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I agree that Schulze is better, but Approval is a huge step in the right direction. The biggest problem with Approval is that you need to know who others are likely to vote for if you are to vote most effectively (you should typically approve all candidates that you prefer [or consider equal] to the one you think is most likely to win). This explains the issues pretty well: http://karmatics.com/voting/movienite.html

This may not be so mathematical, but it explains it in a way so that you can wrap your head around why it can work. (as well as why people might be inclined to think it wouldn't work, even though it does) http://karmatics.com/dwfttw

Good point! Because that's exactly what Wikipedia has been waiting for an opportunity to do: get their hands on some money so they can completely subvert their creation system and ultimately prove that their model is flawed, or at least limited.

Joking aside, people have to start understanding that the collaborative nature of Wikipedia is not a transition phase to success that will allow them to morph into a traditional publisher. It is the core of Wikipedia and, frankly, I'm one who believes they've gone beyond proving that their system is much more effective than having hired experts as content creators.

The fascinating issue is that the Wikipedia model is still so counter intuitive to so many people. For a nice analysis of the topic and a parallel to Darwinian Evolution and prediction markets, see this article:
http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-and-wisdom-of-crowds.html

What you describe is not ranked approval voting, but Borda count, which has some big problems. If I want to have the best outcome, I wouldn't want to rank, say, Nader first, Kerry second, then Bush last in your system (assuming that is my true preference), because ranking Kerry second doesn't give him as many points to beat Bush as he would have if I ranked him first. So strategically, knowing Kerry has a greater chance of winning, I would still be smart to vote Kerry first. Therefore Nader is still hurting Kerry by running, and parties are still needed to try eliminate similar candidates.

I do agree, that Condorcet has some problems as far as seeming complex.

Here's an article I wrote about the issue some time back: http://karmatics.com/voting/movienite.html

America's form of democracy is certainly representative, which is probably the only practical solution when you've got more than a dozen or so people. I'd argue it is still a democracy, if an imperfect one.

If (in my little fantasy world) the constitution had been written with the input from modern day game theorists and election theorists, I'd think it could be massively improved. For example, our destructive two party system is a simple (and unnecessary) by product of plurality voting. (example: http://karmatics.com/voting/twoparty.html )

aardvark does this.

There is a plugin that might help you: Aardvark.

It has an 'isolate' option, that will let you do what you are mentioning.

You can try it out here: http://karmatics.com/aardvark/


Cheers.

http://karmatics.com/aardvark/

It allows easy and quick modification of the page you are looking at. Most often use I have for it, is to 'Isolate' an article so I don't have to look at all the banners/advertisements/pop-up divs/annoyingly narrow width main content.

Aardvark is great to prepare a page before print out Use RIght Click: Start_aardvark Highlight the area of the page you want then CNTL-I nukes the rest. http://karmatics.com/aardvark/

For an easier to use and more powerful Nuke Anything, try out Aardvark. There's a demo link at the top of the page that will run it without installing, to let you get an idea of how it works. I think it's great. I was actually considering writing a similar extension before I found it, because I wanted more than Nuke Anything gives.

You could try installing Aardvark, and using "de-widthify" to see if that works.

Have you tried Aardvark for web development? http://karmatics.com/aardvark

Its pretty simple, but I'll bet you'll find you use Web Developer a lot less after using aardvark.

(and yes, I wrote it, but its been very popular on del.icio.us and 60,000 people have downloaded it in the last week, so I'm not the only one who's into it)