of phrasing a question dealing with the same very broad issue, which will elicit very different responses (except what the Tories and now everyone else are very cunningly concealing is that immigration and asylum are in fact not the same issue at all… anyway…)

Alternatively, someone may consider it to be true that the Iraq war was wrong (thus suggesting Lib Dems) and also believe Labour’s other policies outweigh that - the website makes no allowance for this kind of ‘balancing’.

I do know one person who came out as Green, who is in fact Labour through and through. Holding ‘green’ opinions does not mean that one would agree with the Green Party’s policies - they would need alarmingly high levels of state control to enact the policies they intend to.

Anyway. That website is notoriously biased!

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