Talk:Compilation complexity

Merge proposal

I propose merging Summability criterion into Compilation complexity. Summability seems like a slightly weaker version of Compilation complexity, however, without research or properly cited material backing the definition up. The results for summability further mostly seem subsumed by the results for compilation complexity, especially the fact that IRV is not summable. @RobLa, Erel Segal, and DominikPeters: Jannikp97 (talk) 16:58, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable --Erel Segal (talk) 20:00, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I haven't fully formed my opinion on this. The "compilation complexity" page is not written to be accessible to the layperson, so that would need to change. For example, the lead sentence of the section regarding a common voting method ("#Voting rules with runoff") currently centers around "$\Theta (c^{2}\log {k})$". Generally, the article is written as though mathematicians are the only important audience. However, I do think that the "summability criterion" may be suffering not just from a weak Wikipedia page, but a lack of nuanced reasoning in many circles. "Summability" is not a simple pass/fail criterion, but some folks treat it as such. Given the widespread use of "summability" in many electoral system articles (and that widespread use of "summability" in electoral system discussions outside of Wikipedia), there would need to be a lot of work applied to ensure that readers expecting to learn about "summability" are presented with an accessible article that acknowledges the existence of a concept named "summability". This seems like a lot of work, and I would oppose a merge proposal that wasn't coupled with a credible commitment to address the accessibility of the merged article for readers redirected from summability criterion. -- RobLa (talk) 22:18, 21 March 2024 (UTC)