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We are electing seven people, subject to Jimbo's approval. If one can vote Support, Oppose or Neutral, are you limited to a maximum of seven support votes - as per some UK systems, or can you vote for as many candidates as you wish? ϢereSpielChequers 09:15, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that you may support or oppose any or all candidates (once per candidate, obviously). At least, that's the way it's been done in previous elections. — Coren ^(talk) 13:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Correct - you can support or oppose any or all of the candidates, as you wish. There is no limitation on how many candidates you can vote for (or against), though there are some other restrictions. You can't vote more than once for a candidate without indenting the previous vote, and you can't vote for (or against) yourself if you are a candidate. As for Neutral votes - we're not currently set up to do neutrals, though some candidates end up with them anyway. Voters who wish to vote Neutral should probably do so by commenting on the candidate's discussion page. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of each person only having seven votes to cast in the election as it requires more thought in order to use the votes wisely. It would also result in less "oppose" votes, as people wouldnt waste their votes on opposes unless they had a good reason to do so, allowing candidates to more gracefully pull out. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:47, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean seven supports, I like that idea too and will be using it when I vote: seven supports for who I want on ArbCom, and everyone else will be opposed (since obviously I won't want them on it). Al Tally ^talk 13:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the idea of an oppose based system, but would point out that if you vote for only seven candidates it still makes sense to only oppose those you least want to be elected - voting for seven and opposing all others only makes sense if you are neutral between all the others - and would probably have the same effect as voting for seven and not opposing anyone. If the system goes ahead as I now understand it, then I will divide the candidates into three groups, those I most want elected I will Support, those I least want to be elected I will Oppose and for those in between I will abstain. ϢereSpielChequers 14:38, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree to the seven support system, perhaps this should be considered in the future (I think it's a little late in the game now). Although it requires more checkups, it would save the sort of "opposing so as to make my vote count" votes I have seen in the past. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 19:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've been doing a little reading, and I think if we limit the system to support votes only, and no more support votes than there are places we are considering, then the system we are talking about is Plurality-at-large voting. This would have the advantage of being fairly simple for both the voters and the tellers, and a major advantage over the current system of not involving opposes. But I for one would find it an artificial constraint to lump all the seven I support into one equal category, and by implication all the rest into a second group. My preference would be for one of the systems such as single transferable vote where you put the candidates in order for as far as you have a preference. Whilst I haven't yet read all the statements I suspect this will fit my eventual perception of the candidates better than a straight support/oppose choice. There is also a system I experienced once where you put the candidates in order of preference and your votes are distributed accordingly, so in a 28 candidate field your first choice gets 28 points your second 27 etc. I think this would be fairly straightforward to count and vote under (you don't need to list all the candidates); it should also be easy to automate the counting. ϢereSpielChequers 18:35, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem Were, is that ArbCom elections suffer from the same problem most elections do: people are more interested in immediacy of apparent result and tracking who "is in the lead" at every second that the ultimate fairness and representativity of the results. First-past-the-post systems where you simply count up an absolute value (or, in our case, a proportion) of number of votes are very visible, even if broken in a number of ways.

The Schulze method for instance, is demonstrably better in all respects than our current system, and no more complicated to participate in, but requires a slightly complicated calculation in order to determine who the "top N picks" are that is not amenable to simple horserace calling "X is in the lead, with Y percent ahead... but wait! Z is catching up...". — Coren ^(talk) 19:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There was some discussion on the merits of the Schulze method, but the complexity daunted us, I think. Single-transferable vote works well, though it's probably too late to switch this time around. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, from the voters' perspective, Schulze is essentially identical to STV, but validating and tallying really need to be done by an automated process because, while not complex, there are a lot of steps. One of the nice properties about voting systems that meet the Condorcet criterion is that there is no need to vote tactically — having to vote for someone you don't like because you fear someone whom you like even less will win; or having an otherwise good candidate fall by the wayside because of split vote. — Coren ^(talk) 23:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, after the election, I'm going to code up a reliable and transparent Schulze voting system that we can use whenever we want for on-wiki selections. Open source so it can be validated, and using the Wiki for recording and tracking so that it can be audited when running. Too late to use it now, at any rate, and it wouldn't be right for me to run in an election where I wrote the voting system.  :-) — Coren ^(talk) 23:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Coren, I may have got this wrong but my reading of the Schulze method as opposed to the single transferable vote (STV) is that though they will produce the same winner if there is only one seat contested, they should give very different results if two or more seats are up. With seven vacancies STV would elect a candidate who was the first choice of over an eighth of the electorate even if the rest of the electorate marked that candidate last; whilst Schultze in my understanding would produce the seven most acceptable candidates to the electorate as a whole, and if there were eight or more candidates would not elect someone who was the first choice of 13% and the last choice of 87%. So if our intent is to elect a diverse ArbComm that reflects all significant views within the community we should choose STV, if however we consider this more of a job interview where we want the seven candidates with the broadest support we should use Schultze. I can see advantages either way, but they would involve very different ArbComms. In any event I suggest that after this election we review the system, and code the agreed system well before the next election. ϢereSpielChequers 11:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Actually, STV and Schulze will tend to elect the same top candidates in most cases no matter how many seats you're filling; but in more marginal cases and in ambiguities latter picks "least disliked" over "most supported by a subgroup". I agree that there is something attractive about being able to "represent" subgroup of editors with seats on ArbCom— but I think that, ultimately, the committee's job is one of conciliation and balance and I'm not sure polarizing it would be a good idea because it could lead to simply replaying the same divides of the entire community within the AC.

It certainly is an excellent question, and a philosophical discussion worth having, but I agree that this needs to be tackled well in advance of the next election and not at the bottom of the ninth.  :-) — Coren ^(talk) 15:50, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts on the methods proposed here so far: Plurality-at-large (where you must vote for 7 people if there are 7 slots) sucks. It has no desirable properties of the kind you can read about at the voting system article. I'm a fan of Condorcet-based methods in some situations, but they actually perform badly in environments like Wikipedia -- they have unique failure modes when you can see the votes as they're coming in, because voters can vote strategically to cause Condorcet cycles, either preventing a victory for a candidate they don't like or making that victory appear less legitimate. (This actually happened in a Wikipedia discussion that tried Condorcet.) STV is nice because of proportional representation, but I am unsure that we want proportional representation on ArbCom; that could make it easy for a constituency of raving loony trolls to get a seat. What we've got now -- which you could describe as either approval voting or range voting -- is a system that is very well-suited to the task at hand. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 06:03, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbcom is voted on because it is actually outside-the-wiki. (it's a long story about right tool for right job). In the case of holding actual elections, I agree with Rspeer above about use of approval voting or range voting. If you try to apply other voting methods on top of approval voting, you're just disenfranchising yourself. (in the same way as when you try to straight-vote on other wikipedia topics where consensus is permitted and encouraged(!), you are also disenfranchising yourself).

Long story short: Ensure you are using the most applicable system; Understand the system you are using; apply and/or participate in the system intelligently. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:53, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a user undergoing current arbitration request, I hesitate to vote in sections regarding current arbitrators: we are all human, and in theory, a vote from me could influence their decision in my case. It shouldn't, of course, but... therefore I wonder: should we have some form of secret ballot that would allow users undergoing current arbcom proceedings to cast their votes in secret, with those votes being attributed after a given arbcom case has ended? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it seems pretty obvious to me that we should be voting by secret ballot. And since the foundation elections were by secret ballot earlier this year, the format of the arbcom election is a regression. I thought about this yesterday, and decided to wait until after this election is over to start a discussion on how to fix this in the future. I think it's too late at this point to change anything for the present election. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:09, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We definitely should have secret ballots. Some voters may be concerned to vote against a leading candidate, knowing that the candidate will probably win, and may then have their views colored. For that matter, what about the fear of voting against a losing candidate and having them take retaliatory action. I think secret ballots are an excellent idea. I have even seen one instance of a voter offering to switch her vote for specific consideration. Jehochman ^Talk 19:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We used to use Special:BoardVote to do arbcom voting until boardvote was moved offsite. I imagine for next year we could just use the old BoardVote interface and call it something like ArbVote for our purposes of better privacy without the expense of a separate server. MBisanz ^talk 19:36, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that a secret ballot would be better, though perhaps with more use of talk pages for some of the comments currently made with !votes. An additional advantage that I don't think has yet been mentioned is that the Arbcomm members have to work together and therefore several of our voters who are closest to the process are not voting - but could with a secret ballot. ϢereSpielChequers 21:44, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with all of the above. The idea by MBisanz (talk · contribs) sounds like a good way to implement this in the future. Cirt (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not completely against the idea of secret ballots, but I like the open system as well. Especially for the few candidates where I'm fairly neutral, reading the "support" and "oppose" comments can help me make up my mind, or can bring up factors that I hadn't considered. The open nature of the voting allows me to make more informed decisions. However, I do agree that there is that little bit of hesitancy when I'm opposing a candidate, as I'm aware that if that candidate does get elected anyway, that that "oppose" may come back to haunt me later in a future case. I'd like to think that all of the candidates who end up elected are emotionally mature enough to not allow the oppose votes to bias their future impressions of an editor; but, human nature is human nature, so it can't be entirely discounted, either. Maybe allow for a mix, so that a voter could choose to vote openly or secretly, whichever they were most comfortable with? So if they're voting a candidate where they never edit in the same topic areas as that candidate anyway, they can stay open, but if they're voting for a candidate that they're going to have to work with in the future, they have the option of casting a secret ballot? --Elonka 22:16, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh.. I rather like the non secret aspect of this system. But I think there's merit in bouncing around ideas on allowing but not requiring secret ballots... as soon as you vote publicly, you can't vote secretly on that candidate, or the like. Needs thrashing out but it might be interesting to see if it has legs. ++Lar: t/c 22:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed before, and was again this year, but has failed to gain consensus. This is quite possibly due to inertia, and Piotrus concerns are quite real. On the other hand, open voting allows for open checking of voter sufferage, and allows people's opinions to be influenced by the votes of others. Some see this as a negative; but without taking several hours to review each candidates contributions, reading their answers to the questions and seeing the opinions of those editors who I have interacted with and hold in high respect is the best way to guage their sutibility for ArbCom. Eluchil404 (talk) 22:55, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was wrong. The discussions earlier this year focused exclusively on whether to use atraight approval voting, candidate ranking, or the current support/oppose system with no explicit discussion of secret ballot. Eluchil404 (talk) 04:42, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I completely disagree with the above. The last thing this wiki needs is more secrecy. >Radiant< 23:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is perfectly possible to have an election where how you !vote is secret (or optionally secret) but who voted is not. You can even have the facility for a checkuser or crat to strike the !vote of invalid !voters ϢereSpielChequers 00:17, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not only possible, we did it for the foundation board election... — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:44, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re Radiant and Elonka: secrecy in knowing who voted for who is much different than secrecy in the results. Essentially every election I have ever seen was done by secret ballot, because its merits are so widely known. But the results were widely publicized. I appreciate there is a "wiki aspect" of threaded discussions, but it's outweighed by the problems of intimidation (as Piotrus says) and social pressure among colleagues. Honestly, I never expected that this election wouldn't be done by secret ballot, which is why I never looked into it before the election started. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:44, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is the same system we use for WP:RfA as well as "votes" on policies, RfC's, and article deletion AfD. It's theorhetically a discussion resulting in consensus rather than a pure electoral system, but despite the name even ArbCom elections aren't straight elections. (Though like many others I'd welcome changing that). Compare how votes are taken in a legislature or indeed by any board or committee. The secret ballot is the norm in governmental elections because the cost of political intimidation is so high and campaigns have wide opportunities to diseminate information. Open ballotting, as here, essentially combines the election with the campaign which can be efficient in cases of general political ignorance. Eluchil404 (talk) 04:31, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The two-week question/answer period is the "campaign" so to speak. The board vote is also not a straight election, if I remember correctly the current board can veto candidates if they want to. I don't see either concern as a reason not to use a secret ballot when we already have the software to do so. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:43, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the fact that someone has power to veto the results makes an election "not a straight election", then this is not a "straight election" either. The appointments to the committee are made by J. Wales, based on the advice given to him by the community in this "election." However, in light of the fact that he has appointed who was "elected" (almost always, at least), there is no reason why the same principles that apply to a "real election" should not apply here. One of those is secrecy of the ballot. Another is that if you want to tell people who you support, or oppose, and why, you can. Elonka and others raise a good point, but I suspect that the technical details involved in some people voting openly and some people voting secretly might get a little complicated. How about this: Everybody votes secretly, but there is a discussion page for each candidate where each person can give a brief statement of support or opposition, and link to a larger statement (as a number of people have this year) -- or, ignore completely. The discussion pages, in addition to allowing "campaigning" (a fundamental part of any election), would also function as sort of an "exit poll" -- and just like a "real" exit poll, it could give a misleading impression of what the real results are going to be. But once again, that's how elections work. 6SJ7 (talk) 23:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What I would like for us to do next year is have a parallel vote using the traditional wiki way, and one using the board vote method or similar. I don't think either is clearly superior; there are strengths and weaknesses to both. I suspect that the results would not differ by much in the end, but it would certainly be interesting to see. I think we can say the following: a secret ballot would make things freer for "dissenting" votes to be cast more freely, and that's a good thing. But a secret ballot is also likely to produce candidates who are less a "consensus" than this method, and that's not a good thing. Our processes work best when they are a constructive and rational dialogue which weighs several competing concerns, and the decision method has checks and balances to make sure nothing weird happens. The current method is pretty good at that, of course depending unfortunately as it does on me personally (in consultation with the Arbs and ex-Arbs and other prominent members of the community) to not do anything weird.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo, are you suggesting that a person would have the option of voting in the "Wiki" procedure, or the "boardvote" (or similar method), or both? That is the only way that adding the "boardvote" would really add anything to the process. However, if you do that (and I think it is a reasonable idea), I think you would need to specify in advance which one "counts" in case of a different result. Given the voting patterns this year (and in the past), it seems quite likely that someone could be in 7th place (or whatever the lowest "winning" position is) in one procedure but in 8th or lower in the other, even if the difference is just a few votes. Or to put it another way, I think you need to tell the voters, in advance, what they need to do to make sure their vote "counts." My preference, as suggested above, would be that the "boardvote" method is the one that counts. While I understand your desire for consensus, I don't think that ideal is being achieved anyway, nor can it be in a voting process. If the election were over right now, one candidate would come in 7th with 67.2 percent approval, and one would come in 8th with 66.3 percent approval. Given your practice for the last few years, it is reasonable to expect that, unless you had a major issue with one of the top 7 that caused you not to appoint them, you would appoint the top 7 -- even though candidate #7 has an "approval level" only slightly higher than candidate #8. That is a fair and reasonable way to decide an election, but it is not "consensus". And, incidentally, if one of the current top 7 were rejected and the dividing line were between candidates #8 and 9, it is noteworthy that the current separation between those two candidates is less than one vote. So I think the balance should definitely fall on the side of "counting" the result that allows people to keep their votes to themselves, and the computer that counts them. 6SJ7 (talk) 15:45, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mervyn Emrys vote has been stricken from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Vote/Vassyana but he complains that the eligibility tool shows him eligible.[2] The tool is clearly incorrect here as munaul counts show less than 100 mainspace edits and no deleted contribs. I can't fidn the error in the debug output. If this is an isolated case we should just appoligise and move on, but if it's a systematic thing we should not link a faulty tool from the vote page. Eluchil404 (talk) 04:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I restored the vote, but may have mis-read the main space part. Whoops...self-revert. RxS (talk) 04:27, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any mechanism for giving someone the benefit of the doubt in borderline situations? I agree with the minimal requirement to keep out obvious sock- and meat-puppets, but in Mervyn's case, he seems to be a genuine good faith editor who just spent more time on talkpages than actual articles. He did have over 200 edits prior to November 1, though he's just shy of the 150 mark for article edits. But as we all know, he could have been easily gamed this if that was his goal, by just making multiple small edits rather than a few large edits. He appears to be a "real" person, even an actual academic. And, when he checked whether he could vote or not, our utility did tell him that he was an eligible voter. My own feeling is that this is such a borderline case, that we should allow his votes to stand. --Elonka 04:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In a general sense, I don't think that making case-by-case exceptions on the basis of an assessment of an editor's good faith is wise. All voting cutoffs are arbitrary on some level, but selectively enforcing them makes them even more arbitrary. In this specific case, I'm a bit puzzled as well since the editor's userpage indicates he's retired and contains a lengthy complaint about and farewell letter to Wikipedia. I'll note for disclosure purposes that 2 of the 3 disputed votes agree with my own. MastCell ^Talk 05:38, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, this editor's votes don't coincide with mine either (for example, he's supporting Jehochman, and I'm opposing). I also agree with MastCell that a certain cutoff is necessary. However, we did set up an automated "are you eligible" utility, and he clicked it, and it told him that he was okay, so he went ahead and voted. Since the screwup was ours, and since he's obviously such a borderline eligibility case anyway, I think it's worth giving him the benefit of the doubt. --Elonka 06:04, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, I am surprised he supported me. Might this be an off by one error in the tool? If the discrepancy is small, giving the user the benefit of the doubt may be justifiable, as long as we do the same for all affected editors. Jehochman ^Talk 06:17, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed; the query wasn't correctly limiting by date. Sorry about the confusion. —{admin} Pathoschild 08:43:23, 02 December 2008 (UTC)

Look, I'm not asking for special treatment, just for FAIR treatment of all persons, including others who relied on a faulty account checker before we wasted so much time reviewing candidates and trying to participate in a constructive manner. Seems this election has been turned into one very poor joke. Perhaps it should be called off and started over again, given the large number of persons whose votes have been invalidated in this manner. If anyone wishes to discourage people from voting, this is an effective way to do that. Just waste their time. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 17:28, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's a helpful attitude. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:31, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the opening post of this thread, the editor's mainspace edits are described as "less than 100" and then later, in another post, he's described as "just shy of the 150 mark." As a statistician, I have to say that the difference between 150 and "less than 100" is hardly an insignificant discrepancy, unless the first post was in error as to the number of mainspace edits. I too was subject to misinformation about eligibility; an early discussion about eligibility pointed people to a link that gave total edit counts, and I was pleased to find that I was eligible by the count I was given at that link, something like 324. But when it came time to vote, and I saw that the actual eligibility requirement is 150 *mainspace* edits, I knew I didn't have that, not even close, and I haven't attempted to vote, being sure I wasn't eligible. However, I'm interested enough in Wikipedia that I have researched all the candidates and read all the questions and answers and discussions, and have arrived at an informed opinion of who I would vote for (and against) if I could, and I don't consider that wasted time and energy. I'd probably be a good Wikipedia voter (and I'd be a good Wikipedia editor as well, if the obstacles that keep me from editing articles were made less insurmountable) but I'm willing to accept that the rules for eligibility are the rules for eligibility.Woonpton (talk) 17:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, the reason I said "just shy of the 150 mark", was because based on my (rough) count via copy/pasting his contrib list to Microsoft Word and then doing a line count, Mervyn Emrys had well over 150 total edits, and over 100 mainspace edits. If my count was wrong, I apologize. I'm not really enthused about going through and counting by hand to get an exact measure. My point is really that our utility told him he was eligible, so he voted, and then had his votes removed as being ineligible. If this had happened in a commercial establishment where I were customer service manager, for example if someone bought something that was marked on "sale", but a different database showed it as not on sale, I would give the benefit of the doubt to the customer, and let them buy the item at the lower price as it was marked on the shelf, even if the cash register disagreed. Now granted, we're not talking about a commercial transaction here, but the general concept is the same: We set up an automated utility, which told him that he passed. So I think his votes should be allowed to count. It's not like it's going to make a huge difference one way or the other, right? Last year the candidate with the top number of votes, NewyorkBrad, had about 500 votes. So, Mervyn Emrys can influence things by his .2%, we take responsibility for the bug in our own software, and in return, we get the goodwill of an academic who may be a useful addition to the project. --Elonka 18:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Too much common sense...we must cling to rigid rules and offend as many newcomers as possible. Volunteers are an expendable resource...(the preceding comments were sarcastic) If the vote checker was wrong, anyone who was given a "eligible" result at the time they checked should be allowed to vote. This will make no practical difference in the results, but it will create goodwill. Jehochman ^Talk 18:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The way the election is set up is that anyone - any editor whatsoever - can vote and make their voice heard. Then, and only then, editors with less than 150 mainspace edits, or who are unregistered, or who registered after 1 November, have their votes indented and removed from the votecount - NOT removed from the voting page. The votes remain for the world to see as a show of support/opposition. I feel bad that a coding error ended up misleading anyone, but that's not a reason to open a loophole in counting votes that would not otherwise be counted. We had another snafu where the 1000 edit minimum to be a candidate was dropped from the election page. The result is that we have several candidates short of that limit, all of whom are permitted to run; their chances may be slim at best, but there they are. If a similar discrepancy occured with the mainspace count, then I think the vote should be counted - but it didn't. Not a great situation, but the only fair way to deal with it is to count every vote undr the same rules, which - unfortunately - disqualify this voter. On point, if we counted votes that the checker would have OK'ed, then we have to count all such votes, whether or not they actually used the tracker - since AGF assumes that they did. So all of those sleeper socks in the votes count as well. Too many problems, I think. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 18:34, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@Elonka: My point was that this was presented as a "borderline case" where the discrepancy between his actual mainspace edits and the eligibility cutoff was very small, in addition to the fact that he was given wrong information about his eligibility, and others in the discussion were saying that as long as the discrepancy is very small, then it makes sense to make an exception for this editor. If the size of the discrepancy were an important factor in the decision to grant an exception, then it seemed to me that it would matter to point out that the discrepancy was hardly insignificant. But if that line of argument is going to be dropped in favor of allowing anyone who was misled about their eligibility to vote, regardless of the size of the discrepancy, then that's fine, but by that criterion, I too should be allowed to vote, since I was also misled about my eligibility. And the problem is, where do you stop, once you've started making exceptions?Woonpton (talk) 19:08, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I never did think edit count was a great way of doing this. What if he had 149 edits at 00:00 UTC on the day? I can make that many edits in 10 mins, so it's not going to prevent anything. I would bet my house there are sockpuppets voting here. The idea of the criteria is to prevent sockpuppet votes, is it not? I'll just say then, the current requirements wouldn't stop anyone determined enough. – How do you turn this on (talk) 18:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The criteria catches the innocent, but the guilty will game the rule. Next year we should get help from computer scientists, mathematicians, or game developers to work out the process. Perhaps the votes should be privately correlated with their IP addresses, and for good measure we can scan low edit count voters for use of open proxies. I think such a protocol would provide much stronger deterrence against socking than what we have now. Jehochman ^Talk 19:17, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is safe to say there is some discontent amongst the community over the forum for voting, and that a shift to a secret ballot (with non-public [automatic?] scrutiny of voters for sock puppetry) would be preferred. That would require tying in with the system administrators, however, with a view to having Special:BoardVote restarted (and adjusted for an ArbCom election as necessary). AGK 19:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The 150 edits at start of voteing requirement was meant to stop straightforward socking (combiened with a a requirement that accounts be 3 months old). The number was due to a bunch of at that point recent AFDs where there had been a 100 edit requirement and was meant to catch socks left over from that.Geni 19:42, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I count 81 mainspace contribs prior to November 1st and 2 on that date, along with plenty of Wikipedia and Talk namespace one's as well. As such this isn't a 149 spirit rather than letter of the law case, though I don't suspect Mervyn Emrys is a sockpuppet. My primary goal was to get the counter fixed so that this doesn't happen to others. As for the general requirement, it seems a good way of filtering out most socks with relatively little, though unfortunately not no, collateral damge as most newbies won't want to participate anyway. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks to me like the discussion is pretty much completed and noone is really advocating that we change the rules. The only people who still seem to be commenting are talking about borderline 149 edit cases and about private voting, which is completely unrelated to the matter at hand. Elonka suggested he may support the votes being allowed if there were over 100 qualifying edits, there are 83. We are not selling a vote, we are running a democracy. That word essentially means rule by the people, but if we elected every user who interpreted it that way to ArbCom or whatever governing body you please, we would have a rather poor government. Disenfranchising the community from the 'advertised' fair vote is as evil as disqualifying a voter who failed to meet the criteria. This is not a borderline case. Anyway, typically when there's ongoing discussion regarding a rule, we enforce the written policy until a consensus develops to the contrary. As such, I have stricken the vote. If anyone would like to make an argument as to why this voter, who does not meet the criteria nor comes close, should be allowed to vote, please go ahead and make that argument. ST47 (talk) 03:23, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ST47, I believe you are misrepresenting my comments. I said nothing about "over 100 qualifying edits" being the key factor here. I said that since our software said that Mervyn Emrys was eligible, and he voted based on that, that it makes sense to allow his votes to stand. And please don't say things like, "the discussion is pretty much completed", as that is disrespectful of the other people commenting here. For myself, I was actually thinking that it might be worth starting a poll to let people weigh in on whether the votes should be counted or not, to get a better sense of who thinks what. --Elonka 03:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even if it was 149 edits, the only answer would be "sorry, the software was wrong, you're not eligible". There are lots of ways to check your edit count, so any other response would be unfair to people who didn't even try the eligibility checker because they already knew they didn't qualify.

Question though: does the 150-edit requirement include deleted edits? How does one count one's own deleted mainspace edits? Franamax (talk) 03:36, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since there does not appear to be a clear consensus on whether Mervyn Emrys's votes should or shouldn't be allowed, I have advised him to go ahead and vote on all the candidates he chooses to, even if the votes are then indented as "not valid". As UltraexactZZ said above, at least the votes are still listed on the page that way. If we then reach a consensus that his votes should be counted, it's easy to "un-indent" his votes. And if not, at least he's able to make comments, and we can listen to them with respect. This sounds like a reasonable compromise to me, would others agree? --Elonka 01:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think what we've got here is a failure to enumerate. Like ST47 above, I thought this discussion was over a while back; the only people I see arguing in this thread for making an exception for Mr. Emrys are Elonka and Mr. Emrys, and he's not arguing for an exception for himself alone, but for everyone who may have been affected by the glitch. The people who would have to figure out the logistics of how to make that work have said it's not feasible. Everyone else has argued for not making an exception in this case, especially since it's not a borderline case; in fact, the editor in question has barely more than half of the required edits. As far as the "compromise" that's being offered, it's exactly how UltraExactzz has already explained the election is set up: anyone can vote, even those who aren't eligible, so all voices can be heard, but then the ineligible votes will be indented and not counted. That seems fair to me, but it also seems to me that's what is already in place, so not sure what you're proposing that's new.Woonpton (talk) 03:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In my enumeration, I missed one comment, by Jehochman, that supports the idea that anyone who was misled about their eligibility should be allowed to vote.Woonpton (talk) 05:36, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The tool was broken, but the rules were clear. Only editors that meet the requirements should be allowed to vote. Verbal chat 16:27, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This situation does point up that it's worth discussing eligibility to vote for future elections, and I'll open a discussion below. As for this election, I think the votes should be counted [classed] as Dimpled Chads and not allowed to count. Any fudge to allow the votes would create more drama than is needed at this time. SilkTork *^YES! 10:41, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eligibility of Mervyn Emrys

Please see User_talk:Lar#Mervyn_Emrys and User_talk:Mervyn_Emrys#Your_votes for background on what I am about to say. I was asked to run a CU to validate the other ID that Mervyn was using. With Mervyn's permission, I have done so. He disclosed the ID to me independently of my running the check, and it matches... the user clearly controls the other account. That ID has another 90 or so mainspace (articles and lists... NOT article talk, user space, user talk space etc etc) contributions prior to 1 November. Mervyn disclosed to me why there were multiple userids used and I am satisfied that their use was for good and valid reason and was not in contravention to the sock policy.

In my view accounts controlled by this user have well over the required 150 mainspace edits prior to the deadline, and the community should strongly consider granting suffrage to this account. I am happy to answer questions as necessary, and as usual, invite review of my checks by other CUs. Thanks to Elonka for bringing this matter to my attention and urging me to investigate. ++Lar: t/c 04:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Lar. For the record, I too am aware of Mervyn's two accounts, and confirm that there was a valid reason for him to be editing under different names, and I have seen no indication that either account was being used to violate policies in any way. I have also examined the contribution histories of both accounts for myself, and concur with Lar that when combined, they meet the "150 mainspace edits by November 1" minimum standard. I support the idea that we should allow Mervyn Emrys's votes to be counted. --Elonka 04:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was given some of the backstory to this and I agree with Lar and Elonka that Mervyn Emrys should be granted suffrage here. The unfortunate need to create a different account and the reason for returning to the original are really quite unfortunate for Mervyn, and he should not be punished or penalized here for the disruptive behavior of another user. لennavecia 06:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Doing...Reinstating Mervyn's votes.--Tznkai (talk) 06:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Question: Should I restore Mervyn's vote after the fact on withdrawn candidate's pages? My inclination is yes - the vote was valid in the first place, we've just discovered this after the fact.--Tznkai (talk) 06:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In my view it is purely symbolic to do so but it pleases my sense of order to see it done so I would say yes. Votes are votes. ++Lar: t/c 12:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Lar, we should restore all votes, even on the withdrawn candidates. --Elonka 16:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done--Tznkai (talk) 16:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've enforced a wikibreak on my main account, Bencherlite, to make sure I do some work etc between now and the end of the year. This non-admin account of mine wouldn't by itself qualify to vote in this election, but is there any problem in using it as a "proxy voter" for my main account? If there is or might be, I'd be grateful if a passing admin could delete my monobook temporarily so I can vote. Thanks, Bencherheavy (talk) 12:15, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On a side note, shouldn't your main account be bencherheavy, and the alt be lite? :P Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 13:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there should be a problem if you give a short explanation of the situation on the pages you vote on. --Conti|✉ 13:19, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, the two accounts are clearly tied together. So long as only one of them votes, you shouldn't have a problem. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:38, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The process wording is "In order to vote, you must have an account registered with at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2008." so that would allow a person with an account which meets this requirement to vote. Our general sock puppet rules would forbid a person using alternative accounts from multiple voting. So as long as that wouldn't happen (and in this case couldn't happen), then it would be acceptible. But an explanation would be needed to avoid drama. It might be easiest to just pause the wiki-break to do the voting and then set it up again. I'll be happy to delete the wikibreak from your monobook, and I'll drop you a line. SilkTork *^YES! 10:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Two last columns in results table [3] are "Net" and "%". One could reasonably argue that "net number" of supporters ("Net" column) is a more appropriate measure than net percentage of supporters. The results are obviously different. Which measure is used and why? Biophys (talk) 16:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Net is number of support !votes minus number of opposes (which is why this can be negative); % is percentage of support and oppose that is support. The latter is used to decide who is in the top 7, subject that is to Jimbo's power to override. ϢereSpielChequers 18:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I asked why should one include people with highest net percentage, rather than with highest net total number of supporters. For example, candidate A received 100 net votes (150 support and 50 oppose), but candidate B received only 10 net votes (10 support and zero oppose; nobody cares about candidate B). Why should candidate B be elected?! (a support of100%). Obviously, candidate A has a 10 times higher number of votes. You can order the Table either by "Net" column or by "%" column and see two very different outcomes... P.S. That would not be a problem is all users who want their 7 candidates to be elected, simply voted "oppose" to all other candidates. Then the result of elections would be as in "Net" column (that is why I believe the using "%" is wrong) Biophys (talk) 23:39, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had just finished writing the following when Biophys answered, and will post it without revising, even though it's somewhat redundant to his post:

I was reading Biophys's question to mean, not how is each of these calculated, but why is the %support rather than the "net" support used as the measure on which the candidates are ranked? It's something I have wondered myself. Percentages are notoriously bad metrics to use statistically, since they're not anchored to anything. To use an hypothetical example for purpose of illustration, someone with 9 supports and 1 oppose would have 90% support and would rank very high in the %support ranking, but by any common sense measure they shouldn't be in the top ranking because of the very low level of enthusiasm they've generated in the community. Percentages, in other words, can't tell you anything about the absolute level of support, and that's an important consideration. Also, I prefer to look at net support because the sign (plus or minus) is an immediate indication of the number of supports relative to the number of opposes. Sure, with percentage, you can keep in mind that if someone has less than 50% support, that's the same as saying that their net support is negative, in other words they have more people opposing them than supporting them, putting their net support in the negative range. But I think it's much more straightforward to read that directly from the net supports rather than intuiting it from the percentages.

There is a short thread on this subject on the talk page of the election results, but it doesn't really answer the question we're asking, just says that percentage is what Jimbo has looked at for the last couple of years and so that's what everyone looks at. It's not really a very satisfactory answer.

Just out of curiosity I looked at last year's result to see how it would have been different if "net" support had been used instead of percentages. NYBrad and FT2 would still be in the top two places. Deskana would be third instead of 5th, FayssalF would be 4th instead of 3rd, Raul would be 5th instead of 8th, Rebecca would be 6th instead of 7th, Sam Blacketer would be 7th instead of 4th, and Bainer would be 8th instead of 6th. Looking at the actual numbers, it's even more striking; Bainer and Sam Blacketer had significantly lower absolute levels of support than the other candidates. Maybe it doesn't matter ultimately, since it's just an advisory vote anyway, but I'm surprised more people aren't raising questions about the vote-counting metric when so much effort is put otherwise into choosing the best candidates out of the list. Woonpton (talk) 00:51, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The tradition to count percentage probably came from voting during elections of individual administrators, which is very different from the elections of multiple candidates. This is very important. Jimbo always selects only the top candidates to show his fairness. If one counts "%", Vassyana will be elected. If one counts "Net" number ("support" minus "oppose", third column from the right), WJBscribe will be selected. Only the latter is right, speaking scientifically. This is just a matter of fairness (I voted "oppose" to the both).Biophys (talk) 18:08, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One of the problems here is that changing how we calculate official support/oppose mid stream, however good the reasoning, would seriously damage the fairness of the advisory election - voters had an expectation of how it will go after all. I'd suggest you start planning now on a good metric for the next election.--Tznkai (talk) 19:23, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you're saying, except I would like to see for myself where exactly that "expectation" was spelled out so that voters knew to be expecting it; I've been looking for weeks for any explanation of how the votes would be counted, and haven't seen any. It was only when the results tally went up with the % column highlighted, that I guessed (to my consternation, I must say) that %support was the metric that was going to be used, but nowhere I know of does it actually say that. Or have I missed something?Woonpton (talk) 20:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure - I'd guess its one of those pesky unwritten traditions we've got - its just the way we've always done it, sorta like Great Britain's constitution. --Tznkai (talk) 20:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The percentage column reflects the % of support votes against the total of votes for a candidate (Support votes / Total Votes * 100). What could be an interesting number would be the percentage of support votes against the total number of voters. That metric is not there at this moment, but could be very useful. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I think you may be missing the point. We *know* how the % support column is calculated; what we're saying is that it isn't an appropriate metric for determining the ranking of the candidates. To follow your suggestion and change to using supports as a percentage of total voters would change the election significantly, as it would take into account only supports and not opposes, but that doesn't strike me as something the community would be in favor of; people really do want to look at who has real opposition in the community as well as who has real support. The "net" support gives that information, as well as avoiding the problem that %support has, of not being anchored to the level of support. In other words, I agree with Biophys that the "net support" column is the much better way of calculating who's ahead. Jossi's suggestion would turn it into something more like a regular election where people would just vote "for" someone rather than "for" some people and "against" other people. Woonpton (talk) 22:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See my comment below. In the example I give below, I would prefer to go with the candidate that has 75% support rather than the candidate that got 66% support, despite have 400 supporters. The reason? 200 oppose votes are a substantial enough opposition and more double the number of support votes of the other candidate in that example... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:40, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, 200 is double 150? I seem to have stumbled through some kind of wormhole on this page and am now in some alternative universe where ordinary math is out the window and some other system is operating; now 83 is "just a hair shy of" 150, 400/600 is 50%, and twice 150 is 200. It's an interesting place, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend very much time here.

But seriously, I don't agree with your reasoning for choosing the candidate with 150 supports and 50 opposes (100 net support, %support 75) over the candidate with 400 supports and 200 opposes (net support 200, %support 67). What you're saying is that you would prefer someone who generates very little support in the community over someone who is hugely popular but also controversial. I would much rather have the person who has generated so much support that even in spite of significant opposition, his support votes still outweigh his oppose votes by 200, in fact his support votes are double his oppose votes. The fact that his opposes are more than someone else's supports doesn't seem even relevant to me; all it means is that the other person doesn't have much support; why would I want someone with little support on the committee? The person with 400 supports, and half as many opposes, is the person I'd want to see in the office, rather than some bland person who has never done enough in the community to garner either much support or much opposition. And I'm having some trouble with the inconsistency of your arguments; a few minutes ago you were arguing for a measure (supports as a percentage of total # voters) that puts total weight on the number of supports and ignores the oppose votes altogether, and now you're arguing that you don't care about the level of support at all; you would prefer to ignore the support level altogether and make a judgment based on absolute number of opposes. The two arguments don't fit together well.

If I might say so, (this directed not to Jossi but to the community) if this is the mindset of the community, that you really would prefer nonentities who have comparatively little support or opposition, and if you have deliberately chosen a measure that selects for that kind of person over someone with more support and more opposition, then you can only blame yourselves if it seems you've chosen a committee with people on it that seem ineffectual or not well prepared for the job. It's a natural consequence. Woonpton (talk) 00:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the comments above, one can argue that % as currently calculated, may not work for those that get a small number of support votes and a smaller yet number of oppose votes. On the other hand, if a candidate receives a substantial number of support votes as well as very large number of oppose votes, it provides a valid point for consideration. What is best? A candidate with 400 support votes and 200 oppose votes or a candidate with 150 support votes and 50 oppose votes? The former will have 200 net votes at 50% 66% and the latter 100 net votes at 75% ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:23, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Goodness, is there any doubt in your mind which is best? A person with net support of 200 vs someone with a net support of 100? The percentage simply doesn't give you the information that's most useful. But by the way, you calculated the first person's percentage wrong; it would be 67% not 50%. A person's score would be 50% only if the number of opposes is exactly equal to the number of supports. Woonpton (talk) 22:39, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(sorry about the math) Don't you think that a person with 200 oppose votes is pointing to a real problem? I do. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:43, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think a person with 200 oppose votes is pointing to a real problem, as I've said above. I can't tell anything from the absolute number of opposes without balancing it with the number of supports. If someone had 200 opposes and 100 supports, yeah, I'd say that was a real problem. And if someone had 200 opposes and 200 supports, yeah, still a problem. But 200 opposes and 400 supports? That's a guy I'd probably want to have in there, although I'd want to look at who is opposing him and why. Sometimes the opposition comes from people who don't want someone doing a good job at being an administrator or whatever; I think that kind of opposition can be safely ignored. Besides, a lot of people don't like Obama, but I still think he's going to be a great president. Woonpton (talk) 00:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like how you guys just spent two pages arguing over how best to make a decision you have no control over -- Gurch (talk) 23:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(lol) - not an argument for decision, but a useful discussion I would say. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:06, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes and no. I do think it's a useful discussion, but more than that, whether Jimbo follows the rankings given him by the community or not, I would think you would at least want to think about the decisions you make that determine the rankings.Woonpton (talk) 00:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No reason to argue. If it still matters after the end of voting, I will place a brief notice at the talk page of Jimbo. My concern is that using percentage works in favor of candidates who are relatively less known and creates a disadvantage for users who are more dedicated to the project (as in V. versus W. case).Biophys (talk) 15:46, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it's not really an argument, but do I think it's important to raise the question. Someone has already put a question on Jimbo's talk page, but it's the wrong question: it asks whether Jimbo pays more attention to "net support" or to "% support" in deciding whom to appoint. We already know that it's % support he relies on, because last year he appointed the bainer and Sam Blacketer over Raul, and I assume he uses % support because that's what the community gives him to work with. Last year there wasn't even a net support column in the results tally.Woonpton (talk) 16:06, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think net support is probably a better measure both of the level of a candidate's overall support and of his or her suitability for the job, and I hope that is taken into account when determining the successful candidates. It seems to me that a candidate with 160 net votes in support has a lot more community support than one with only 80, regardless of the relative percentage of support for either.

Percentage is also more likely to reflect relative profile, which is to say a candidate who has not engaged much in dispute resolution is more likely to get a higher percentage than one who has, but then the percentage does not reflect competence or experience, it just reflects the fact that the former has kept a lower profile and made fewer opponents.

I think if you click on the sort button at the top of the net support column in the voting table, you get a far better reflection of who has community support and who doesn't than you do from the default percentage-sorted column. WJBScribe and Jayvdb each have almost twice as many net votes as Vassyana, but if the vote is taken based on percentage as of this moment, Vassyana will get on the committee and one of the other two will miss out. Gatoclass (talk) 09:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If candidate that has 160 net support has 400 opposes and 560 supports, would they have more community support than someone with 80 supports and no opposes? Granted, that situation doesn't exist, but I'd be careful about simply writing off percent support. A large number of votes means only that there is high interest in voting.--Tznkai (talk) 10:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since we are talking hypotheticals, what if the other candidate only got 3 votes, all in support? By your method, he would have to go onto the committee because he has a higher percentage of the vote. That would clearly be ludicrous.

In reality though, both these situations are hypotheticals. In practice, any serious candidate will get far more votes than that. If you look at the current table, you see that candidates who are in the running on percentage have at least half as many votes as the candidates with highest net support. So using your own analogy, if candidate A got 960 votes overall, with 160 net supports (58%) candidate B would get not 80 votes but around 500, let's say he got exactly half as many votes or 480. In order to match candidate A in net support, he would only actually need 320 votes, or 66.67%. So a candidate with only half as many votes would still have an excellent chance of defeating candidate A on net support alone, because 66.67% is an eminently gettable proportion. In other words, net support still gives a reliable indicator of community support, even with large discrepancies in the total number of votes. If on the other hand you use percentage as your determinant, a candidate with only a fraction of the net support of another candidate could win. That's why I believe net support is a better indicator of the community's will. Gatoclass (talk) 07:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just FYI - rule is that anyone who gets more than 50% approval by the community is eligible to be appointed. And then I get to choose from the pool who have been approved. I have traditionally looked at the total % in making that selection, but I don't have to do so. I am unlikely to deviate from it, but if I were to, it would likely be precisely for the sort of reason that has been mentioned here: if there was a candidate who had a radically low number of net supporters, and if there were other indications of irregularities, I might take that into account. Reviewing the situation at the present time, it looks like there are no major discrepancies in this area - the two rankings are roughly similar.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:42, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation Jimbo. I guess it's a little late in the day to be having this discussion in any case, but I think for future reference, it might be a good idea for the community to have a good think about it and then make a concrete proposal, which may save us all some future angst in the event that we do get a substantial discrepancy at some stage between the two counting methods. Gatoclass (talk) 14:04, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the nominees are administrators. Is it safe to assume that all of them are? Also do all the nominees have a certain number of edits? Do they all have a block-free record? In other words what are the minimum requirements the nominees were asked to pass before contesting for elections.VR _talk 16:32, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Most are admins, I don't think there was a minimum criteria but there is a guide at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/General Summary which includes number of edits in column 3, whether they are admins, crats etc in column 2, and for their block record click on blocks in column 1. Hope that helps ϢereSpielChequers 18:40, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the nominees are not admins, but of the leading candidates, it appears that the community consensus is that admin status is an essential pre-requisite for arbitrator status. In terms of number of edits, there's usually a thousand-edit minimum, but there was some SNAFU this year that allowed less-experienced candidates to be nominated for some reason. All those candidates seem to be getting massive opposes, plus a few minor sympathy votes. For a list of who is and isn't an admin (and other comments), check my ACE2008 notes page. --Elonka 19:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Massive" opposition is a misleading exaggeration. For example, despite his obvious "joke" candidacy, the majority of those voting for The Fat Man Who Never Came Back have supported him, and he currently leads several administrators in the results table. There is a large sector of the community that inherently mistrusts your average administrator. Furthermore, I know several who wouldn't be caught dead with admin tools who are even more popular, more intelligent and more prolific in their edits than the Fat Man and would win even more votes if they were to stand in next year's election. I have no doubt the community will one day elect a non-administrator to the Committee. Free your mind from tired old ways of thinking.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 15:38, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, those popular intelligent and prolific non administrators you mention tend to shy away from ArbCom for the same reason they shy away from administrator tools. It may happen some day - but its going to require more shifting in the Wikipedia culture first. As for eligibility - give them information, and if they still want to risk the gauntlet, let whoever wants to run run.--Tznkai (talk) 17:18, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Near as I can tell, the 1,000 edit minimum required to run was dropped inadvertantly when the main election page was cleaned up and reformatted. Given the fact that we now have 5 years of history to point to, a statement that "While Adminship is not a requirement to run, please note that no non-administrator has ever been elected" might not be a bad idea. I agree that a minimum is in order - I seem to recall candidates with as few as a dozen edits, back in the day. Kudos to the editors offering moral support, too - it's easy enough to get discouraged by a NOTNOW close on an RFA, how would this feel to a sincere new editor wanting to pitch in? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like UltraexactZZ's idea and wording. --Elonka 20:11, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think by "massive opposes" Elonka was refering to the candidates with fewer tahn 1000 edits not the non-admins. There are non-admins who are doing fairly well, though none look likely to make the top 7, but no one with under 1000 edits is making a credible showing. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. --Elonka 00:01, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, okay. I misunderstood.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Has there been any comments (e.g. from Jimbo) about whether new seats might be created on the Committee this year? Dragons flight (talk) 09:48, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't said, but I would very much consider the idea of an expansion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the #Eligibility discussion above it has been suggested that the process criteria for voting eligibility "catches the innocent, but the guilty will game the rule." I agree that if the intention is to avoid sockpuppets then it may be healthy to re-examine the way we do it, and to check it is effective enough. While our founding principle is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that principle does not have to extend to the community's voting process. To vote intelligently in an ArbCom election does require some understanding of the Wikipedia community, and the needs of having an ArbCom. Such intelligence may be unlikely to be gathered by involvement in the community of only 1 month and/or by a low number of edits. For the majority of long-serving Wikipedians the activities of the ArbCom are unseen and unfelt. There are Wikipedians who involve themselves in the discussions, and there are Wikipedians who are touched by some of the incidents under discussion, but most Wikipedians are simply going about building the project with little knowledge or concern for the events happening off-stage. So allowing someone with only one months (apparant) experience, the freedom to come in and have an influence that may impact on future disruptive behaviour may need looking at. After all, the sort of person who would come to an ArbCom election with such minimal Wikipedia experience may have little understanding of the implications, or if they did may possibly be a sock or a person with an intention to cause disruption.

• If there is a need to avoid sock puppets or ill-considered voting then we could consider setting up a Voter registration system for ArbCom elections. Requirements for registration could be 3 months active editing and email enabled, and on registration the software invisibly picks up the IP and email addresses and matches them against other registered voters. Whatever.
• However, if there's not much evidence of sock puppet use then the present system is successful in preventing a quick easy sock being created. The need to create a sock one month in advance and then use that sock to make 150 mainspace edits is likely to deter most people. And I assume if someone is that willing to game the system they would game the system no matter what we do.

Unless there's evidence that our present system is letting in too many questionable votes, then it's a decent enough system that appears to be working. SilkTork *^YES! 11:56, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good ideas here. But as you said, this, nor probably any method, would not stop serious puppeteers, like the ones who create multiple socks and edit with all of them on dynamic IPs. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:49, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, it would be interesting to see how everyone compares if only votes from admins are counted. Is it an easy thing to calculate with some form of bot? Jimbo has noted he has always looked at it in this thread. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What! After all these years adminship is a big deal? What a fool I've been. --Joopercoopers (talk) 09:26, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone often say "voting is evil"? (Robert Mugabe maybe, but let's restrict ourselves to the sane here). DuncanHill (talk) 09:33, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Voting is "evil" when used as a way to settle content or user disputes, where some editors' legitimate opinions are ignored because others can outvote them. The same principle doesn't really apply to elections (or it's a necessary evil), since selecting arbitration committee members on a large wiki by consensus is very unlikely to be effective. —{admin} Pathoschild 10:25:38, 06 December 2008 (UTC)

Now what is the latest on etiquette in arbcom elections regarding opposes with no explanation? I have had a couple and was curious about the reasons, but didn't want to appear to be badgering anybody (for obvious reasons). Do we just accept the opposes as not-supports-for-top-seven-choices given how the process works? signed curious. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have amended my oppose - apologies if it appeared as rude or curt. Caulde 15:39, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that Caulde, much appreciated and I can see why you voted the way you did. No worries. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:14, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If an administrator opposed your candidacy without leaving a rationale, I think it's acceptable to leave a note on his/her talk page asking what the reasons are. If non-administrators have been opposing you, I wouldn't bother inquiring further, since their votes don't count anyway.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 14:36, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All votes from editors who have suffrage have equal weighting. I would discourage claiming otherwise to further a belief in an administrator "club", regardless of the merits of such a view; introducing confusion would be the only effect of such an action. AGK 14:44, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It does strike me as odd that these elections are held in the form of a poll. I thought "voting was evil"? On RFAs at least, we expect some sort of explanation, but for the most important elections on Wikipedia, it's a simple straight vote? Odd. – How do you turn this on (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A straight vote would suggest every vote is considered equal and those with the top votes are guaranteed to be appointed. But that's not the case, as the Fat Man has pointed out, far more eloquently than I could hope to GTD 15:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misinterpreted Mr. Wales' comments. In any case, when was the last time someone was appointed after an election who didn't win? 2006? – How do you turn this on (talk) 15:34, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't support Jimbo's role in ArbCom elections, I don't believe there is any reason to suspect he gives votes from admins more weight than votes from non-admins. --Tango (talk) 15:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A public vote, unlike a secret vote, has an inherent element of persuasion in it. For example SandyGeorgia put together a voting guide, a lengthy voting rationale, and has voted and linked accordingly. Between her reputation and her logic she seems to have manged to convince another of other voters to vote the same way she did. In that sense some "votes" count more than others. These votes are more than just a show of hands, they are forums for persuasion that ends in an advisory to a decision maker: who has always followed that advice. Merely stating your oppose makes your voice heard, and puts your reputation behind it - making your voice heard and attempting to persuade can do that much more.

Admins are disproportionately represented in positions of persuasion perhaps, and in the "top tier" of candidacies - but there is nothing particularly sinister about that, just the systemic bias of how Administration is viewed by the average wikipedian, and the tenancy for the more "active" wikipedians (active in dispute resolution, high profile functions, anything that shows up on the main page, and the AN related alphabet soup) to get themselves an admin bit as soon as they've achieved trust from the community - especially the portion that shows up to vote at RfA. --Tznkai (talk) 15:55, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For example SandyGeorgia put together a voting guide, a lengthy voting rationale, and has voted and linked accordingly. Between her reputation and her logic she seems to have manged to convince another of other voters to vote the same way she did. Not sure what you're saying here, Tznkai. There are about a dozen and a half voter guides besides mine, someone even made a meta guide summarizing all of them, and someone made a template of all of them at {{ACE 2008 guides}}. I made mine by shamelessly copying another editor after I discovered all of the others, and I left it off of my talk page even until I saw the template everywhere else. My track record in terms of predicting success seems to be about on par with everyone else's. So what is meant by I "managed to convince" others to vote accordingly and why am I singled out? I certainly prefer open and public rationale to anything private going around. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to single you out like that, but you are interestingly !admin and have been cited in a number of votes. I may do a full tabulation of the various "per" votes later for my own edification in fact. At any rate, I certainly did not mean to offend, nor imply what you did was any way improper - just an example of how things are working, and how it is that some votes may at least appear to be worth more than others. If you prefer, I can strike, modify, or remove the parts of my comments that singled you out.--Tznkai (talk) 04:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No need, I was just curious if I was missing something, because I merely copied others. Thanks for clarifying. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:35, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly no need. It is good to wield power for oneself. Promoting one's interests is always useful. —Mattisse (Talk) 03:29, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In an attempt to answer Casliber's original question: I think we do. Evidence has suggested that Jimbo simply takes the top percentage without carefully and meticulously weighing the exactly relative strength of each comment (Jimbo may object to that characterization)- which I think is fair in a sense. We, the community bare the responsibility of nullifying votes we find objectionable, either by persuasion or voting against them outright.--Tznkai (talk) 15:59, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't the collection and display of oppose votes in elections encourage all the very worst sorts of uncivil behavior that are commonplace in Wikipedia? Replaying and sharpening the axes of old grudges? The smarmy groupiness of obvious factions and block voting? Wouldn't the spirit and guidance of WP:Civility be better served and perhaps even advanced if only support votes were collected and displayed? And wouldn't the outcome be more fair to all concerned? I mean, why encourage and facilitate negative behavior in the manner of the current election? Mervyn Emrys (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That might work if sitting arbitrators were prohibited from running - as it is, it is vital for the community to have the opportunity of making it crystal clear when they feel that sitting members have failed. DuncanHill (talk) 17:08, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c)I'm going to dodge your question - not because I believe you're wrong or that you're right, but because I'm still doing some unofficial election clerking and I prefer to keep my personal opinions on the validity of our voting structure to myself while I'm still doing that. I am going to say however, that whatever flaws there are in the current system, changing it midstream would be disastrous. Unfortunately, suggestions for improvement only come during the issue at hand, by the time next year rolls around, they will have faded a way. It will take someone with significant energy to, from the moment elections are over until the next elections, suggest and gather support for improvements. If that is you - good luck.--Tznkai (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't every support vote in effect a vote in opposition to candidates who do not receive that support, without all the verbiage and bad vibes? Mervyn Emrys (talk) 17:16, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, that's one way of looking at it I guess....dunno if the voting patterns reflect that (or maybe they do). Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If everyone voted for everyone, there would be no noticeable difference in opposing or not opposing. That is however, not the case. A lack of support is merely an abstention for a vote.--Tznkai (talk) 02:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Realistically, what is the probability everyone would ever vote for everyone? Not very great in this Wiki, I think. But we could avoid all the ill-will generated by oppose vote statements. I could live without all that rancor. Wouldn't it be better for Wikipedia? Mervyn Emrys (talk) 04:26, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why would there be any ill-will generated? Arbitrators are supposed to be able to surmount the fact that some editors might oppose them. If they can't do that, they shouldn't be arbitrators. Franamax (talk) 05:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Friends and supporters may take issue with oppose votes, and we are all human. I suspect that people will be shy about opposing a candidate who seems likely to win a seat. Who needs to take the risk of antagonizing somebody who might wield power over them. Jehochman ^Talk 22:57, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I ran for arbcom once, and people had promised that there would be no oppose votes. Of course there were oppose votes. I posted a VERY large message saying I Really Didn't Like That, and (probably consequently) didn't join arbcom. For which I am thankful to this day.

Note that people who actually do any work at all will probably garner some amount of opposition... "in the beginning God created heaven and earth, this has widely been seen as a bad idea, and has made a number of people very angry"

-) See? If it even happens to this God fellow, what about us mere mortals?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 15:45, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does it really matter if one is an arbitrator or a mere mortal? Franamax, look around you. It is unquestionably accurate to say ill-will has been generated by some of the statements made with oppose votes. You can see it in other statements and revised statements in many of the same lists of votes. The point is, the generation of this ill-will is harmful to the electoral process, harmful to relationships between editors, harmful to the candidates, and harmful to Wikipedia in general. Negativity does not help people cooperate to build an encyclopedia. Thank you for at least reading this. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 22:54, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What might make sense would be to have three way voting: oppose, abstain and support. The voting would be done via a form requiring the voter to choose one of the options for each candidate. The votes could then be recorded privately or publicly. Any comments would be placed on the talk page or could be reformulated as questions. I believe this would lead to a more civil election, without hindering Jimbo's ability to gather the necessary information to appoint qualified arbitrators. Jehochman ^Talk 23:00, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I deliberately gave no reasons for supporting or opposing candidates. The point is that my giving reasons could affect the opinion of other voters. I think voters should cast their votes based on their own thorough analysis of the situation (e.g. after reading the questions page and checking the candidates' contributions), not on the one-sentence reasoning of other people. Given that the one-sentence reasoning is directly on the vote page, it is far more accessible and seems to be more influential than the slow and lengthy discussion on the question and talk pages. If anybody wants to know my reasons for voting, they are free to ask me, but I will not campaign or or against candidates on the vote page itself. Kusma (talk) 09:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree 100%. Voting is voting; electioneering is something else again, and is best done elsewhere. Having spent many hours over three or four days wading through countless questions and answers and poring over talk-page discussions till I was bleary-eyed, the last thing I was about to do was wade through voters' justifications for their votes. I admit I was tempted (What if candidate z turned out to be way more insightful and astute than I'd realized? What if I had missed Something Troubling And Dramatic about candidate x?) . . . but I successfully resisted the urge. Personally, I'd favor either a secret ballot à la the board elections or a (probably futile) stab at real consensus, but in the absence of either of those, votes should just be votes, with no soundbites attached. No disparagement of thoughtful soundbites intended, but can the merits or deficiencies of these candidates really be summed up in one line? I'm doubtful. Rivertorch (talk) 08:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We've had an object lesson this round of voting, that allowing comments along side votes but not allowing discussion in voting allows too much latitude for 'well poisoning' style of negative campaigning in the Oppose votes.

No comments should be allowed at all with votes or anywhere on the voting page. There is ample space elsewhere for commentary and discussion on the candidates, the ballot box is not a soap box. --Barberio (talk) 20:18, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Either it needs to be a straight vote with all comments removed, or a standard free for all. Either would be acceptable. rootology (C)(T) 21:10, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly oppose. The comments are valuable for where they are. Leaving them spread out in other places effectively means there will be less information for many voters. Deal with those who attempt to game the system; but find a way to do so without restricting, limiting, making information less immediate for the vast majority of WPians who play fair. Jd2718 (talk) 21:26, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Spread out"? There is a clear link on the candidate pages directing discussion of the candidacy to the talk page for that candidate's statement. If you support keeping discussion centralised, then you must mean putting all discussion in one place. The voting page is not that place, and leaving comments there is in direct contradiction of keeping discussion centralised. --Barberio (talk) 21:40, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To me, the supporting rationales for oppose/support !votes are not discussion - and I don't think that the candidacy talk pages are appropriate places for giving one's rationales. DuncanHill (talk) 21:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They are discussion, in that they are the voter discussing the reason they voted, and they are very very often used to influence the votes of others. The difference here is that the discussion has no opportunity for dispute, correction or rebuttal.

Election for ArbCom should not suffer the same flaws as Request for Adminship did! --Barberio (talk) 22:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I much prefer succinct reasons on the vote tally, (but replies on talk or elsewhere - i.e. no indents there really). Cheers, Casliber (talk· contribs) 22:43, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Casliber. And I would trust a small group of self-selected volunteers to decide where 'succinct' ended. Jd2718 (talk) 23:01, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I too agree with Casliber, and will point out that there was indeed a small group of self-selected volunteers doing a lot of this sort of cleanup throughout the election last year, and the year before. Risker (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If there were editors poisoning the well against you, making false accusations, or engaging in off wiki canvassing against you, you might feel differently. It is fundamentally wrong to criticize people and not give them a chance to respond. A vote with a little description is fine (eg strong, weak, sorry), but leveling accusations against a person's character, without evidence, and without a chance for rebuttal, is nothing more than a personal attack. These elections violate Wikipedias core value of civility. Jehochman ^Talk 15:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let's face it folks, the comments on the support section are not the problem. Postitive comments about a candidate are merely last minute campaigning. It's the trash talk with the oppose votes that demean and degrade Wikipedia, along with the candidates. Get rid of the oppose votes and the problem goes away. It's just nasty grafitti most of the time. Why encourage incivility here?

Isn't every support vote in effect a vote in opposition to candidates who do not receive that support, without all the verbiage and bad vibes? Mervyn Emrys (talk) 00:45, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some people prefer to save their 'not voting' for candidates who they don't have an opinion on. Say we have 200 regular users voting in the election. Candidate A isn't really popular, only 100 of the people voting know him. Of those 100, 75% like him, 25% hate him. Under our system he'd have 75% with a net of +50 and under a system without opposes he'd have a net of 75. Candidate B is the popular choice. Only 66% of the people who know him like him, everyone else hates him for his controversial stance on, oh I don't know, abortion. He'd have, under our system, a 66% with a net of +66, but without opposes he'd have a net of 133. Candidate B simply blows candidate A out of the running, even though they have fairly close net votes and % supports. Which one should win? That's one of the fundamental questions about this election system. It isn't really something we can answer with a debate, since people have different viewpoints. Jimbo has stated that he looks at both % support and net support and if there are any major discrepancies in turnout, he will take that into account. If we can't tell who's not voting because they don't like a candidate and who's not voting because they don't know a candidate, we are losing information about the election and that is not what we want to do. ST47 (talk) 13:58, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Here is the problem with comments: an editor can raise an objection that has never been mentioned or discussed before and the candidate has no practical opportunity to respond. Responding to oppose voters is virtual suicide for a candidate in this election. Votes should be allowed without comment. If concerns exist, they can be lodged as questions. Comments can be placed on the talk page where the candidate has an opportunity to respond. We should be talking to each other, not about each other. Jehochman ^Talk 14:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  I am aware of at least one instance in the current election where a candidate questioned a !voters reason for opposing, and that !voter then changed their vote, so I do not feel that it is true to say that candidates have no practical opportunity to respond. DuncanHill (talk) 15:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, there is an exception to every rule. If candidates question an oppose vote, there is a very high risk of pile on opposes. Jehochman2 (talk) 15:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, that is possible - this particular candidate had no realistic prospect of being elected anyway. DuncanHill (talk) 15:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• ST47, I agree with Jehochman on this. At the most basic level, are elections really about merely giving editors an opportunity to vent, or are they about what is best for Wikipedia? Wouldn't Wikipedia be better off if we did lose some of the information that came with some oppose vote statements? Is Wikipedia well served if those statements drive some candidates away? Mervyn Emrys (talk) 14:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that, as in the real world, canvassing and campaigning shouldn't be allowed at the polling station/voting page. Perhaps a voting form, which asks for reasons, can be created. These reasons can then be put in an appropriate place for discussion (subpage, user subpage), possibly with a link from the voting page. These are merely my first thoughts on this issue. Verbal chat 15:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, I think it would be a good idea to remove campaigning, appeal to emotion, poisoning the well, ad hominem and similar types of remarks from the actual vote pages. At the moment the self-selected clerks are not neutral. Several of them have published their own voter guides and I would not expect them to be neutral towards the candidates. It would be better if we had an objective criteria that comments do not belong on the vote page. Jehochman2 (talk) 16:12, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Again, I agree with Jehochman. Hope this is not habit forming... Mervyn Emrys (talk) 18:23, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Personally speaking I think it shows incivility to vote against someone without giving a reason, except if there's an obvious reason or it is clearly tactical voting. (I agree with Cas that replies belong on the talk page, and I think there should be many and varied exceptions to deal with clearly bad faith or other situations.) Orderinchaos 19:59, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree (note that my own votes are without comment). I think the situation where people campaign while voting (for example, by posting a link to their reasoning) or soapbox while voting affects the election in a bad way. It is easy for voters to just check what others said and follow them. That is what the question and discussion pages are for. Those, however, are so long that most people probably won't read them. Instead, the statements of other voters are far too influential. In any proper real world election, campaigning and voting are separate; here, they are together, with bad results. Kusma (talk) 17:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Again, I agree (not that anybody cares). Current electoral policies and structures encourage negative campaigning to continue right inside the voting "booth" as votes are cast, giving undue influence to passion in efforts to sway uninformed voters. This does not facilitate civility in other areas of Wikipedia. Better to have a straight vote counting supports without comments or opposes. The actual vote should count for more than the opinion justifying it. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree with most of what was already said. When I went to vote last month for President, I a) didn't see what everyone else had voted, and b) wasn't yelled at through the curtain about how good or bad a particular candidate was. I don't know if we can get to a point where these elections are anonymous, but we can certainly stop the campaigning/poisoning. --Kbdank71 15:38, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• An arbcom election shouldn't be just there to merely elect arbitrators. It should also point out why people who weren't elected why they weren't elected. So people should be required to provide a rationale when opposing (or supporting). Having said that, trolling and NPA violations should not be tolerated. On the vote page even humor shouldn't be allowed. Arbcom elections are supposed to be the most important annual event on en.wikipedia but it hardly appears as such. -- Cat ^chi? 12:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

  You may always leave a comment on the candidacy talk page if you have a strong opinion you want to express to the candidate. There is no need to put your comment in your vote, other than to ensure that comment is seen by people while they are voting and not just the candidate. If you want to campaign against a candidate, there are also suitable places to do so.

  I think requiring people to leave rationales with their votes is bordering on the absurd, as the vast majority will just do as they did on AfD and RfA when such was required, and simply comment 'per username'. And it will perpetuate the issue of people being able to 'poison the well' without rebuttal. --Barberio (talk) 13:34, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My candidacy is causing more heat than light at this point. Thank you. Jehochman ^Talk 03:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done - Someone else should double check of course.--Tznkai (talk) 04:06, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would 150 mainspace edits from January 1 08 through November 15 08 have been acceptable? Hard to automate? Jd2718 (talk) 22:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It could potentially adversely affect administrators and other dedicated, longterm editors whose contributions have evolved to one or more of the specialised namespaces; for example, certain editors/admins work almost exclusively in template/project space, and some administrators may make most of their edits in project space and/or user space, depending on what issues they focus on. Perhaps a higher number of total contributions, including logged actions (for those who do new page patrol, upload images, or carry out logged admin actions), might be a reasonable compromise. Risker (talk) 03:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am merely curious... What tactical value is there to a "tactical support" of a candidacy as far behind as that of Dream Focus? Grandmasterka 00:44, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The usual suspects at WR had some kind of Grand Master Plan where they'd all switch their votes around midway through the elections. I can't quite remember what, if anything, it was supposed to achieve, but it may be something to do with that. Or it may not. – iridescent 00:57, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to make Kmweber come in last, rather than getting anyone elected? Wkdewey (talk) 05:55, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I thought of that, but Kurt's too far ahead of last place for that... Grandmasterka 10:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No: if each of the bottom candidates got just six votes, Kurt would be in last place. Actually, only AnthonyQBachler needs six votes. The rest only need four or less. Cool Hand Luke 23:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, all right. Grandmasterka 04:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Spotted an unsigned vote here. Could an election clerk or someone else neutral deal with it? Carcharoth (talk) 02:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. Thanks for the heads up. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 02:59, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Another one here and one more here. Carcharoth (talk) 03:25, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done by ST47, who really ought to use edit summaries for that sort of thing, but does a good job otherwise.--Tznkai (talk) 14:36, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think he uses an automatic tool to neutralize votes by those without suffrage. It may be necessary to drop him a user_talk page not, requesting an improvement in the code to include a (pertinent) edit summary. AGK 21:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious about community participation in this election, as compared to previous years. Is there anyone who'd be able to use their magic programming skills to figure out how many Wikipedians voted for/against one or more candidates during the last 2 elections plus this one? I'm not sure about anyone else, but I have the sense that voter turnout is down this year. Risker (talk) 15:52, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Last year the numbers participating were artificially inflated by people coming to vote for/against Giano who didn't comment on any of the other candidates, so I'm not sure how accurate a picture that would give. "The numbers of regular contributors is down" isn't really news; someone (I think Dragons Flight, but don't quote me worked out a bunch of participation stats, which are somewhere in the WT:RFA archives. – iridescent 17:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True, although they may have also been artificially inflated by the number of people who came by to vote in support of Newyorkbrad; that was over 500 people right there. Perhaps a better metric would be number of people who voted (total), with separate tallies of number of people who voted on just one candidate page and number of people who voted on two or more candidate pages. I'll see if I can find those statistics you mention, thanks. Risker (talk) 17:21, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tricky, as one also has to compare this with total number of users, active users, admins, and active admins, I would imagine (?). I'd be interested too. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We'd have to hammer down what we consider "active." Plenty of wikipedians who put plenty of bytes to pages whos name we'll never encounter I'm sure.--Tznkai (talk) 01:12, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, no need to differentiate between users and active users; anyone who was qualified to vote would be sufficient. For that matter, no need to differentiate between users generally and admins specifically; we all get the same vote regardless. The only question would be how many users were qualified as of the established date; someone could probably run a script to find out. Risker (talk) 01:37, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The AccountEligibility tool is not considering all cases; my User:Moby Dick account is 'eligible', but I'll not be seeking to use it ;) ^{(see also)}

There must by a huge number of accounts that are technically 'eligible', but a great many must surely be dead accounts that whomever has long since abandoned or lost track of. This leaves some sort of 'activity' criteria as needed to determine the true proportion of the community that voted. There are plenty of radical ideas one could consider; nag messages for active editors who've not voted? An edit governor? Anyway you look at it, turn out is low. The single largest factor is likely to be that most editors never get anywhere near the sort of issues the run across rfar daily. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently an unindented stricken vote on my vote page. See here. Could it be fixed please? Carcharoth (talk) 01:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 02:12, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 02:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that comments on the vote pages by those ineligible to vote should be removed, and their names simply added to a list at the bottom of the vote page, whether they support or oppose, under the heading "Ineligible voters". The comments could simply be removed, or with a diff of the removal, or a link to their user page with the comment moved and a reminder that they are ineligible. They can of course still take part on all the other pages. Verbal chat 20:30, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please refer to the comments by UltraExactZZ in the section above on Eligibility. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 20:38, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a new discussion and a new proposal. Verbal chat 20:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It could (also) apply to the next election, which was the dual aim of my comment. Sorry for not making that clearer. Verbal chat 22:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you describe why we should do this, as opposed to simply indenting the votes as we have done in the past? What is the benefit of your proposed method? Avruch ^T 01:01, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that any such commentary should be moved to the talk page, where indeed any un-banned, un-blocked user is free to contribute. If commentary appears on the vote page itself and is not accompanying a valid vote, it is superfluous and should be moved to talk, per normal procedures. The benefit of the method I suggest is that it keeps "talk" on the talk page, rather than on the vote page. The vote page is for valid votes, optionally accompanied by short comments, possibly with very brief rejoinders. Franamax (talk) 06:37, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A valid point, but I'm not sure the problem presented by superfluous commentary on the voting page is enough to warrant a change - in this case, normal procedure is to indent invalid votes but leave them on the page. Avruch ^T 13:17, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Still, current electoral policies seem to encourage negative campaigning to continue right inside the voting "booth" as votes are cast, giving undue influence to passion in efforts to sway uninformed voters. This does not facilitate civility in other areas of Wikipedia. Better to have a straight vote counting supports without comments or opposes. The actual vote should count for more than the opinion justifying it. It is, after all, the number of votes that determines who wins, not the excess verbiage. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 02:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've indented the votes of a user, User:Spidern, who is the closest user I have seen come to the deadline without meeting the criteria. If you look at it edit-wise, he isn't even borderline/close, 24 edits away from the deadline. But time-wise, he's only seven hours over. Opinions? ST47 (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This might require more thought, but my first instinct is that we should be strict as we have denied a vote (but not a voice) those who met the total, before the deadline, but over multiple accounts that were undeclared at the time. Verbal chat 22:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is that we should be consistent - he/she should be able to vote, but his or her votes should be indented as commentary. This year and in the past people who barely fall short of the threshold have been denied the opportunity to vote (it happened to me, as a matter of fact). That will happen with any edit count requirement, though, so offering an alternative that is not actually voting is preferable to making exceptions that can't be consistently applied. Avruch ^T 01:01, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Was looking over what had happened on the vote pages today and spotted this struck-out vote that was unindented (followed by this). It's been five hours now and it hasn't been corrected yet (I wasn't at a computer where I could log in, though e-mail was possible). There was a similar situation yesterday with inconsistent indenting of non-suffrage votes (some were indented on some vote pages, some weren't on other pages). Are election clerks watching out for things like this that need tidying? Is there a way to program a bot to pick up things like this? If there is a bot watching for double votes, presumably it would detect something like that where someone forgot to indent a struck-out vote. Not really a problem at the moment, but it might be at the weekend, though presumably by that point there will be more eyes watching all this. Carcharoth (talk) 23:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I personally scan over the vote pages randomly just with my eyes, but I believe other editors working as "clerks" on the matter use a combination of tools and the AceBot in the IRC channel to track ineligible votes. Basically, the watches probably went to sleep, we aren't organized at all.--Tznkai (talk) 00:40, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Is it possible to make sure that some clerk or other is available throughout the coming weekend? Oh, my other concern (this time about the "results" table) is that if the bot being used breaks down at the wrong moment, chaos could ensue. A lot of people will be relying on that bot (run by ST47) to provide up-to-date results. Previously there were two bots, but now there is only one. Is there a backup bot around? Carcharoth (talk) 01:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the bots, but I'd be interested in the self-selected volunteers getting somewhat organized for the voting this weekend, or at least have a place where people know to report problematic votes.--Tznkai (talk) 04:10, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite prepared for the weekend, I've got several bots up at the moment and two more on the way, one to ensure a clean closure of the election, and another to perform a full pass to check for any votes made by ineligible users, which were incorrectly or incompletely stricken out, or which are duplicates. ST47 (talk) 19:25, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, a support vote recently commented that I hadnt answered all questions, so .. knowing that I had one of the largest Q&A pages a few days ago, .. I whipped up a script to regularly calculate the pagesizes of all of the Q&A pages, and placed the results at User:Jayvdb/AC question pagesize. I can update it every few hours, or whenever someone pings me, or I can give the script to one of the clerks who runs a unix box and wishes to maintain the wiki results page. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet; a suggestion; make it sortable; add about that to the script. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I mean seriously. With the exception of Il Grasso (the thinking man's User:Endlessdan) you wouldn't feed this lot boiled rice with a slingshot. X MarX the Spot (talk) 12:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]