Votorola stable release (and papers about the field)

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Michael,

just a clarification:

I wrote:
> By the way (probably an other topic), one way to allow cycles in
> delegated votes and still being able to calculate the number of
> votes of each person is to use the page rank algorithm which google
> uses:
>
http://chato.cl/papers/boldi_bonchi_castillo_vigna_2011_viscous_democracy_social_networks.pdf

You answered:
Boldi et al. use something similar to Brin and Page's "dampening".
The vote loses strength as it goes from delegate to delegate.  We have
a different aproach where the vote is stopped and "held" before it
can cycle: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cycle

My comment:
You don't necessarily need to use "dampering".
In theory you can use the stationary distribution of the Markov
chain (which is equivalent to setting the dampering constant to one), see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#Steady-state_analysis_and_limiting_distributions
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#Internet_applications .

Basically each row of the transition matrix contains the shares of all the
votes of a specific voter that he/she gives to each of the other voters
(including him/herself).
From the transition matrix you get the stationary distribution by finding
its eigenvalues and those eigenvalues are the final distribution of the
votes.
I guess the stationary distribution might be thought of as the average
share of all votes that a voter receives in each turn when the votes are
delegated.

Best regards
Peter Zbotník

2012/7/9 Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com>

> Hi Peter,
>
> Thank you for sharing these papers.  I post to the list in case others
> are interested.
>
> Peter Zbornik said:
> > Votorola got good scores in the review in the attachment - except
> > from the development side (not being ready yet).
>
>   Andrea Cangialosi.  2011.  Delegative democracy: is the
>   PiratenPartei liquid democracy proposal fit for Germany?
>   http://www.scribd.com/doc/83203862
>
> Cangialosi uses Thomas's comparison.  He adds, "The objectivity of
> this comparison might be argued since the author is also involved in
> Votorola's project [!]... I'll suggest considering also a deeper
> technical analysis in the working paper [below]."
>
>   David Horbank.  2011.  Liquid Democracy: Neue Formen direkter
>   Demokratie im Internetzeitalter.
>   http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~graebe/Texte/Horbank-11.pdf
>
> I discovered a couple of other interesting papers in Cangialosi's
> references.  I don't know how I missed these before:
>
>   Bryan Ford.  2002.  Delegative democracy.
>   http://www.brynosaurus.com/deleg/deleg.pdf
>
>   James Green-Armytage.  2010.  Voluntary delegation as the basis for
>   a future political system.
>   http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/proxy2010.pdf
>
>   (more: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/voting/)
>
> Green-Armytage's history of the ideas is the best I ever saw.  I was
> unaware of Miller's paper, for example.
>
>   James Miller.  1969.  A Program for Direct and Proxy Voting in the
>   Legislative Process.  Public Choice 7: 107-113.
>
> > By the way (probably an other topic), one way to allow cycles in
> > delegated votes and still being able to calculate the number of
> > votes of each person is to use the page rank algorithm which google
> > uses:
> >
> http://chato.cl/papers/boldi_bonchi_castillo_vigna_2011_viscous_democracy_social_networks.pdf
>
> Boldi et al. use something similar to Brin and Page's "dampening".
> The vote loses strength as it goes from delegate to delegate.  We have
> a different approach where the vote is stopped and "held" before it
> can cycle: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cycle
>
> We've been counting cycles for a while, but we never had a good way of
> viewing them.  The latest code has a slight improvement.  I posted a
> demo here: http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2012-July/001392.html
> The section about cycles refers to the "vote track" at the top of this
> page: http://zelea.com/w/G/p/sandbox
>
> You need Firefox, Chrome or something similar to see it.  Please let
> me know if it doesn't work for you.
>
> Very best,
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Peter Zbornik said:
> > Hi Michael,
> >
> > thanks for the short overview.
> > The German pirate party is using LiquidFeedback a lot:
> >
> http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-pirate-party-seek-to-reinvent-politics-a-829451-2.htm
> <
> http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-pirate-party-seek-to-reinvent-politics-a-829451-2.html
> >
> > There will be a beta-release of v 2.0 soon (end of June).
> > More info on the pirate party and LiquidFeedback:
> >
> http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/22154/how-german-pirate-partys-liquid-democracy-works
> > List of users of Liquid Democracy:
> > http://liqd.net/en/schwerpunkte/anwendung/
> > Votorola got good scores in the review in the attachment - except from
> the
> > development side (not being ready yet).
> >
> > By the way (probably an other topic), one way to allow cycles in
> delegated
> > votes and still being able to calculate the number of votes of each
> person
> > is to use the page rank algorithm which google uses:
> >
> http://chato.cl/papers/boldi_bonchi_castillo_vigna_2011_viscous_democracy_social_networks.pdf
> > .
> >
> > I just subscribed to the votorola mailing list, so you can post this
> > message there if you want.
> >
> > Best regards
> > Peter Zborník
>
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