Maine Ranked Choice Voting Initiative Approved - <AUTHOR> https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016) <comment><USER2> I'm very proud of my state. We also voted to legalize marijuana.

RCV was especially relevant to Maine because our Republican governor, Paul LePage, won his seat -- twice -- with around 35%-45% of the vote, primarily due to votes being split between the Democratic and Independent candidates (a.k.a The Spoiler Effect).

To me, LePage and his path to election and re-election closely mirrors Trump and his campaign. He ran on "telling it like it is", "being a businessman, not a politician", and "draining the swamp". He has said some really horrible things about minorities and his fellow politicians, he's vetoed a record number of bills, and he's held very controversial policy stances.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/controversial-gov- paul-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/controversial-gov-paul-lepage- maine-list.html)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/06/samantha_bee_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/06/samantha_bee_compares_maine_governor_paul_lepage_to_trump_video.html)

Edit: I never meant to imply blame of any candidate in creating the Spoiler Effect, and as such I modified my comment to reflect this.

<comment><USER3> The Democratic candidate came in 3rd place with only 19%. I believe that makes the Democrats the "spoiler" in that election. To not recognize it as such is to prop up the 2-party system.

<comment><USER4> While that may be true, either of the two could've been the actual winner if real ranked voting was used.

People usually flock to the candidate who has the best mix of "likely to win" and "shares my values". Preferably, only the latter should count.

It's also important to note that First-Past-The-Vote forces candidates to try to differentiate themselves as much as possible from each other, and that also includes popular 3rd parties. They will say more extreme things that they often don't really believe in. So that too would skew the results.

All in all, ranked voting will completely change how the whole process happens.

<comment><USER5> I'm wondering why doesn't the US implement a system like "Two-round system" as a part of electoral reforms because as I see it the current system in place is not fair for the electorate or even the candidates themselves.

<comment><USER6> Two-round system would be an improvement as well to the FPTP system. It would also fix the spoiler effect and the lack of majority support for winner problems. It's also simpler than RCV.

However, I don't think it reduces negative campaigns like RCV does (though it might improve on the "blue or red" campaigns that exist with FPTP). Another objective may be that the election "costs too much" (basically double or more), although I don't think this is a real objective. Democracy costs money. Deal with it. But I could see the objection gaining traction with some politicians, for the same reason the removal of voting polls gained traction in states with budget deficits.

I'd be content with either RCV or two-round system.

<comment><USER7> RCV is better than the Two-Round system, which is an expensive and time- consuming way of doing Supplementary Vote. Supplementary Vote is a system we use in the UK to elect mayors and Police & Crime Commissioners, and is a form of RCV in which voters are limited to only two preferences.

<comment><USER8> Not certain. [http://scorevoting.net/Honest](http://scorevoting.net/Honest) Runoff.html

<comment><USER7> The address should be [http://scorevoting.net/HonestRunoff.html](http://scorevoting.net/HonestRunoff.html) (without the space)

Perhaps not certain, and I do agree that there's far more to be gained by replacing plurality voting by either, but I think that page has some mistakes.

> IRV leads to stifling 2-party domination

I suspect that's because of poor voter information. You can't address every political problem effectively with a choice of voting system.

> with IRV, that one round is more complicated and it cannot be done on > ordinary "dumb totalizing" voting machines ... > IRV is more complicated for > both voters and talliers.

I find IRV simpler as a voter because of the reduced need for tactical voting in the first round.

IRV isn't complicated to count by hand. (In my country, vested interests said we couldn't afford the necessary voting machines, but we already conduct hand counts suitable for IRV.) You simply separate the ballot papers by candidate and count each candidate's vote, as we do under plurality voting. If no candidate has a majority, eliminate the last candidate, redistribute that candidate's votes to the highest ranked candidate (as marked on each ballot paper) still in the race, count only the redistributed votes and add them to the total from the previous round. Keep going until a candidate has a majority.

> we certainly cannot argue that one system is better than the other under all > circumstances.

You have to choose an electoral system before you can know the exact circumstances of an election, but the he main thing is to avoid plurality voting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A number of places in the US have tried this over the last century. It's never caught on, and in most places it's been reversed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant- runoff_voting_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant- runoff_voting_in_the_United_States)

IRV is not really a good voting system. It's better than plurality, but it still doesn't really allow viable third parties. If a third party ever catches on, they could steal first votes away from a major party, and cost both of them the election. Demonstration here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q7rzqJ0YS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q7rzqJ0YS8)

I would recommend a condorcet method, or approval voting. Condorcet methods in particular have a lot of nice mathematical properties and are close to optimal with honest voters. I think it's the most likely to allow third parties to actually get elected. You can see some results of simulated elections with different voting systems here: [http://rangevoting.org/BR52002bw.png](http://rangevoting.org/BR52002bw.png) [http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html](http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html)

They claim that just approval voting is the same level of improvement from plurality voting, as plurality voting is from monarchy. Based on the massive voter satisfaction index improvement. It really is crazy that we still use plurality voting.

<comment><USER10> As a supporter of Gary Johnson, I grew frustrated with the fear of the "spoiler effect" of our current system and spent a day looking into alternative voting systems and their pros and cons.

I, too, came away with approval voting being my favored approach.

One question to ask yourself, though, is this: in an election where candidate A is loved by 55% of the population and hated by 40%, and candidate B is loved by no one, but tolerated by 80% of the population, who "should" win? It's more of a philosophical question, but depending how you answer it influences how you should choose a voting system.

If you think the 80% tolerated candidate should win, then approval voting is for you. If you think being loved by 55% of the population should be the winner, then IRV or another system may be better.

I personally prefer the boring, centrist 80% tolerated outcome, so I like approval.

Another thing I realized, is that a lot the research doesn't seem to take into account polls ahead of time and iterated preference making. Approval voting might be terrible if it's once-and-done, but if you have polls leading up to it, you can calibrate your "approval level" a little better.

E.g., if Hitler is running, you might say "I approve of everyone else". But if you see polls suggesting that no one is approving of Hitler, then you might raise your standards a bit and not approve of some more candidates.

<comment><USER9> I find that people tend to like the voting system that (they believe) will give their favorite party the best odds. So people that have radical political ideologies, tend to prefer systems that are more likely to allow radical candidates.

Note that in practice, people start to vote tactically to prevent radical candidates, so there really isn't any voting system that works great for that purpose anyway.

I think the centrist option is probably the best for a number of reasons. I think a particularly bad president can do much more harm, than an unusually good president can do good. E.g. start WW3, or destroy the economy. Not to mention dividing the country and polarizing our political system.

Second there is a phenomenon called wisdom of crowds. That if you take the middle of the estimates given by a large number of uninformed people, it usually comes out very close to the true answer. The same should apply to voting. The middle preference of a large number of uninformed voters, should be close to optimal.

Third there are studies that show that centrists and moderates tend to have much more accurate beliefs than others. As in, their predictions of future events were the most accurate. Ideological people were extremely biased and inaccurate. That's probably the closest we can get to scientifically measuring how good their policies would be.

Lastly, for values questions, where there is no "right answer", the middle should be chosen. It's the fairest choice.

<comment><USER11> I'm a radical leftist (seize the means of production!) and I actually favor Approval Voting. It allows for a democratic compromise on single-seat offices, and it can also be more-or-less automatically adapted to a multi-seat body with proportional representation. It allows a voice to small parties or factions without spoiler effects, while being dead simple to implement and making tactical voting _relatively_ difficult.

>Lastly, for values questions, where there is no "right answer", the middle should be chosen. It's the fairest choice.

As a radical, my problem with this is that the "middle" is _defined_ by the power struggle between the "extremes": it always tracks the _formerly_ "extremist" positions of the winning side. For instance, until last week, nobody would ever have said that privatizing Medicare was anything but extremist far-right lunacy. Coming this year, we're going to hear that it's a mainstream, centrist position. That's not even being said as a statement of fact, since it's transparently false -- people love Social Security and Medicare! It's being said as an _imposition of hegemony_ on the part of the electoral winners, as how "we create our own reality now".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Approval Voting makes the most sense, seeing as this concerns the election of a single individual.

Basically, vote for ALL of the candidates of whom you approve.

Whoever gets the most approval (votes) wins.

Simple.

With a paper system such as we have in the UK, then if you don't like any of the candidates you can use a blank ballot paper to record your DISapproval, with the option that if the disapproval ballots exceed the winning total of approval votes then a new election should be called with a new slate.

Mathematically, for a single candidate election, it gets extremely close to the optimum Condorcet result.

<comment><USER6> I've seen the data (at least from the organizations that support approval voting), and it seems to deliver the most optimum results.

However, I have some concerns. The way I see the two voting systems is like this:

Advantages approval voting:

\- much simpler

\- eliminates spoiler effect

\- may give third-party candidates better chances in most elections

\- reduces negative campaigning, since the winner would have to be "approved" by like 70% of the country in typical elections.

Disadvantages AV:

\- the winner may be someone who was #2 on 80% of the country's wishlist. So 51% of country won't _love_ the candidate, as they may with RCV or two-round voting systems, but also the other 49% won't _hate_ the candidate (perhaps only 20% will). So from that point of view, it would be "better". But it would be someone most are just content with.

\- I believe even the organizations supporting it admit that it would lead to "centrist" leaders. Perhaps in most situations a centrist is preferable, but what if the country has gone in the wrong direction for 2 decades, and it needs a completely new direction? Would a centrist still be enough? Or would the approval voting system and people pick exactly the guy that is willing to go in a different direction this one time? I'm not sure what would happen in this scenario.

Advantages RCV:

\- eliminates spoiler effect

\- also reduces negative campaigning, because a candidate would need some of the opponent's voters, too, to rank them as #2 on their list.

\- easier transition to multi-winner RCV system for state legislature and Congress - and this alone is much bigger than _just_ using approval voting system. Proportional representation beats all single-winner voting systems, including approval voting

Disadvantages RCV:

\- it may eliminate spoiler effect, but other than that, it won't do much else to help third-parties. The main two parties would likely still be elected for a long time, at least until population's thinking about at least one of the the two parties changes in a major way \- a bit more complicated to understand how votes are counted by the average person, and a higher number of "lost" votes (I believe 5% or so, compared to about 1% or less for AV).

I believe both could also be used strategically - as in rank #1 the person you think is more likely to win with RCV, or only vote for the person that's more likely to win with AV, instead of multiple people.

So I would qualify the two as: AV would be a _great improvement_ over FPTP, while RCV would be a moderate, but still well worth it and welcome improve, for the fact that it would eliminate spoiler effect alone. However, if single- winner RCV makes it much more likely that multi-winner RCV (STV) is also adopted for state legislature and Congress, then I would definitely choose RCV over AV, because the ultimate goal should be to adopt proportional representation in the US.

I think proportional representation coupled with a limit of $200 of individual donations and a ban on any other political donations would greatly improve democracy in the US, and these are the main changes Americans should fight for, if they want _all of the other issues_ (as Lessig often says) to be solved as well. First fix democracy and change the system to a better one, so that the people that actually represent you get to pass laws in your favor for whatever issue you (the People) want.

<comment><USER8> No, IRV does not eliminate the spoiler effect.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ)

Score Voting and Approval Voting are simpler and better.

[http://scorevoting.net/CFERlet.html](http://scorevoting.net/CFERlet.html) [http://www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs- irv](http://www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv)

<comment><USER13> While I am a fan of Approval Voting, it doesn't eliminate the spoiler effect entirely:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Strategic_voti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Strategic_voting)

<comment><USER14> "The spoiler effect" generally means that if you vote for your _preferred_ candidate, it can backfire and give you the least-preferred. Approval can't do that. In approval voting, it _never, ever_ hurts to vote for your favorite candidate.

It's true that voting for other candidates you approve of could take the election away from your favorite, but that's not what people usually mean with spoiler effect. As long as you do approve of the winning candidate, your vote isn't spoiled. In Approval Voting, there's no context where any form of voting, strategic or honest, will have you worrying that your vote helps someone you don't approve of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wikipedia has a really comprehensive article [1] on this type of voting, but for most purposes of discussion this is the relevant paragraph:

"Proponents of IRV note that by reducing the spoiler effect, IRV makes it safe to vote honestly for marginal parties, and so discourages tactical voting: under a plurality system, voters who sympathize most strongly with a marginal candidate are strongly encouraged to instead vote for a more popular candidate who shares some of the same principles, since that candidate has a much greater chance of being elected and a vote for the marginal candidate will not result the marginal candidate's election."

It's generally viewed as a means of gradually stepping away from some of the problems of a two party system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant- runoff_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting)

<comment><USER8> [http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol.html](http://scorevoting.net/AustralianPol.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really exciting electoral reform. I don't think our current system captures the diversity of political opinion now, and we could really use a couple more parties. Like a democratic party that is anti establishment or a republican party which is not particularly religious but more libertarian.

And maybe if we had more parties, voters wouldn't be so tribal. There's a deep sense of "us vs them" now in America. It's good guys vs bad guys, and whatever their side says, our side cannot believe. It leads to complete nonsense like climate change denial. But if there were many parties, your 25% couldn't be against the other 75%. You'd have to recognize your perspective is just one of several and you have to look for common ground.

</comment><comment><USER17> I found this video of CGP Grey to be a nice explanation of the Ranked Choice / Instant Runoff: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

<comment><USER18> Also, this video by Exploratorium has great examples of paradoxes in Ranked Choice / Instant Runoff voting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834)

<comment><USER19> I found this extremely insightful, specifically Arrow's impossibility theorem [1]

It really seems like this should get more attention: _Every voting system is flawed._ You cannot design a voting system that will, in every possible case, be "fair."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

<comment><USER20> You have to look very closely at what the definition of "flawed" is. The dictator rule in Arrow's thm is not what it is commonly portrayed to be. All it says is that there should be no voter whose preferences are the same as those produced by the choice function. That doesn't really sound all that objectionable. Often people word the dictator rule as "one person decides the outcome" but that is not what it is at all.

And like the other response said, the fact that no scheme is "perfect" doesn't mean all schemes are equally flawed.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure your characterization of the non-dictatorship rule is wrong. According to wikipedia, the rule states that there should be no voter whose preferences are _always_ the same as those produced by the choice function:

> There is no individual, i whose strict preferences always prevail. That is, > there is no i ∈ {1, …, N} such that ∀ (R1, …, RN) ∈ L(A)N, a ranked strictly > higher than b by Ri implies a ranked strictly higher than b by F(R1, R2, …, > RN), for all a and b.

<comment><USER20> It does not mean always as in "the same voter every time." What it means is that if more than two voters have a preference ranking which is digested by a social choice function, the outcome should not be exactly the same as any individual voter. I argue that doesn't make any sense, because there are plenty of situations where the best choice of ranking might coincide with the preferences of a particular voter, completely by coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Arrow's impossibility theorem [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem) is often trotted out in the discussion of RCV and similar systems. It seems to me that the problem with mentioning that theorem is that if you admit that every system for judging among more than 3 choices has some flaw, and that flaw makes the system anti-democratic because it allows tactical voting, then why not admit that the status quo is worse, under the same framework, and therefore admit that something else other than plurality voting should be used?

<comment><USER23> I can't completely follow the argument, but I think Arrow's is mostly used to counter the "utopians" (roughly; people who argue that one system is Inherently Unfair(tm) and the alternative is Inherently Fair(tm)).

You're replacing one flawed system with another flawed system, so you should not argue in terms of the presence or absence of flaws, but rather argue why one is better than the other.

RCV can still have outcomes that a majority will disagree with, but it should be less common than FPTP, and also make third parties competitive in practise. That may be better than the old system (and it also may _not_ be), but it's not going to resolve the fundamental tensions of representative democracy.

<comment><USER24> Instant runoff matches four of the postulates, including all three that FPTP matches. It is a superset of the fairness of the other, they are not "equally unfair in different ways" or anything like that.

<comment><USER24> Edit time threshold passed so I'll have to reply to myself.

I've just read up on Arrow, and this theory only has four postulates not five: I'm pretty sure I've either misremembered or am talking about a different theory. Apologies, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish they also enacted _multi-winner_ ranked choice voting (also called Single Transferable Vote) for legislature. Fair representation beats winner- takes-all systems every time, because it guarantees more than just two parties get to be in charge, much like in parliamentary systems (which also use some kind of fair/proportional representation voting system). But it's still a good start, and maybe other states will take a look at both, and choose a better system next time.

By the way, this is exactly the sort of thing Sam Altman should be fighting for, along with joining Wolf-Pac, Represent.Us, and others to get money out of politics. Not try to use GOTV tactics to get people to vote for his preferred candidate. That is, if Altman still cares about this, and the "improve democracy thing" he pushed for earlier wasn't just a one time ruse to get people to vote for Clinton.

If Altman is serious about improving democracy, these right here are _by far_ the best ways to do it - _way_ better than just trying to "increase turnout" in an election. Because for one, fair representation voting systems increase turnouts by default, because people feel better represented and have more reasons to go out and vote, and second, STV also eliminates gerrymandering, which would also greatly improve democracy by making seats less safe.

[http://www.wolf-pac.com/](http://www.wolf-pac.com/)

[https://represent.us/](https://represent.us/)

STV by CGP Grey: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI)

Droop method for STV is probably preferable: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRc630BSTIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRc630BSTIg)

Also preferred by FairVote:

[http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation#what_is_fair_vot...](http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation#what_is_fair_voting)

<comment><USER25> Ireland currently uses a PR-STV system, and if you ask any Irish person about their politicians, you will probably get an ear-full.

STV pushes majors parties to sit on the political middle, where they might not collect as many '1's', but will collect a lot of 2s,3s,4s, etc, as more divisive parties/candidates will be ranked highly by a segment of the population but very lowly by the rest.

<comment><USER6> I'm not really stuck on STV, per se. Whatever proportional voting system the US chooses is fine by me. However, I think that if RCV is adopted, STV would be a natural extension to that. Plus, something like STV (or Dion's P3, which I actually like a bit more: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLeClCrfgQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLeClCrfgQ)) is more likely to be adopted in the US, than say something like list-based voting, because Americans like to _directly elect_ candidates from their districts.

But I do think STV is still far preferable to winner-take-all FPTP, where the winner may only represent 35-40% of the voters in a given district, or even RCV, where the winner may represent 50%+1 to ~55% of the voters in a district, which is obviously better, but it's still less preferable to being 3-5 winners in a larger district and from 3-5 parties, whereas RCV would still mostly allow the two main parties to rule, with some exceptions in a few districts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One desirable property of FPTP is that if you want to maximize the chances of your candidate being elected, you should vote for your candidate first before all other candidates. In IRV, sometimes you should not vote for your candidate first before all other candidates. Is that okay?

Here are some interesting diagrams of the results of applying various voting algorithms including IRV: [http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/](http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/)

<comment><USER27> Those diagrams aren't very intuitive to me. Do the different shaded regions represent turnout? What is the coordinate of the candidate, position on a 2-axis political scale?

<comment><USER26> A point on the 2d plane represents a preference (if we imagine that there are only 2 real-valued issues in the world). The regions shaded in a particular color are the regions where a normal distribution of popular preferences centered there will elect the corresponding candidate.

I assume that individual simulated voters just rank candidates from least to greatest by cartesian distance, or do that and then use a random cutoff for approval voting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm really not sure people realize how chaotic and unpredictable ranked choice voting can be, and how easily it can be gamed.

For example, there are scenarios where it's better to put your favorite candidate in #3. You pick #1 to help an undervoted candidate and therefore, causing one candidate to drop off. Same for #2. By the time the choice comes to #3, your minority candidate has suddenly managed to eliminate stronger opposition just by playing numbers.

We've seen this scenario happen repeatedly in all countries and counties that have tried this approach.

There's a reason ranked choice voting is hardly ever used anywhere: it's really not such a good idea.

<comment><USER29> I don't follow your scenario. Can you give a real example? If you put your favorite candidate in the #3 spot, it would make them more likely to be the one that drops in round 1 or 2, no?

<comment><USER30> Here's a couple of examples of how RCV might have played out if it was in effect for the 2016 election:

Scenario 1: Clinton, Sanders, and Trump are all running. Clinton and Sanders supporters assume Trump will lose. Clinton and Sanders spend most of their time attacking each other. Since supporters of Clinton and Sanders don't bother making a second pick (since they don't want to support their opponent, and assume Trump is going to lose anyway). Clinton and Sanders each get 32%, and Trump wins with 36%.

Scenario 2: Imagine a scenario where there are lots of candidates running. Something like the GOP and Democratic primaries this year, but everyone running in the general. Like this year, there are 5 candidates running on the left and 17 running on the right. Most voters aren't going to bother ranking all 22 candidates, and only rank 1-3. This causes the left to win simply because they have fewer candidates.

The thing is, many comments seem to assume that people would rationally rank all of their choices. But people don't really act like that. Some will, some will just pick their favorite, some will rank only the people they're familiar with, etc. The current system (with the primary acting as a run-off vote) allows people to reflect on new information (these are the top two candidates and this is what they believe) before making a choice. RCV seems to just kind of hope that people think about these things ahead of time (and people usually don't).

<comment><USER31> Both of those outcomes are because the hypothetical voters made stupid decisions, not because the system is flawed. If they choose to not take advantage of writing out all their preferences it's their own fault when they don't get what they want.

I don't see how FPTP would be better in either example, you'd just get the same or worse outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would someone explain the counterpoint that this will, "further disenfranchise voters by using the recounted ballots of the loser to determine the winner"? I can't understand how counting voter's second and third choices until a majority agree on a candidate could be seen as disenfranchisement.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure it can be explained. To borrow a phrase from economics, moving to instant runoff has always seemed Pareto efficient to me. Which would mean that there are no possible counterpoints.

<comment><USER34> Arrow's theorem[1] demonstrates that no voting system can be "efficient" in the normal sense of the word. That is, no voting system can guarantee:

1\. If every voter prefers A over B, the electorate prefers A over B

2\. If no voter changes preference between A and B, the electorate's preference of A and B is unchanged

3\. No single voter can always change the electorate's preference

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

<comment><USER35> That's a different issue from what the parent comment is talking about. He's not saying that IRV will be fully efficient, but that the switch itself will be Pareto efficient (which means that each entity is better off, or the same).

This actually isn't true, because major party candidates will be worse off, but I think he meant something like Hicks-Kaldor efficient, or positive sum.

<comment><USER33> Yes, I wasn't claiming that there is a perfect voting system. Just that IRV seems strictly better for pretty much all voters than FPTP.

I am also seeing several comments that try to take into account the preferences of the candidates themselves, or their parties. Why? Aren't we talking about efficiency from the perspective of the electorate? To the extent that the candidates are themselves members of the electorate, and can vote for themselves, shouldn't we ignore them in this analysis because their preferences are inherently biased?

<comment><USER35> > I am also seeing several comments that try to take into account the > preferences of the candidates themselves, or their parties. Why? Aren't we > talking about efficiency from the perspective of the electorate? To the > extent that the candidates are themselves members of the electorate, and can > vote for themselves, shouldn't we ignore them in this analysis because their > preferences are inherently biased?

I fully agree with you. I was just being precise in my usage of Pareto efficiency, which includes all agents in a situation. Especially because it's used so often when Hicks-Kaldor improvement is meant (which means that there's the possibility for Pareto improvement after redistribution of gains).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> San Francisco, Oakland and 1-2 other Bay Area cities have had this for a while. I think it works well, and the electorate and politicians are getting used to it.

The implementation, at least here in Oakland, is a bit clunky. When there are only two candidates, they still let you pick your first, second and third choice...

Having it at state level opens things up to a whole different level. Now a popular and/or centrist third party candidate can realistically get elected as US senator, and that's _real_ power.

<comment><USER37> That implementation is a feature, not a bug! Write-in candidates are an important part (as documented up-thread) of our electoral process.

<comment><USER36> I haven't seen a way to write in candidates on these ballots. They're scanned by a machine that detects where you drew a line, so I that would have to be detected manually.

TBH, I haven't looked hard for a way to write in people, and it's possible it exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why does it cost nearly a million dollars to print new ballots and update the firmware in existing ballot machines?

Specifically regarding the ballot machine update, if the installers are charging ridiculous prices when I'd bet others would be willing to start an open source project that met security needs

</comment><comment><USER39> It's actually quite concerning to see the media attention that IRV has received as a result of Maine passing the RCV measure. A much better voting system (across many different metrics for what a "better" voting system means) is range voting. For a comparison of the differences between the two, see here[1].

[1]: [http://rangevoting.org/IrvExec.html](http://rangevoting.org/IrvExec.html)

<comment><USER7> Why is it concerning? As I understand it, Range Voting supporters object that IRV performs poorly (in terms of Bayesian regret) because voters don't understand how it works. Maybe the attention will help to educate voters and improve its performance. Also, isn't it enough to improve on the status quo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is amazing news. I'm now wondering how voter training will work?

I feel like a lot of people might get it backwards and mark the third party as their second or third choice. Also the mainstream candidates with the most money would have an incentive to spread misinformation.

<comment><USER41> Here in Australia, volunteers for the political parties hand out 'how to vote cards' at polling places: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How-to- vote_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How-to-vote_card) . It's not a perfect system,[1] but it should be enough to prevent most people from completely messing up their vote. (Especially in the US, where voluntary voting presumably means that those who turn up are motivated to make their vote count.)

[1] The most obvious risk is misinformation -- e.g. someone claiming to be from Party A, handing out Party A branded leaflets that actually direct people to vote for Party B -- but in practice that doesn't seem to be a significant problem. I'm sure it happens at small scales online, but in person it's hard to get away with, so at least the information seen immediately before voting is accurate. (Though admittedly I have heard of one or two borderline cases, e.g. cards with colour themes chosen to misleadingly hint that they're associated with a particular party.) What is prevalent is 'preference trading' between political parties, as a significant number of voters do seem to more or less blindly follow their party's suggested ordering. This is arguably a problem, but it doesn't usually get too crazy, as preference deals between ideological enemies both look bad and can easily backfire.

<comment><USER42> And the people handing out voting cards, who tend to be the "extremists" on either side get to spend a pleasant day with the other side. As nasty and divisive as things get at the top, that doesn't seem to transfer to the ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If anyone is interested in using Single Transferable Vote for unofficial uses, I recently wrote an implementation in Elixir and wrapped it in a small JSON API. It is a toy in its current state (it uses cookies to see if people have voted and the link to close an election can be somewhat easily found even if you are not the creator of the election) but we use it around or office for a few things and I would be interested in continuing work on it if anybody would like to jump in. I have an instance of this running on my site; ping me if you'd like to try it.

STV Algorithm: [https://github.com/carrigan/elixir- stv](https://github.com/carrigan/elixir-stv) Phoenix API: [https://github.com/carrigan/vote-service](https://github.com/carrigan/vote- service)

</comment><comment><USER44> Nice to hear some good political news out of Maine, home to one of the worst governors in the country. Maine is a great place that deserves better.

<comment><USER45> I refer to this as the "LePage Law".

<comment><USER44> Ha! I wasn't aware of the context because I don't closely follow Maine politics, but some of the other comments here cleared it up for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Something to consider: Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections. Another way of saying it: They lost a nationwide vote once in the last quarter century.

Generally I support the electoral college, but those are undemocratic results.

Also: In the 2014 House of Representatives elections, Republicans won 51.2% of the vote (per Wikipedia) yet held the largest majority in the House since WWII (IIRC).

EDIT: In the 2012 House of Representatives elections, Democrats won more votes (48.8 - 47.6%) but fewer seats (201-234).

<comment><USER42> You're making the mistake of assuming that voting patterns would remain the same without the electoral college. I'm sure there are large numbers of republicans in blue states that don't bother voting currently.

<comment><USER46> An interesting hypothesis regarding presidential elections but ...

1) It doesn't affect House elections

2) Any such second-order effects could also favor Democrats

3) There is no evidence; we're just wildly speculating

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If I were to change the system, I would have ballots ask 10 or 20 or so questions based on issues, and each party gives their own response to each question.

The voters then choose their answers they favor for each question, and they can choose multiple answers they agree with, and a point goes to the party for each answer.

The party that gets the most total points among all voters wins, they then decide the people to run that position.

We really have to focus on issues politics, instead of people politics.

<comment><USER33> I think this is a mistake, but probably not for the reason you think.

We need to stop thinking about politics so statically. Positions on issues can and should change as new information becomes available. Your current preferred position on an issue is really just a rather poor proxy for your preferred method of problem-solving or thought process that reached the conclusion of your preferred position.

You want to elect the person that "thinks and learns in your preferred manner", so that when they are asked to reach a conclusion on a totally unexpected issue, they reach the "correct" conclusion.

I'd almost rather just have all candidates take an IQ test or something and then elect the top scorers.

<comment><USER48> Then instead of asking questions about positions directly, take a page from the Elder Scrolls games and ask questions whose answer imply a certain thinking process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd approve of some other systems even more, but this is better than the usual.

Maine has also had voluntary public campaign financing since 1996, strengthened a bit in 2015 [http://www.maine.gov/ethics/mcea/](http://www.maine.gov/ethics/mcea/) ... I'd be really curious to read an up-to-date analysis of its impact, and prospects in combination with RCV.

</comment><comment><USER50> There's a simulated comparison of the practical perfomance of several different voting systems at [http://zesty.ca/voting/sim](http://zesty.ca/voting/sim). It looks like approval and ranked voting fare the best, with approval being more likely to get voters to express their true preferences (IIRC).

</comment><comment><USER51> RCV seems like an okay idea, but the root of many complaints about elections seems to be with voters not feeling represented as opposed to the actual election mechanics.

My proposal is to increase the number of representatives in the House so that there is a much more reasonable chance for voters to be represented. Something like 1 rep per 50k or 100k seems like it would be a better system.

Any thoughts on this from HN?

<comment><USER52> Ireland has at least one representative per 30K people [0] and that works reasonably well. At least you can usually meet and speak in person with your representative in the run up to an election.

Of course the flip side is you probably get a lot more 'parish-pump politics'. Candidates looking after their one tiny constituency to the detriment of the country as a whole.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann#Number_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann#Number_of_members)

<comment><USER53> Ireland has a population of ~6.5 million. At 30k/representative, that gives ~216 representatives. In practice, not all the people in Ireland vote (e.g. some are children), so you get 150-160 representatives per your citation.

The US has ~200 million registered voters [1] and the number actually eligible to vote is somewhat higher than that. But if we go with the 200 million number, at 100k/representative you get 2000 representatives. That's a lot more unwieldy than 150-160 in terms of actually getting anything done. Yes, you can meet with your representative and all, but that representative may have no effect on pretty much anything in practice.

I'm not saying "435" is some sort of magic number that is obviously the right number of representatives, of course. But it's not obvious to me that 2000 is better.

[1] [http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered- vo...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-voters-are- in-america-2016-229993)

<comment><USER51> Good points -

A debate on whether or not being represented should be sacrificed for the sake of expediency and getting things done is an important one to have. From my perspective, getting less done could be a feature of such a system rather than a bug.

Perhaps the federal government would focus on large problems in need of a countrywide consensus with smaller things bouncing back to the states?

<comment><USER53> Getting less done is a feature of the US system as initially set up, sure.

I feel that there are less pleasant failure modes of a too-big legislature than just gridlock leading to _less_ getting done:

1) "Everyone always votes the party line" as opposed to "nothing gets done", because there are too many things being introduced and no time to think about any of them. This already happens to some extent, but in general this seems like a problem that should get worse as the legislature gets bigger.

2) Confusion and chaos in the legislature leading to it having no power and the executive grabbing all the power for itself instead.

Yes, I realize those are somewhat mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is this for Presidential contests or only ones up to the state level?

<comment><USER2> _This initiated bill provides ranked-choice voting for the offices of United States Senator, United States Representative to Congress, Governor, State Senator and State Representative for elections held on or after January 1, 2018._

[https://votesmart.org/elections/ballot-measure/2128/an- act-t...](https://votesmart.org/elections/ballot-measure/2128/an-act-to- establish-ranked-choice-voting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It will be very interesting to see what effect this has on the two party system. AV (as it was called in the UK's 2011 referendum) allows voters much greater freedom in expressing their first preference, and I will be interested to see how first preference votes differ the first time people are given this additional choice.

</comment><comment><USER55> Lots of problems with IRV:

* Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits, [http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/Instan...](http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf)

* Instant Runoff Voting: A Cure That is Likely Worse Than the Disease, [https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/langan.htm](https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/langan.htm)

* Instant Runoff Voting: Looks Good--But Look Again, [http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html](http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html)

<comment><USER56> If you're going to link to ~50 pages of content the least you could do is summarize or pull out some interesting bits.

Some of these are real logistical issues but are certainly solvable. There's no real reason that we have to know the results immediately other than a desire to know. And a couple examples like ex 4 in your third link are really unlikely to happen because to make them work you have to have a lot of information about the ranked choices of other voters.

<comment><USER57> An example of IRV's misbehaviour:

* 8 people vote: A, C, B

* 5 people vote: B, C, A

* 4 people vote: C, B, A

IRV eliminates C and elects B, but the majority of voters prefer C over B (12 to 5). The order of elimination dropped 8 ballots' information that they prefer C over B. To put that generally, IRV ignores the secondary preferences of large demographics.

Perhaps another example of why I think single winner voting systems should take all preferences into account (as Condorcet methods do):

* 100 people vote CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateA > CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateB > CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateC > CentristX

* 101 people vote PolarizedCandidateD > CentristX

The example is a bit contrived, but it highlights how disregarding secondary preferences (IRV's main feature) isn't a good idea. 403 people prefer CentristX over every other polarized candidate, yet CentristX is dropped in IRV's first round.

Disclaimer: I run modernballots, a voting website that makes use of the Schulze-family of voting systems: [https://modernballots.com/elections/zombies/vote/](https://modernballots.com/elections/zombies/vote/)

<comment><USER58> Without going through whole way to Condorcet methods, you can eliminate the problems associated with IRV's elimination step by just dropping the elimination step; set the election quota as the the smallest integer greater than half the ballots cast, if no one reaches the quota with just first preference votes, then add in second preference votes and see if there is a winner, and so on until someone wins.

This also has (compared to both Condorcet methods and base IRV) relative simplicity of tallying ballots and processing them to get a result.

<comment><USER57> Alternatively, why not just go full Condorcet? The Schulze Method has a significant backing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Users](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Users)

If you really want simplicity though, I suppose you could use IRV as your tie breaker amongst the Schwartz set.

<comment><USER59> While I think the argument that voters won't understand how winners are chosen for IRV is a bit overstated, I think it'd be completely true with the Schulze method -- its safe to say that the average voter doesn't have a strong understanding of graph theory.

Which isn't to say it isn't a good system; but its definitely a draw back. Supporting IRV seems like a good first step in which we don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

<comment><USER57> Barring edge cases, Condorcet methods can be described like single-elimination tournaments which pretty much everyone is familiar with.

Yes, graph theory comes into play for tie breaking (assuming we can agree that cyclic Condorcet paradoxes are ties of sorts), but the core of the idea is already understood by an overwhelming majority in concept if not by name.

<comment><USER58> Condorcet methods are more like a particular method of choosing the winner of a round-robin tournament; they don't really map naturally to a single- elimination tournament.

Of course, if you assume consistent relative performance, then _any_ single winner tournament that you construct among the candidates in a Condorcet election would choose the Condorcet winner of one exists, and some member of the Smith set in any case (though different initial bracket structure can choose different Smith set members in the absence of a Condorcet winner.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Has anyone seen analysis of elections nullified by vote?

For example, voters would be allowed to put the status of any and all candidates as null and/or a top vote as null. If the majority of votes cast as were null, another election would be run with all candidates from the prior election removed.

<comment><USER25> In the mean time between the next election (with all the time it would take to find/vet brand new candidates!), would the incumbent keep his/her spot?

<comment><USER60> That would be the most obvious resolution in the case that another election was required, though might be exploited as a means to get around term limits.

Another option might be the delegation of responsibility to the voting population to force a timely resolution of the election, greater understanding of the issues at hand, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> A very nice video that explains the various voting paradoxes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJag3vuG834)

Yeah ranked voting has issues, but it is still way better than the spoiler effect.

</comment><comment><USER62> California would do well to follow this lead.

</comment><comment><USER63> This is a huge step in democracy.

I'm hoping that we can get fully digital, cryptographically verifiable elections before I die.

</comment><comment><USER64> Why not sortition based election? They seem like the most reasonable way to implement democracy as the name implies.

</comment><comment><USER65> The US Presidential Election Campaign Fund provides monies for parties that reach 5% of the vote. How will votes in Maine be handled going forward? Does it mean that candidates who are eliminated in the first pass of counting officially receive zero votes? Seems like it should be something like that.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, but I think it would make more sense for candidates that receive 5% of first preferences to receive those monies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Here's an idea: give each voter a positive vote _for_ their most preferred candidate and another negative vote _against_ their least acceptable candidate. Award the race to the candidate with the greatest net sum.

EDIT: If no candidate has a positive sum, throw them all out and do it over.

</comment><comment><USER67> It will be interesting to see how an electronic voting UI is built for this that is simple enough for non techy people to use. Almost all examples of this on Wikipedia appear to be paper ballot based.

I was part of counting a Ranked Choice ballot in my college but it was again paper voting - not online

</comment><comment><USER68> Kudos to them, from my (cursory) knowledge of Social Choice that's a fairly good voting method.

</comment><comment><USER69> This gives me a lot of hope. Its time we looked at alternate voting systems seriously.

</comment><comment><USER70> Does anyone know how the votes are actually counted ? Because it seems to me that you need to count all the votes together (in one location) rather than counting them on each district,etc.

<comment><USER7> You don't need to count them all in the same place. You could conduct each round of counting at the district level. Then, when the round finishes, you add the district counts together to see whether there is a candidate with a majority. If not, you eliminate the last placed candidate from all districts (i.e. the same candidate from each district), redistributing votes for him/her where possible, count the redistributed votes and add them to the last sum.

<comment><USER70> It's the redistributing part that I'm not clear on. How do you count PAPER votes in a manner that allows you to redistribute them.

Or do you actually have to count AGAIN?

<comment><USER7> You have a pile for each candidate. The pile for the eliminated candidate is redistributed to the other existing piles in the following way. Each redistributed ballot paper is directed to the highest preference marked on it that is still in the race, if any. Only the redistributed votes need counting at this stage. You don't combine the redistributed votes with the existing piles until you have counted them.

<comment><USER70> I understand this. Which means that there needs to be these many actual physical recounting.

I believe an explanation is in order - in India we have up to 20 candidates in constituencies. We don't have a 2 party system. It's unfeasible if paper has to be counted 10-15 times.

Which is why I wanted to figure out if there was a one time counting system that lets us reassign votes without the need to physically recount again.

<comment><USER7> Well, papers with a first preference for any candidate that stays in the race until the last round of counting are only counted once, which might save a lot of time with many candidates if there is one very popular candidate (and even if there is a higher small number of popular candidates).

With large numbers of candidates, voters probably leave more unranked. When there are no more valid preferences on a ballot paper, there is no further need to count it. (I would prefer their votes to go to compromise candidates, instead of being exhausted, though.)

It depends on circumstances, but I expect votes for the candidates to be eliminated earliest would fairly quickly be redistributed to compromise candidates.

Consider an election between n candidates who are left/right-of-centre to varying extents. If my first preference is for a candidate at one extreme and my subsequent preferences are in order of similarity to that extreme and there are n-1 rounds of counting and my vote is counted every time, then my vote is probably quite unusual, because my favourite candidate was eliminated first and must therefore have had the fewest first preferences. However, the election itself is unusual, because the eventual winner is the kind of decisive fringe candidate that usually attracts few votes other than first preferences, but if such a candidate won on the strength of first preferences alone, there would be only one round of counting and no ballot papers would be counted more then once.

I don't know what the upper limit is on the number of counted preferences (as a function of the numbers of candidates and voters), but I would be interested in finding out.

<comment><USER70> I spent some more time on this - for a large number of candidates (which is extremely common in India), the IRV mechanism is impractical.

The Indian elections are the largest elections of any kind in the world. The number of eligible voters are 814 million and a total of 8k candidates contested for the 500 odd seats.

Perhaps something like the Kemeny-Young pairwise comparison might be the most efficient way of doing this. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method)

I wonder why this was not chosen - the claims seem to indicate that IRV does not account for second choices ([http://www.votefair.org/compare.html](http://www.votefair.org/compare.html))

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the interesting links, but I don't think they support your conclusion that IRV is less practical to count. The Kemeny-Young method can't practically be counted without a computer. IRV can easily be counted by hand or computer.

I think IRV is used as widely as it is not only because of its simplicity, but also because of familiarity; it is a preferential form of the multi-round Exhaustive Ballot system and a special case of Single Transferable Vote (which in other cases is a system of proportional representation).

For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system.

<comment><USER70> > For your legislative elections, a system of proportional representation > would be better than IRV, Kemeny-Young or any other single-winner system.

that is a much harder battle. Changing the election system is easier than change the representation system.

So I agree that IRV is simpler - but I'm still looking for a tabular format that will allow count-once-but-execute-multiple-reassignment-round mechanism.

Sorry - I'm really interested in these things for the electoral system in India... which is far more complicated than the two party systems in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> What about reforming electoral college to full popular vote?

</comment><comment><USER72> qq

</comment><comment><USER73> Plurality voting is the best system. You can't view the actual casting of the ballots as the only part of the process. The campaigns and surrounding public discourse are the opportunity for the coalitions of our society to decide on two broad-appeal candidates. The "runoff" happens in conversations between citizens, and in primaries within established coalitions, not inside a ballot counting machine.

<comment><USER74> It's not possible for a candidate with zero first preference votes to win [1]. If they have zero first preference votes, they will be eliminated in the first round.

Ranked choice doesn't always get the correct result, but it's a lot closer than a simple vote.

"If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first choices is eliminated and voters who liked that candidate the best have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice."

\- [http://www.rcvmaine.com/how_does_ranked_choice_voting_work](http://www.rcvmaine.com/how_does_ranked_choice_voting_work)

<comment><USER75> How are you defining "correct result?" One formal definition could be the Condorcet winner (the candidate that would win a one-on-one election against each other candidate), but some elections don't even have a Condorcet winner. Also note that neither plurality voting nor instant runoff voting are guaranteed to select the Condorcet winner if one exists.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_criterion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_criterion)

<comment><USER76> I'm of the uninformed opinion that any national election will probably have a Condorcet winner. IF that's true, then we could literally pick any Condorcet method, and just go with that.

Condorcet IRV seems a reasonable choice, in that it's relatively easy to explain to people (compare to beatpath, for example).

I think all the discussion about the merits of different methods is just so much bikeshedding. It might matter, but it's far more important to pick _something_ than to stick with plurality!

In that spirit, I am totally in support of Maine's choice to go with IRV, even with its warts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transfer your files with Kermit - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What is with people posting something with no URL or reference, just a title? Stop it!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_(protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_\(protocol\)) [http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/kermit.html](http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/kermit.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1982 called, they want their protocol back...lol</comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a reliable PSD to HTML service? - <AUTHOR>

I don't mind where in the world they are, but I'm looking for an HNer to recommend a reliable, good quality PSD to HTML person / team to whom we can provide ongoing work.<p>If you are or have worked with anyone fitting this description, please let me know!<p>(my email is in my profile) <comment><USER2> Have you looked at <http://www.markupwand.com>? It's more of an "auto-magic" service, but it's worth checking out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did look at it, but it seems a bit unfinished. Have you used it?

<comment><USER3> I'm Raj from Markupwand team.

You are right; the code that Markupwand currently gives isn't upto the mark. It makes a few wrong guesses on how the PSD should be interpreted. But that is just for a few more days.

We are coming up with a semi-automatic version, where Markupwand would take inputs from the developers on how the code should be structured. That would make the code usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi Rich, I could certainly help with that. I'm going to be a little busy for the next 2 weeks as I'm moving to a new home and finishing up on another project, but if you'd like to send me an email I'm sure we can work something out!

You can view my portfolio at <http://www.lemoncreative.net> or get in touch by emailing email@example.com

Oh, and I'm based in Brisbane :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used psd2html.com in the past w/o issue.

<comment><USER6> +1 from me.

And the quality of the work was pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got this done on oDesk recently. I got about 50 applications within an hour of posting the job, and I ended up awarding it to 2 people. I only needed a single page done, and 12 hours after initial posting, the job was [very well] done, and I had spent around $60

<comment><USER8> As a long time outsources I think you touched on a commonly missed technique for getting your project done on time. Get two people who duplicate the efforts of the initial request - this virtually ensures that you'll get the work done within the timeframe requested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am a frontend freelancer who does PSD to HTML/WordPress, love to help out. I've checked out the slicing shops but have yet to find one that I like.

<http://dylanhassinger.net> firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER10> I am help you.</comment>


Ask HN: How to decide if an idea is worth implementing as a business? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say you have a great idea. You think it is something that people need and would want. There is also a viable business model.
Now with each idea, there is always a possibility that somebody else is also thinking about it. Anything short of a patent is not a guarantee of exclusivity. Then there are incumbents who could implement it as an add-on. For eg (only for argument's sake) if the idea is about a Facebook application, then there is always a possiblity that Facebook would implement it themselves before or after you do it.
So how do you decide? What are the considerations to be weighed in? Thoughts? <comment><USER2> The love test from Robot Co-op (the guys behind 43things, 43 People, 43 Places etc...):

 _"When we started working on product ideas, one of the tests we subjected every idea to was what if it works?

We had lots of ideas: a better answering machine, online education tools, job hunting sites, baby blogs, personalized text ads, personalized news services. Sure, we could build a personalized text ads service! But what if it works? Do we really want to run that business?

Before long, we realized we had one primary criteria for an idea we'd want to work on: it had to be an idea we loved so much that if it works, we'd be happy to work on it. Reflecting on the love test I found myself contemplating the word Amateur. The root word there is love, and an amateur is someone who pursues their interest out of love, not a hope for professional recognition or market success.

The test we were concerned with wasn't how great a business the idea would be. It was whether we could love the work. We thought about products we admire: del.icio.us, flickr, upcoming.org, craigslist, bloglines. Some of these are going to be great businesses, but all of them have an amaeteurish edge in the best sense of that word. They look like works of love. It was the amateur roots of them, the passion behind the product, that we admired."_

Full link: <http://blog.robotcoop.com/2004/11/15/the-age-of-the-amateur/>

</comment><comment><USER3> > Let's say you have a great idea. You think it is something that people need > and would want. There is also a viable business model.

To me, that is all you need to know. The risk you mention is definitely present, but that is part of all ventures. Do it the way you envision it and fill the gap.

Great luck to you!

<comment><USER4> this. to the OP: do you think that novelists worry about someone else writing the same or similar book before they start? do you think painters worry that someone else had the same inspiration? do you think that investors worry that someone else out there is spending money the exact same way as them?

sure, some probably do. but the vast majority don't. they follow their ideas/gut/inspiration. if you think the idea's good, give it a try.

<comment><USER5> I think the test is if you have a significant enough competitive advantage (via execution stemming from knowledge, the team, idea and implementation) that if entrenched powers try to follow on, it won't matter hugely. For example, youtube was bought by google after google had tried their hand at google video. If your approach can jump this hurdle, the competitors are not something to worry about.

<comment><AUTHOR> If there is already a clear competitive advantage then indeed the competitors are not that big of an issue. But it is very hard to ascertain that. Besides almost every company has smart people. So if there is something that can be done and it is not technologically impossible (or patented) then chances are that lot of other folks can do it too.

Those besides incumbents have about the same chance as you starting up and that is fair. The real issue is in estimating the likelihood that incumbents would dive-in too before you get traction. So what are the factors that one can look at or ensure to minimize the risk of doing something that the entrenched players would replicate. Or what are the factors based on which such an idea should be put aside?

I really appreciate all the high quality input I am getting.

<comment><USER5> Things to think about:

If it is a feature, not a product, that would be a warning sign.

If the bulk of what the incumbents have already radically increases the value of the product, it will be harder to compete. As an example, kiko had calendaring, but google held higher ground with a massive user base and large critical mass of related functionality in other apps.

You have to weigh who the competitors are also. Do they buy, or invent technology? Are they vigorous (startups, or google) or slow and lethargic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not about the idea, it's never about the idea, it's all the execution. It shouldn't matter to you if someone copies your idea because you know you can execute better than them. They can make X, but you can make a better X or better market X or make more money from X, etc.

Most of the time, whoever implements an idea first doesn't win, it's whoever implements it _best_.

<comment><USER7> This is both a good piece of advice and a bad piece of advice. The fact that someone can copy your idea is really not of great concern if you execute well. This is very true. But a business is not _all_ [in] _the execution_. Execution is important, but if you spend all of your time working on a useless or stupid idea then you have just wasted lots of your time, effort, and possibly money. Execution is only good when you have a decent idea to start with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Business model? People want it? Hell, it already has more going for it than a lot of the ideas I see floated around here. Go for it!!

</comment><comment><USER9> > So how do you decide?

By actually trying it. In fact, you could say the whole point of a startup is to run experiments to figure out if an idea makes a viable business.

</comment><comment><USER10> Assuming you are in tech, you should probably think differently about this problem.

Instead of focusing on whether people could like it or not, do a test to see if people actually want it or not by implementing a very simple and non- committed version (kind of like what Google Labs is to Google's product line). If people like it, you will have your answer.

You probably have ideas like this all the time, so make a list and try a few of the more promising ones. But don't put all your eggs in one basket if you don't have to.

Also, stop worrying about people stealing your idea. Assuming you are sitting on a pot of gold, it's not about who launches first, but about who gets the right people to use that product first who get the prize.

</comment><comment><USER11> When you get to THE idea you'll know it because it'll be all you'll think off for weeks

<comment><USER12> Really? Then I must have had "THE idea" at least 20 times this year...

Ideas are a dime-a-dozen.

<comment><USER7> Picking the right one is the hard part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Customer First. Competition Second. Period.</comment>


Ask HN [Developers]: LinkedIn Effectiveness - <AUTHOR>

HN Developers - when job seeking... I'm wondering:
1) how effective do you find LinkedIn in representing you to recruiters?
2) Do you really care who viewed your profile on LinkedIn?
3) Does LinkedIn properly represent your skill set?
4) Do you get a lot of recruiters' spamming you with positions that dont really have much to do with your background or outdated?
Do you feel like there are better ways they could do #1-4 above or make a more succinct profile?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'm a HUGE fan of LinkedIn. You get what you put into it, though. For me, LinkedIn is my online resume - even moreso than GitHub, because the nature of my work prevents me from contributing to open source.

I also definitely care who views my profile, as it can be used as a good icebreaker. Whenever someone interesting has viewed my profile, I immediately reach out to them. Odds are they wanted to learn about me for a reason. Maybe I can help them with something.

<comment><USER3> I've suffered _years_ of non-stop spamming from linkedin.

"Your friend Bob from India wishes to connect with you". "Reminder, your friend Charlie from Canada recently invited .."

I've received hundreds of unsolicated mails, each of which was junked, binned, and reported.

Recently I started issuing DMCA-takedown notices for content I'd produced which was copy/pasted into their forums/groups.

I will be happy when linkedin ceases operations.

To keep this vaguely on-topic; most of the local friends I know who mention linkedin regard is as a ghetto, something they used to use before they started receiving connections from people they'd never met, in countries they'd never visited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please explain what you don't / wouldn't use on LinkedIn and what you wish was.

I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get spammed a bunch. Really LinkedIn is intended to serve the employer (not the employee), but it can be helpful when you need a very specific skill set. I know over 400 programmers. I only know of one that took a job based on linkedin interaction.

The truth, no platform is helpful or even necessary. I would only take a job offer recommendation from a friend, mostly because they would better understand what I am looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the succinct feedback gamechangr!

<comment><USER4> I assume you are a recruiter??

If so, another HN coder posted this yesterday....may interest u!

[http://danrodriguez.me/blog/tips-for-tech-recruiters-from- an...](http://danrodriguez.me/blog/tips-for-tech-recruiters-from-an-engineer)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not, I am a developer myself. I already saw this - this is great actually it validates my thoughts as a developer experiencing the same problems myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a vert old LinkedIn profile, noone ever tried to recruit me, dunno why.</comment>


A conversation with Marc Andreessen on PBS's Charlie Rose - <AUTHOR> http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10093

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting that. It probably doesn't have much content that will be new to News.YC readers, but I'm a big fan of Marc Andreessen and the interview was a fun whirlwind tour of the industry.</comment>


Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without her noticing (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://mango.pdf.zone/operation-luigi-how-i-hacked-my-friend-without-her-noticing <comment><USER2> > She explains to me how she got an email from Apple about her account and > there was a phone number in it. I tug my collar several meters into the next > room, knocking over several carefully-potted indoor plants.

That line was fucking gold.

<comment><USER3> > Shout outs to Aerobatic for the smooth smooth phishing UX. Use the referral > code DIANA to be immediately reported to the NSA.

This one definitely got me!

<comment><USER4> "I reach under my desk, unwrap a parcel addressed to "DIRECTOR OF CYBER, NSA", slide out a yellow and black canister labelled "CHINA", break open the safety seal, and use safety tongs to extract the following red-hot phish."

Gold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Banks and the rest hate me. I use keypass to generate random alpha numeric 'passwords' I use for the answers to personal questions.

<comment><USER6> I have personally experienced a CS rep accepting "it's just a bunch of random characters" as an answer. Combined with the fact that you just went on the record as using that scheme, your opsec just took a dramatic hit.

Use plausible sounding, but random answers.

<comment><USER7> In this case a password like "to be repeated exactly: <random string>" has the same properties and can be divulged without affecting opsec particularly.

<comment><USER6> (Un)fortunately, normal people don't think like programmers. That's why security questions exist, in the first place. Do you think they won't accept "It's to be repeated exactly, and then gschgschgsch. Ahh, youth. Those were the days."

If you think that's bad: I always enter a fake phone nr. Once, a company turned out to use them as verification for phone support. I didn't know, and had forgotten, so gave my actual number. "Oh, it says something else here. Shall I just go ahead and remove that, then?". I wanted to cry.

Don't play games.

<comment><USER8> Not that I condone this strategy, but what is the threat model where an impersonator knows to say, "It's to be repeated exactly, and then adso&#fjsou..."?

<comment><USER6> I'd go with "putting your security question strategy on a public forum", for starters.

Security through obscurity strikes again.

<comment><USER8> Well yeah, in this case that's the weakness. But before parent announced their strategy on this forum, what was the threat model? Hell, let's assume OP obfuscated the introductory part in their comment to avoid that leak.

<comment><USER9> If they're willing to brag about their passwords on the internet, I'd be willing to bet that family and friends have the same information.

Assuming that wasn't true, a customer service rep for the phone company could call the customer's bank and try to impersonate the customer, assuming it's used often (like the poster stated).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > At this point Diana has been completely gaslighted as to what her hotmail > password is, because my phishing site said the wrong password was right, and > then said the right password was wrong, and she thinks it's the real > Hotmail.

Most underrated footnote.

</comment><comment><USER11> the content of the article is good - but the writing style does not sit well with me. It's an odd sense of humour and a writing style more suited to instant messages perhaps rather than a blog.

<comment><USER12> Going off on quirky tangents can be an effective tool for keeping a reader interested. It reminds me a little of Douglas Adams. He punctuates the hard science fiction with goofy anecdotes to get the reader thinking about the subject from another perspective and to keep them entertained.

It is not a tutorial on how to phish or a vulnerability report, but rather a story about how motivation is potentially more important to phishing than technical skill. Without the casual writing style, the main character (and author) might have seemed more sophisticated, which would have diminished the point of the story.

<comment><USER13> A joke here and there is fine, but this person injects his jokes attempts pretty much every sentence. That gets annoying quickly.

<comment><USER14> I guess the threshold isn't the same for all of us, I didn't get irked by he jokes at all... however around halfway through I started wishing for it to be over soon(tm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My goal here is to figure out what Diana's actual password is, given that I have her password hash. This process is commonly known as "hacking".

This is hilarious!!

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an interesting model for how to provide training/education

</comment><comment><USER17> This post periodically makes it way back to the top. Last I checked it was 6 months ago

</comment><comment><USER18> Posted numerous times, a year ago, including: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14919845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14919845)

<comment><USER19> On the site ([https://mango.pdf.zone/](https://mango.pdf.zone/)), the above link is called 'Salty Hacker News comments'

<comment><USER20> That's pretty funny. I didn't like the writing style at first either, but it got funnier as I carried on (or maybe the writing got better too). By the end I was questioning why I was so resistant to light-heartedness in the first place.

Overall, a really great breakdown of a textbook phishing attack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is certainly not how trust in human relationships is reinforced :)

Get consent before hacking your friends.~~

Edit: This is awkward - I was sure I read it one of the previous times it was posted. Chapeau!

<comment><USER22> Did you read the article? The author got consent.

<comment><USER23> > Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even > read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article > mentions that."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER24> To be fair to the above it's a pretty central factoid that is mentioned more than a few times, but yes, I agree with you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ford Makes 65 mpg Car, but can't Sell it in the United States - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

<comment> patrickg-zill Just a note - the reason that small diesels are not popular here is because of the California Air Resources Board's idiotic measurement methods.

They count total emissions not per-mile, but per-gallon, completely ignoring that the diesel-powered vehicle will go farther on the same amount of fuel.

<comment><USER2> I can't find a source saying how they measure in either direction. Link? Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They can't sell it in the US because it would destroy the carefully- perpetuated myth that expensive hybrid cars are the only way for fuel efficiency.

<comment><USER4> Ford doesn't have any interest in maintaining that myth -- they only have one hybrid model. Toyota is the only company currently getting rich off that particular myth.

They couldn't sell it in the US because by US standards it's tiny, underpowered and expensive.

<comment><USER5> The Honda Fit is tiny, underpowered and sells just fine. I think the article is correct on why it won't sell; size and power don't mean as much as they used to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the problem with Ford is that they just stopped trying. Sure they can't import the diesel version...but the Fiesta is a very light car, throw a tiny engine in there, and you'll get a 45-50mpg 100hp commuter. Sure it won't have as much torque, but at this point people are willing to sacrifice power for mpg.

<comment><USER4> There was a spike in fuel-obsessiveness about six weeks ago, but now prices have flattened off people care much less. People only care about saving fuel when fuel prices rise suddenly, not when they're flat-but-high.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a link for your six weeks ago asasertion? I don't doubt what you're saying, but that kind of data really interests me.

<comment><USER4> No, six weeks ago was just a guesstimate. You could probably try plotting the frequency of the words "gas prices" and similar phrases showing up in news stories over time to gauge interest (speaking of which, trend picking via time-dependent news analysis is a pretty good startup idea...)

In my opinion, gas prices are one of those things which people are maximally irrational about. Since they vary from day to day people are far more aware of how much they're spending, while other larger expenses are more easily ignored. For a couple of months people were selling their SUVs for cheap and buying new small cars for more than RRP -- I was almost tempted to pick up a cheap used Lincoln Navigator or similar just to take advantage of it.

<comment><USER8> Google Trends says approximately six weeks ago is a good guess; looks like news references to gas prices peaked in mid-July, while web searches peaked a couple months earlier:

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=gas+prices&ctab=0&geo...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=gas+prices&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know a lot of people who would love to have a Diesel Cooper Mini, but like the Fiesta, it will never be sold in the US. I'd love to have one and run it on biodiesel. (This month, I am using Waste Vegetable Oil derived fuel.) My dad would love to have one, and he's almost 80!

<comment><USER10> I recently met an engineer who drove from Portland to Sunnyvale on a single tank in his converted Jetta.</comment></comment>


Andreessen: 'The Dot-Com Bust Was Basically A Mistake' - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/11/01/marc-andreessen-the-dot-com-bust-was-basically-a-mistake/ <comment><USER2> This is a misleading title as the content of the article is basically a shill for his latest investment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh, yeah, because Pets.com would have worked so much better as a mobile app.</comment>


The Most Important Thing Paul Graham Taught Me - <AUTHOR> https://shubhamjain.co/2020/01/11/paul-graham-taught-me/ <comment><USER2> I agree this is an important lesson. Not everyone is aware of it, or else people would obviously avoid pointless arguments and acting in futile ways.

Arguing for 5 minutes or 10 minutes can consume your whole day afterwards (in your own mind). When you say something, be it bad or good, words will continue to resonate silently in her mind (and yours).

I also noticed when I'm working at something really important, or when I'm on an epiphany of discovering some glorious truth, I naturally don't mind any argument thrown at me. I'm just focused on that beautiful and exciting thought, and no external input could shake it out of my head. I then realized how futile other person's worries and "sadness" are.

It's relativity: the wider your awareness (and the brighter your thoughts), the more shocking it is to see people "closed minded", prisoner of their own thoughts's limitation, and self-imposed grief.

Oddly, we keep going from one to the other. Sticking with mindfulness is hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great writeup on the futility of conflict.</comment>


I bought js.org and want to "give it back" to the JavaScript community - <AUTHOR> What do you think would be most useful for the JS-community? Free subdomains for open-source projects? A CDN ? Community tools like blogs, forums, chats? <i></i>*@js.org email adresses for "everyone"? <comment><USER2> Lets create an online Javascript bible, not the frameworks like angular, ember, backbone etc... But core javascript, objects, constructor functions, bitwise operators. Everything about Javascript language should be there.

<comment><USER3> that's exactly what you can find at [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript)

<comment><USER4> +1. There was that push for the Web Platform site[1], the fancy flashy unified source for web documentation, but I haven't gone back there since day 1... MDN has more content, more contributors, more love.

[1] [http://www.webplatform.org/](http://www.webplatform.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You could focus on redirects, maybe some for npm modules, other for jquery plugins, etc

Also you could link/redirect references, like the Mozilla one [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript) (Mozilla rocks \o/)

</comment><comment><USER5> You could make it a redirect service for npm modules.

e.g. [https://js.org/express](https://js.org/express) 301 redirects to [https://www.npmjs.com/package/express](https://www.npmjs.com/package/express)

Another idea is a blog. One of my favorite blogs is [http://npmawesome.com/](http://npmawesome.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a bit nodejs focused, i think. Off-topic: The blog i like most is dailyjs...

<comment><USER6> How about [https://node.js.org/express](https://node.js.org/express) instead?

<comment><USER7> So getting practical, the main strategy would be:

\- When a project reaches a popularity threshold (for example 10k github stars or gets to be the most popular project is his category - example: the most popular 3D library) would get a subdomain:

[https://jquery.js.org/eachplugin](https://jquery.js.org/eachplugin)

[https://node.js.org/express](https://node.js.org/express)

When we get exceptions, in this case, express grew and got autonomous, [https://node.js.org/express](https://node.js.org/express) would redirect to:

[https://express.js.org/](https://express.js.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You could create an identity system, where users can create personal accounts and have projects, similar to github. Maybe you should simply use github, that way popular projects would keep their well known names.

Do not hustle with email, install a system to handle MX records by the user, maybe with an interface that has some defaults (github, gmail).

After that create an OAUTH provider. Now you can provide other services through partnerships. I would not give away the ability to define custom sub- subdomains, instead let them choose between different service providers for predefined subdomains like these:

* forum.project.js.org

* news.project.js.org

* issues.project.js.org

* mailinglist.project.js.org

Create a skin-able overview of all the services at project.js.org. For the beginning you could simply pull in githubs README and add a navigation bar at the top. Later you could create something more dynamic.

Host an aggregator for each service at:

* js.org/forum

* js.org/news

* js.org/issues

* js.org/mailinglist

After you successfully created an enormous community and locked everybody in, turn evil, go into profit mode and add:

* jobs.project.js.org

* donate.project.js.org

* sponsors.project.js.org

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the evil part... No, to be serious I just wonder what could be useful. Github (for projekts) and MDN (for docu of core JS) are doing great. Thanks for your suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is site called Ruby Toolbox[1] and I find that helpful for doing the initial research for a library and if its active, useful to me, and how popular.

An initial Google search indicates there is a site like this for JavaScript, but checking it show it is an internet lifetime ago (5-6 years).

A fact based inventory of major JS libraries with downloads, bugs and updated_at stats would be helpful. The challenge would be keeping it fresh. If project "owners" can submit their own info that would help.

[1] [https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/](https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> You could somehow use it to establish kind of an _official page_ to JS- community. Right now js-community is divided, there is the angular community, the jquery community, the node community, the meteor community, etc, but a JS community that would aggregate all JS project communities is not organized yet. Without it JS will always look less popular than it really is.

<comment><USER10> That aggregation you mention is traditionally called the "planet", and has a long history:

[http://planet.lisp.org/](http://planet.lisp.org/)

[http://planet.emacsen.org/](http://planet.emacsen.org/)

[http://www.planetnetbeans.org/](http://www.planetnetbeans.org/)

[http://planetopendata.herokuapp.com/opendatanews?style=hacke...](http://planetopendata.herokuapp.com/opendatanews?style=hacker)

There are probably several packages which will ease the creation of such a thing, but this is the one I know of: [http://www.planetplanet.org/](http://www.planetplanet.org/)

<comment><USER7> Ex. I make a search for "ruby", the first result I get is _ruby-lang.org_. For "python": _python.org_. For "clojure": _clojure.org_. For "PHP": _php.net_ (...)

For "javascript", I get _w3schools.com /js_ !!! I know that Javascript is in constant evolution, but _we_ need some kind of "headquarters to gather our troops", do PR and marketing.

JS community cannot be a Peter Pan forever, one day _we_ must grow up.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...thats exactly my thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Free subdomains and email would be really cool, actually. However, who is "Everyone"? Who gets a subdomain/email address?

<comment><AUTHOR> thats the point. I think even with a good hosting plan i could handle subdomains only in the hundreds and email adresses in the thousands?!? But how to decide... Even with a focus on open source devs.

<comment><USER12> You could buy a VPS and set up the appropriate software (mailserver, web client, etc.) and offer free registration for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> subdomain + email is a good thing, setup a invite only "not so" closed beta staging, see if it works. Write a user agreement understanding that this is a test enviroment and making them aknowledge that all their data hosted on that email can be erased.

So you are safe, and can see if it at least work it out.

</comment><comment><USER14> Emails for open sources projects would be awesome!</comment>


Why Not Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://smarterware.org/8026/why-not-tumblr

<comment><USER2> No backups. Unreliable uptime. And of course, no self-hosted option.

If you invest yourself in your blog and take time out of your life to maintain it properly then it's not unreasonable to expect control over your work. If Tumblr goes down for half a day then that means nobody can visit your site, and if you have something that needs to be posted as a matter of urgency then you're stuffed until it comes back up.

Plus, what happens when Tumblr goes out of business?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a bit strange. I migrated my blog from Tumblr about a year ago, and at the time there was an easy-to-use XML API to retrieve posts -- presumably the one that powers the many "hacky third party tools that purport to do it".

I suppose it is disconcerting that Tumblr don't just let you export your data from the dashboard, but it's not at all difficult to do, and it's not at all hacky.

<comment><USER4> It's not difficult or hacky to you - but you read and comment on HN.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree with both of you.

Tumblr is one of the simplest api's I have ever worked with, though. To decide not to use it because there isn't some one-click dashboard csv export or migration tool.. that's such a weird decision. That's like saying I don't want to use [redacted social networking site] because it doesn't feature [one- click-tool] to move to [alternative redacted social networking site]. I mean, I guess. But, if your concern is about ownership of the data and you're treating their service/app as a datasource, I'm sorry but you're going to have to get your hands a _little_ dirty to export that data into your preferred format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Setup pingdom (or another monitoring service) on a Tumblr site and you can witness the other bigger issue with them.

<comment><USER7> If you consider Tumblr to fill some of the same space as Twitter (albeit in a more media-rich way), it has roughly "industry-standard" uptime. =]

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see what's wrong with "hacky third party tools". From the looks of it, the api seems to allow for you to pull your posts, 50 at a time.

However, it is a bit concerning that there is no built in tool for laymen. It seems like tumblr needs more hires.

<comment> brown9-2 I think the worry is that the third party tools might stop working at any time and/or the company might pull or change the API that allows it to function. If it was an official feature from the company, it's continued existence would be a bit more assured (although not perfect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tumblr also has some other awesome features you may not have noticed.

My favourite is tag pages only up to 15. So if you have 300 items under a given tag, you can only sort of see 225 (at 15 items per page).

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://cl.ly/3s1g0z2S3Y2n3e1L0q3U>

Someone else might find this screenshot quite ironic. A response article, "Why Tumblr" and Tumblr failing to display it.</comment>


XPubs and YPubs and ZPubs Oh My - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tokensoft/xpubs-and-ypubs-and-zpubs-oh-my-3f5818e98835 <comment><USER2> Fascinating - was not aware of the nuances and power behind Bitcoin key generation</comment>