Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Social utility efficiency

Social_utility_efficiency (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

The definition of SUE as appearing in this article appears to be only discussed by Samuel Merrill and no other authors (excepting SPS and other unreliable sources) in the past several decades. I do not think this meets the notability bar. Affinepplan (talk) 13:16, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politics and Mathematics. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 20:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - Clearly meets notability guidelines. Has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Not all of these search results refer to the same concept, but there are plenty of hits:
  • "A comparison of efficiency of multicandidate electoral systems" by S Merrill III, *American Journal of Political Science*, 1984. JSTOR
    • Origin of the concept, in a peer-reviewed journal, has 153 citations
  • "Implications of strategic position choices by candidates" by R Robinette, *Constitutional Political Economy*, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
  • "The relative efficiency of approval and Condorcet voting procedures" by S Merrill III and N Tideman, *Rationality and Society*, 1991. SAGE Journals
  • "Comparing Approval At-Large to Plurality At-Large in Multi-Member Districts" by JA Hansen, *ResearchGate*. ResearchGate
  • "Influence allocation methods in group decision support systems" by PA Balthazard, WR Ferrell, and DL Aguilar, *Group Decision and Negotiation*, Springer, 1998. SpringerLink
  • "Measuring majority power and veto power of voting rules" by AY Kondratev and AS Nesterov, *Public Choice*, Springer, 2020. SpringerLink
  • "How frequently do different voting rules encounter voting paradoxes in three-candidate elections?" by F Plassmann and TN Tideman, *Social Choice and Welfare*, Springer, 2014. SpringerLink
  • "Range voting" by WD Smith, *RangeVoting.org*, 2000. PDF
  • "Second Problem: How to Satisfy the Condorcet Criteria" by H Nurmi, *Comparing Voting Systems*, Springer, 1987. SpringerLink
  • "Making multicandidate elections more democratic" by S Merrill, *De Gruyter*, 1988. De Gruyter
  • "STAR Voting, equality of voice, and voter satisfaction: considerations for voting method reform" by S Wolk, J Quinn, M Ogren, *Constitutional Political Economy*, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
  • "The Pathologies of Voting Schemes" by J Zhang, *University of Iowa*, 2020. University of Iowa
  • "The case for approval voting" by A Hamlin, W Hua, *Constitutional Political Economy*, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
  • "The case for score voting" by WD Smith, *Constitutional Political Economy*, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
  • "Ants, bees, and computers agree range voting is best single-winner system" by WD Smith, rangevoting.org, 2006. rangevoting.org
  • "Vote of no confidence" by P McKenna, *New Scientist*, Elsevier, 2008. ScienceDirect
  • "Approval in the echo chamber" by B Armstrong, K Larson, *Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems*, benarmstrong.ca, 2017. benarmstrong.ca
  • "Gaming the vote: Why elections aren't fair (and what we can do about it)" by W Poundstone, books.google.com, 2008. Google Books
  • https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22social+utility+efficiency%22
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=%22voter+satisfaction+efficiency%22&tbm=bks
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=%22bayesian+regret%22+voting+method&tbm=bks — Omegatron (talk) 15:48, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  mind sharing a few? the measure has received coverage nearly exclusively by a dedicated tiny subset of election reform enthusiasts, and as far as I can tell just about zero coverage by any professional sources in the past several decades. Affinepplan (talk) 15:55, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  please note that the OP edited the comment since the reply. I stand by my statement. Pretty much 100% of this list either contains no mention of SUE or is a low quality / self-published source. Affinepplan (talk) 04:03, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Bayesian regret is a different concept and not relevant to show the notability of SUE. and in fact, it already has its own (different) article Bayesian regret

  2. the vast majority of those results for searches with "social utility efficiency" are pulling up keyword hits for fully different concepts.

  I think you have just proved my point? Affinepplan (talk) 16:16, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  No, there are plenty of reliable sources that are independent of the subject. I'm not sure if your Bayesian Regret article is about the same concept. — Omegatron (talk) 03:47, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I spot checked 4 of those sources at random from the list you so helpfully wrote out and none of them even mentioned this metric once. Please don't just bluff and write random links with the assumption that I'm not going to read them. Affinepplan (talk) 04:01, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merge I believe a possible solution might be to merge this into Implicit utilitarian voting. Both concepts seem to be very related, i.e., how well does a voting rule approximate the best possible utilitarian welfare, with Social utility efficiency seemingly being more experimental and Implicit utilitarian voting being more theoretical and worst-case oriented. The Implicit utilitarian voting article is not very up-to-date at the moment, however updating it and including Social utility efficiency as a small subsection on precursors might be worth it. Social utility efficiency on its own however does not seem notable enough for its own article. Also pinging @DominikPeters and @Erel Segal. Jannikp97 (talk) 13:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree these are very similar topics and merging them makes sense. I am less clear what the framing and the title of the merged article would ideally be. Currently, "implicit utilitarian voting" suggests that the aim is to design systems that do well on the distortion measure, while "social utility efficiency" stresses the idea of a metric. To me, the metric framing makes more sense. DominikPeters (talk) 19:12, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's a completely different topic and it would be inappropriate to merge this into that. That is a voting system, this is a metric for measuring the performance of voting systems. That's like merging fuel efficiency into Toyota Corolla.

There is no problem with this article and no reason to delete or merge it; just leave it be. — Omegatron (talk) 03:47, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

there is a problem --- the problem of WP:Notability Affinepplan (talk) 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep. The idea of comparing voting rules based on their utility is social choice and welfare economics 101. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

this article is not about generally "the idea of comparing voting rules based on their utility." this article is about a particular --- nonnotable --- metric. I guess you would be referring to Utility or Comparison of voting rules#Utilitarian_models ? which yes, both of those are reasonable and notable articles & subsections.

Please focus on specifically the article for which I have nominated deletion, and not the general concept of "utility in social choice 101" Affinepplan (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]