[Foundation-l] Board vote, need a bit of help

[Delphine Ménard]

Hello.

Well, I tried, I really did. I read the wikipedia entries. In English
*and* in French. But I still don't understand the Schulze method. I
mean, I kind of understand that it's good (TM) and that it probably
will end up choosing the best person for the position. But I don't
understand the implications of what I vote and how I vote for some
things.

I am hoping that someone can make this clearer to me.

So here are my questions:

The explanation says (and I quote): "You may give the same preference
to more than one candidate and may keep candidates unranked. It is
presumed that you prefer all ranked candidates to all not ranked
candidates and that you are indifferent between all not ranked
candidates."

#Question 1
Does "you may give the same preference to more than one candidate"
mean that I can rank three candidates with rank 1, three with rank 2 ,
one with rank 3 and five with rank 4 (and so forth)?

#Question 2
Can I actually rank one candidate with rank 1, three candidates with
rank 2 and 5 candidates with rank 15? That is, does the rank  (1, 2, 3
etc.) actually matter in the overall results, or is rank always
relative? (ie. If I rank 2 people with rank 1 and 10 with rank 15, the
10 will be counted as being my second choice, not as being "of rank
15")

#Question 3
What's the best way to go about making sure that a candidate is ranked
as low as possible? Rank them at the lowest possible rank (this will
of course depend on answers to question 2)? Or not rank them at all?

I am not sure that my questions are clear. I hope so :-)

Thank you for your help.

Delphine
-- 
~notafish

NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. For Wikimedia
related correspondence, use my dmenard(at)wikimedia(point)org address.
http://blog.notanendive.org