Talk:Ranked-choice voting in the United States

Bloated

This article has become bloated with unnecessary details about every push and pull concerning RCV in the US. Plus, the leading graphic is out date. As a part of updating the graphic I'm going to simplify most of the information presented into table format to make it more easily digested unless there is strong opinion otherwise. Jasavina (talk) 02:07, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

As a part of this simplification I can spin off daughter articles if people think retaining the details on Wikipedia is necessary, but a lot of this stuff just isn't adding to the quality of the article. Jasavina (talk) 02:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

My plan for reorganizing is as follows:

After the introduction, the following sections will be, Current Use, Attempts to Install In Progress, Rejected Attempts to Install, Repealed Use, Legal Challenges

Each section will have an overview paragraph or two–describing the typical circumstances for each topic–and then a table with the relevant information. The narrative details of each individual event will be dropped from the article. Jasavina (talk) 05:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

This sounds to me like a worthwhile effort, as long as you spin off narrative that you think is excessive into a few separate articles.

As long as the narrative is supported by relevant references, I'd hate to lose that material. To support this thought, I feel a need to make two other points:

• Since 2019-09-15 this article has averaged 242 views per day. Making the article more concise may attract a wider audience, but some of those visitors likely come looking for details that may be "bloat" for other readers. If those details are retained in separate articles, we could get the benefit of the concision you are volunteering to provide without losing details.
• The guidelines on Wikipedia:Article size suggests that over 8,000 words, "May need to be divided; likelihood goes up with size." Below 6,000 words, "Length alone does not justify division." Of course, that's only a guideline. This article currently has 7,627 words. That's above 6,000 but less than 8,000 words.

Thanks for volunteering to do this. DavidMCEddy (talk) 06:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy Yeah no problem, it's just the current state of the article reads like the author tried to include every detail they could possibly find. Most of my edits so far are just focused on improving the readability of the article without compromising on substance.

Because my overall plan is quite a major rearrangement of the information, I'm going to be staging all of it over on my user page. I'll continue to pop in here to do writing style improvements, but eventually (a month or more from now) I'll take the cleaned-up prose and fuse it with the tables and new sections.

My plan is to try and retain as much detail as possible. Hopefully I won't need to create any spin-off articles, but I will if it becomes clear that's a better way to organize the information. Jasavina (talk) 19:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

So, in trying to stage the reorganization of this page, I started a draft page with no intention of publishing it. That got deleted by an admin since they don't want people using draft pages that way. Is there any way to stage multiple changes to an article without implementing them? Is there a collaborative sandbox area that doesn't get written over constantly? There's no smooth way to transition the article to a new organization in little steps.

I'm sure Wikipedia is general against this kind of large scale change to an article, but the dang thing is just so poorly organized as-is. The information is very inaccessible and leaving it this way would be a shame. Jasavina (talk) 17:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

For now, I'm planning on just adding the section about bans and repeals, since doing so won't change the overall structure of the article much. Jasavina (talk) 17:25, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

What did you do that was reverted by an admin? Was this material in your own sandbox? If yes, how did it come to the attention of an admin?

And have you asked that admin what they suggest? You should not have to invent a goofy way to circumvent a strange rule like what I've understood from what you've said.

Beyond what I just said, there should be a way to do what you have suggested. A couple of thoughts come to mind:

1. Is (are) there some substantial portion(s) of this article that could be spun off into separate article(s) and replaced with ~a single line and a reference to the new article(s)?
2. Post a brief description / outline of the changes you'd like to see to this Talk page, make the changes in a word processor on your private computer, while posting them, e.g., to your sandbox to make sure you have the syntax correct but keep a master copy on your own computer. If an admin deletes it again, you won't have lost much. AND you can ask others on this Talk page for help in understanding the concerns of that admin. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:47, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy I didn't realize I could access my sandbox from the app, so I had created a draft page as a way to setup an alternate space I could work in from the app. after the admin deleted the draft page we chatted and figured things out and we're all set.

Right now my re-write plan has stalled as I've worked on other things, but I do plan on finishing it. I have the the plan briefly outlined here, but no major changes will be introduced to this page without a through discussion of my final sandbox rewrite. Jasavina (talk) 18:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I've lost the enthusiasm for cleaning up this page. I've updated the map, but man, trying to rework this information into digestible form is just not something I'm excited about anymore. Maybe I'll come back to it eventually. Jasavina (talk) 05:38, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Map update and caucuses

I'm creating an updated map for the top of the page. Are we including caucuses as a form of RCV? The claims inside the article and the map are inconsistent, with some caucuses counting and others not.

In my opinion the American voter would not consider a caucus to be the same thing as RCV, or else we would have been claiming the Iowa presidential primaries as an RCV use this whole time.

I just want to know what we should standardize on so that the map and the article match. Jasavina (talk) 19:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I vote NO!!! on counting caucuses as RCV. It's not as bad as allowing the government to deny ballot access to all their political opponents. However, it could be pretty close, depending on the rules for entry into the caucus.

Thanks for doing this. DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:22, 1 August 2023 (UTC)