2010
Arbitration Committee Election status
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This page is for feedback on the December 2010 Arbitration Committee elections from all involved. Constructive reviews, comments and suggestions for future elections are most welcome.
I'd like to thank the election coordinators, scrutineers, and everyone else who handled (or is now handling) the logistics of the elections, as well as the authors of candidate guides and all the voters. Beyond that, I like the idea of asking for input at this time while any issues with the election are fresh in everyone's mind, but I don't have much to add: apart from the obvious controversies, the election process unfolded reasonably smoothly from my point of view. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 02:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with what Newyorkbrad and Casliber said: the elections were conducted smoothly and in a calm, professional manner. I appreciated the number of interesting questions that were asked of me. What I appreciated less was several people wanting to copy-paste a huge catalogue of generic questions to each candidate's talk page, even though there was presumably a reason that there was no consensus to include these questions in the community-developed set of general questions (probably because several of these questions dealt with nuances of wikipolitics that are only interesting to a rather limited number of people, and have little relevance to the job of arbitrator). I also found it rather odd that the many "election guides", which reflected the private views of individuals, were prominently linked to from the "official" election template. Sandstein 07:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Didn't mind the questions, but did find it a bit difficult having them in two places. This could be because every page starts withWikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010, so I found it somewhat difficult to spot 'em apart. I'd also prefer if the questions were formatted into individual sections - I did that on the talkpage but wasn't sure if I was allowed to fiddle with the 'front' page, as I thought it was being transcluded. I don't mind if guides are written wholly on the basis of which candidates the guide writer would like to buy them a beer, but I found it somewhat confusing when a guide writer who seemed to be working on that basis, then said he hadn't read anything I'd written and asked if I wanted him to read it. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
There were a few comments here and there alluding to the paperwork candidates had to get through as an impediment to standing. I wonder if any of you would care to comment on this – was there anything superfluous, unnecessarily difficult, or better handled by volunteers other than the candidates? Were the templates, preloaders and whatnot a help or a hindrance in getting your statements and question pages set up correctly? Skomorokh 18:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The first thing that I want to do is publicly go on the record and thank fellow coordinators Skomorokh and Tony1. Everyone should follow suit. Most of the coordinators did minor things, template maintenance, rules compliance, and the like. I made questions number properly. That's all well and good, but none of it would have been possible without Skomorokh and Tony1. The two of them ran the show: they planned everything out, recruited the election admins, stewards, and technical coordinator, wrote for the signpost, manned the IRC channel, were a constant presence in answering the questions at the various election pages, and directed the rest of us.
There would not be an election if it were not for those two users. Period. A hearty round of applause is in order from all.
Moving to a less positive note, I would also like to go on the record and register my displeasure in a number of issues that plagued this election. I could write paragraphs and paragraphs of observations, there were several issues, not the least of which were a drop in votes, a less than ideal spread of candidates (both in quality and quantity), and the seemingly endless flow of unnecessary, often uncivil, and certainly unproductive flow of drama.
What I am instead choosing to focus on is the community's poor sense of timing on changing or trying to change the policy and procedure of the election. There was an RfC preceding the election by a few weeks, where changes to the rules were proposed, voted on, and finalized. Participation was decent, about 100 people were involved, and most of the consensuses were clear. However, the RfC forced mainly on the voting method. Once that was decided, and the election began, people began complaining about the voting method, the page layouts, whether or not guides should be included on the ACE2010 template, and confoundingly enough, whether or not we should enforce the preexisting policy on identifying to the foundation.
All of these are valid topics for the community to decide, but doing so in the middle of an election, where it would be confusing and disruptive to actually change anything, seems insane to me. If people have suggestions or problems, these need to be raised before the elections began. Considering that the placement and quantity of questions was an issue in the 2009 election, someone should have thought to raise the issue in an RfC in August or October. Without the voice of the community in an RfC, the coordinators had to rely on the community voice from the various pages in the 2009 election, hence the changes made this year. We can only work with what we know.
I know from asking around that in previous years, RfCs on various facets of the ArbCom election were attempted after elections, and months before elections. Those RfCs, which I have not myself seen, allegedly died from a lack of participation. If January won't work for the community and August won't work for the community, and no one cares to bring these things up in the October RfC, then in my opinion the community has no right to complain about the processes used in the elections. It is clear that there are issues in need of a community decision. It is also clear that there is a poor track record for RfCs not immediately proceeding the elections. If changes are to be made, someone has to either organize an RfC or bring it up in next year's October RfC. Therefore, my proposal is simple. If someone really cares about an issue that they feel was problematic form this election, or wants something to be adopted as policy for 2011, they need to push it. They need to set up the RfC, they need post the question, and they need to fight to ensure that the discussion gets adequate participation. If no one is willing to do that, I propose that no one have the right to complain.
One final note. This election, two editors signed up as coordinators and were subsequently asked to step down (by editors at large, not by election staff or other coordinators.) One did not. One did, and then rejoined after I persuaded him to do so. Asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable. Like all other non-elected positions and tasks on Wikipedia, being a coordinator is an individual editor's personal choice. If you believe that there should be a guideline as to who is eligible to serve as a coordinator, bring it up in an RfC. Barring that, let me repeat, asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable.
TLDR
Sven Manguard Wha? 05:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'll add to this as issues occur to me.
First off, I'll add that this was my first year helping out of sorts with the ArbCom election, and I am amazed of how much work goes into running it.
While I did start Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure (which was mainly out of community need and that time was rather short), for the most part, I did relegate myself to observing the odds and ends, consistently watching the WT:ACE2010 page. On the CheckUser end, I assisted in two CheckUser investigations, both of which sock puppetry was discovered.
Anyways, here are some of my comments and observations:
I look forward to looking at the results and especially seeing where the percentages stand per my RfC statement here. – MuZemike 19:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I would first of all like to echo the thanks that have been given to the other election volunteers, especially Tony1 and Skomorokh. The success of this election is largely thanks to their foresightedness and commitment.
The biggest concern for me was the community's willingness to attempt to change the policy and procedure governing the election in midswing, something which has been frowned upon in recent RfCs as well as being just plain stupid. 90% of the discussion about identification needn't have happened: as soon as Jimbo said the first time that he would not seat an unidentified candidate, that should have been the end of it for this election, because the procedure for this election is that Jimbo takes the results as advisory and reserves the right to seat or not seat candidates as he chooses. All further discussion should have focused on reviewing that procedure for the next election. There were other similar issues of smaller scale, particularly the withdrawals; fortunately it was fairly easy to curtail discussion there by indicating "there are only three users who have the technical means to make the change that you want, and we all agree that it should not be made". But people really do need to get into the habit of accepting that an election is not amenable to being rewired midway through.
The proliferation of fragmented discussions on numerous disparate talkpages was, frankly, a mess. I have sixteen ACE10-related pages on my watchlist, and I'm sure I haven't covered them all. Much more thought needs to be given to which talkpages should stand alone (and what they should be for), and which should be redirected to one of said consolidated discussion fora.
There are still a number of things which need to be done to SecurePoll, the top priority of which is proper logging of tally generation and of edits to messages. I'd say that the community needs to thoroughly review the voting method before next year (by which I mean well before next year). And ArbCom really need to finish off WP:ARBPOLDRAFT; it clears up so many ambiguities which exist in the current ArbCom policy. That's my £0.03. (also) Happy‑ melon 20:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Just to start things off, it seems like we need more clarity next year about exactly what the expectations are regarding identification--how it is done, what happens to the identifying information after the age/identity is confirmed, what is done to ensure the identification actually represents the editor in question, and what happens to candidates who refuse to identify. Now, perhaps we should hold of on such a discussion until this years appointments are determined, but I think that next year we could definitely do with an upfront, unambiguous statement. I don't know how much of that statement would need to be authored by the Foundation and how much could be authored by the community, but the current confusion seems...undesirable. Qwyrxian ( talk) 02:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Not quite sure where to ask this, but if there is anyone reading this who considered putting their name forward as a candidate, but decided not to for reasons that could be taken into consideration for next year, would they consider stating those reasons here, or submitting them in confidence to the election co-ordinators? Carcharoth ( talk) 03:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The question limitation was useless and unhelpful. It was a nice experiment, but it should be reverted to the previous rules. NW ( Talk) 02:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the limitations foundered because they were unsuccessful in encouraging questioners to alter their behaviour. The main effect was to split the questions across multiple locations. Skomorokh 02:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I didn't find the general questions to be that useful since so many of the answers were similar (especially the ones on principles). To me, the only two that really helped were the one of a case the user agreed and disagreed with and the last question on changes they'd propose. I'd also like to see a few days added to the period after noms end and before voting so actual discussion can take place. DC T• C 02:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Hypothetically speaking, how would those opposed to the mass-questioning propose to put a stop to it, in light of the failure of the measures adopted this year? The point has been made that prohibiting questioners from engaging in this activity on election pages wouldn't stop them from doing so on candidate user talk pages, for example. Skomorokh 22:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
As in past years, my questions are liked by some and disliked by others (I think rather less but I could be wrong). Most (although not all) candidates found them thought provoking, if they took the time to answer them. Some candidates couldn't be bothered. I put to you that those candidates would make poor arbcom members since they don't want us to know how they think on important matters. Yes, my questions were wide ranging. That's because the official questions, with a couple of exceptions, are sadly lacking in depth and nuance. They're softballs, for the most part. Nothing prevents mine from being adopted as official questions, of course. If some scheme is come up with to make it more difficult to ask them next year, in direct contravention of what the majority of people want, I will nevertheless ask them, in a way that adheres to whatever Byzantine apparatus is necessary. As I did this year, what I did was completely within the rules, and it was of substantial benefit to the electorate and the candidates. Despite the best efforts of the self-appointed squelchers. ++ Lar: t/ c 02:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I hope Lar joins in the discussion about the general questions next year. Why doesn't he join the team of election coordinators? Then he might see things from a different perspective—one of streamlining the whole process for all concerned.
Unlike Skomorokh, I do not see the guidelines for questioning as having "failed"; no one has presented evidence that the voters wanted to wade through more text, or that discussion with and about candidates was truncated. Tony (talk) 07:40, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Limiting questions cannot be done unless we're going to patrol the candidates' talk pages and remove them, which would be patently inappropriate. Candidates may ignore questions as they choose. That is what they should do if they feel overburdened by questions, not try to limit them. And before the candidates complain about too many questions, remember this: You are asking for a vote on binding sanctions. Voters have every right to want to know a lot about your views and if you don't want to talk about them at length, maybe you just shouldn't be on the committee. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree that limiting questions is a bad idea. There is no such thing as too many questions, and pretty much no such thing as a "bad" question. If the questions are repetitious, the candidate can refer to his/her answer previously. My main concern about the process is that discussion of the candidates was scattered on a bunch of pages. There should be one centralized discussion page for each candidate, where voters could discuss why each particular candidate was good, bad or indifferent. For instance, I had profoundly mixed feelings about candidate X (no point in naming the person now) but I was unclear as to where to voice my misgivings. I think the profusion of pages might have discouraged voters from participating in the process. Yes, I could have established my own "voter guide," but a problem with the guides is that they are not conducive to dialogue with other editors about the candidates. So if I say, "I am troubled by candidate X for this and that reason," there's no simple way for another user to step in to say "yes, but take into consideration y and z." ScottyBerg ( talk) 14:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
A few months back, the election for Checkusers and Oversighters yielded fewer successful candidates than the number of positions that we had hoped to fill. There was some discussion then about whether the Secure Poll system had led to more voters opposing than public voting had used to do. In the ArbCom vote that we just had, there were some candidates with support at more than 50% and less than 60%. Perhaps there should be some discussion to assess what the community thinks about the proper threshold for success in Secure Poll elections, both for ArbCom and for the other positions, and maybe it would be better to have that discussion soon, rather than putting it off until just before the next elections. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I disliked these last minute changes to the template. A format should be decided upon early and then not changed after that. NW ( Talk) 02:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Rather late in the election, as the number of voter guides had grown to overwhelm the template, the list of guides was placed in a collapse box. For next year, I think a list of all the candidates should be placed inside a similar collapse box, and the voter guides only accessed through a single link. Voter guides are all very well, but the focus should be on what the candidates themselves are saying, not an undue focus on what others are saying about the candidates. Carcharoth ( talk) 02:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Linking voter guides in a template is unnecessary and should be dispensed with next year in favor of a subpage of WP:ACE2011. jps ( talk) 03:45, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Voting guides were helpful. What wasn't and isn't is that some editors decided that they have the right to come up with unclear inclusion criteria (how do you judge good faith or whether the guide is written responsibly, and why they have to be serious, and satire is not allowed...). The self-appointed censors intervention is not welcome; by calling some guides inappropriate, their actions might have created the same bias that (AGF) they wanted to eliminate. I believe that all guides should be eligible for inclusion, unless there is a consensus from at least five editors other than the guide's author (or 80% of discussion participants, min 6) that it is unhelpful and needs to be removed. (For the record, my guide was uncontroversial and was never removed by anybody, but at least one other guide I enjoyed reading was subject to censors' cuts). In a free society, people should be allowed to express their opinions, as long as the guides don't violate our policies (such as CIV/NPA), censorship of them should not be allowed. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:33, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The following was initially placed on the main discussion page
I have put together the page traffic stats for the election guide pages (see figure) I am aware of how crude this measurement is. For example, some guides were not even available for the whole of this period. Also guides being worked on extensively by their authors during the election will have a boost to their traffic, although many of the guides were completed before voting began and I have purposefully left out the pre voting period to reduce this anomaly.
I find it interesting but not surprising that three well established guides come out on top in the page traffic, possibly giving them considerable influence. SandyGeorgia (1051), Lar (889) and Elonka (837) were 1, 2 and 3 respectively, these guide writers also published guides linked to by the election templates in 2008 and 2009. Two other guides came close to these established guides in traffic numbers and those were NuclearWarfare's (825) and my own Polargeo (768) at 4 and 5. The rest of the guides were some way behind in the traffic stats and headed up by Wizardman (582).
I invited and engaged in a discussion before the voting regarding election guides being linked to from the template (see Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Archive 1#Election_guides) because I was concerned about the potential for excessive influence of established users on the election. Several established guide writers defended their positions at the time. I think it is good to have some post election reflection, rather than just leave it to the mayhem of the run up next year. I also think the guide writers (including myself) should not dominate any discussion as involved users. Obviously I hope to be able to write a guide next year :). Polargeo ( talk) 11:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Merely measuring page views doesn't really measure how influential a guide is. VM's guide got a lot of views but I would be very surprised if it had a lot of influence. I think people went to your guide out of novelty, to see what the "bad boy" was up to. Since it (while amusing) was almost entirely content free, I expect your numbers might be somewhat lower next year, unless you actually do more than come up with amusing/insulting pictures of the candidates. Do some analysis and give some reasons for your views on candidates, reasons that other voters can use to help form their own opinions. Sandy's views, NW's views, and mine (as well as the views of other serious writers) differed in many areas, but since we gave some analysis, some background, some examples, voters could use our various lenses to get a better picture of the candidate than if they just read the candidate's (severely length limited and thus mostly worthless) statement and answers to the standard (softball, and thus mostly worthless) questions. That's the point of a guide, which as I said before, I think you entirely missed. ++ Lar: t/ c 14:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
One thing that tends to get underestimated when considering what draws people to a particular guide is the number of times it is linked from elsewhere. By this I mean linked from places outside of the template, or just mentioned offhand during discussions of the election. Some guide writers are very active in discussions and (naturally) care about their guides and mention them a fair amount to others. Other guide writers don't mention their guides. Some guides are also mentioned by others. All this helps to 'promote' some guides more than others. Also, some guides get mentioned/discussed on the user talk page of the author, and this will also drive traffic to those guides, especially if the author's user talk page is heavily watched or followed by active users (note that this is a different value to the number of talk page watchers). Any consideration of which guides are more influential has to take all this into account. Carcharoth ( talk) 10:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I didn't put much work into my guide, I'm surpriced that my guide was the most accurate, also one of the lowest seen guides. Secret account 20:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I am concerned that some of the post election analysis is taking place at User:SandyGeorgia/ArbVotes2010/Guides and not here. I was also far more concerned that during the election the author of perhaps the most popular guide selected her own group of "the most helpful ArbCom election guides." on that page. This selection was then able to draw even more attention to a limited portion of the guides that were endorsed by that user. When a guide is linked to from the template using that guide as a vehicle for the selection of other guides is not something that should be allowed to be repeated in future elections. In a way it semi bypasses the fairness and equal treatment which the template at least tries to achieve. Polargeo ( talk) 15:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is an ongoing discussion about the RfC for ACE2011. If there are suggestions about the types of things that need to be discussed for ACE2011 voter guides, now is the time to bring up the questions. See Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee#RfC on WP:ACE2011 in the works. -- El on ka 04:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I think there needs to be a well-planned, well-publicized, multi-step process to discuss any potential changes in the voting method. This year, in a sort-of rushed RfC before the election, there was a proposal for the Schulze method and one for the Single Transferable Vote method (by the same editor I believe). There were one or two people who claimed that the Schulze method (which I believe was supported by 11 people) won a consensus, leading to some debate over the results of the RfC. (The portion of the RfC regarding changes to the voting method was closed as "No consensus.) Hopefully a new process can involve many more editors. It would also have to end with a definite result some months before the election so that the WMF software developers (who do a great job by the way) can have enough time to make it happen. Maybe I am just dreaming here, because I have observed past RfC's on complex subjects with multiple possible outcomes (which I think the issue of voting systems is) end in a torrent of arguments about not only what the result should be, but what the result was. Hopefully that can be avoided this time. I also think that, because there are many different voting methods to choose from, the first step should not be an RfC, but sort of a brainstorming process to get all the ideas that have some level of support on the table, and then a discussion to winnow those ideas down to a manageable few for consideration in an RfC.
As for the specific methods themselves, since there seems to be some support for the Schulze method, I just have a few comments about that. I know the Schulze method is used in WMF board elections, though I don't know exactly how that came about. I do not know whether there was a consensus in each project for that, or whether it was decreed top-down by the Foundation. The reason I am curious about these questions is, after reading our article on the Schulze method, I have to wonder how many Wikipedia editors really understand it. I have to say, after reading that article, I don't understand it any better than before I read it (and I have actually read it three or four times now.) If we do get into a full-fledged discussion of the Schulze method, my first question to its supporters will be, can you please explain it in plain English? In other words, when I vote I will indicate on the ballot my preferences for the candidates... and what happens then? And no fair talking about the Schwartz set heuristic, sequential dropping or for all i = 1,...,(n-1): d[C(i),C(i+1)] > d[C(i+1),C(i)]. I think that I The Voter have a right to know how my ballot is counted and what impact it has on the election even though I am not a mathematician. The current support/oppose method has faults, but one of its strengths is that the voter knows exactly how his/her vote impacts on the outcome. In my opinion, although STV is a little murkier in that regard, it is still simple enough that the average voter can understand how his/her ballot contributes to the result. Maybe someone will be able to explain Schulze so that it meets this criterion as well -- but it hasn't happened yet. Neutron ( talk) 23:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Candidate | Support | Oppose | S/(S+O) | S/voters |
---|---|---|---|---|
Alice | 5 | 5 | 50% | 50% |
Bob | 7 | 1 | 88 | 70 |
Lewis | 1 | 5 | 17 | 10 |
Candidate | Support | Oppose | S/(S+O) | S/voters |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fred | 2 | 0 | 100% | 20% |
Jane | 2 | 2 | 50 | 20 |
Kate | 2 | 1 | 67 | 20 |
We would elect these lower three candidates, even though only 20% of voters voted for them. In fact, by assuming that around half of votes cast were neutral, I managed to get a result where 8 candidates were elected, but only two of them had the support of 50% or more of voters. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 13:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Dare I suggest that my arcane fiddling about with Excel suggests that we would do just as well offering a simple "vote only for the ones you want to get elected" poll, and picking the ones that more than X% of voters supported. That avoids all the uncertainty of "ooh, never heard of Kate, should I oppose or leave it neutral?" which has a significant influence on the outcome of the election. MHO - whether the voters understood the instructions should never be the deciding factor in who wins the election. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 17:02, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
As to "lesser known" candidates getting in with lots of neutral votes, last year's experience didn't bear that out. We'll see what this year's experience tells us, though; I don't think one year's worth of data is sufficient to really assess whether this voting system is the best for our community. Risker ( talk) 19:26, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I hope that what everybody takes away from this discussion is that when we reach the final step in the decision-making process about next year's election -- regardless of whether that is in the form of an RfC, a "poll" or something else -- the different options need to spelled out clearly as mutually exclusive choices, with all the "brainstorming" having been done at a previous stage in the process. Since there are more than two choices and some of the choices may have variations, people should be permitted to give rankings of the choices, i.e., First choice, Second choice, Third choice, much as the ArbCom itself does when voting on a proposed decision. I have seen some "community polls" on Wikipedia that worked that way, but others that did not, and I'm hoping that this one does. For example, it may be that someone whose first choice is "Support/Oppose voting with a 60% support requirement" would not favor "Support/Oppose voting with a 50% support requirement" and should therefore have the ability to make one of the other options (i.e. approval voting, Schulze, etc.) their second choice. I want to make it clear I am not arguing in favor of or against any of the options right now (although I guess I have hinted at my reservations about the Schulze method earlier), but rather I am focusing on the process for arriving at a community decision. Neutron ( talk) 21:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I like the idea of maybe two or three levels of "Support", although I don't see any real benefit in having different levels of "Neutral" or "Oppose". If we allowed, for instance, "Strong Support," "Support", and "Weak Support," with no more candidates in the higher positions than the number of spaces open, I think it would allow voters to indicate which candidates they really want to see elected, while also indicating those that they would accept if that were how things developed. In this scenario, those with the higher degrees of support would be more likely to be chosen, while those who received weaker support would still be eligible if there weren't enough candidates with more support to fill the positions. John Carter ( talk) 19:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
The fact that the developer, scrutineers and election admins were headhunted and selected by myself and the other self-appointed coordinators to operate a system that selects the most powerful group of editors of the project as well as allow officials to see any voter's IP info without having that logged sits very uneasily with me. Coordinators have a great deal of discretion, and the setup is ripe for abuse, cabalism and manipulation given the small number of people involved and the lack of any community mandate. Pre-selection by voting would likely be overly bureaucratic but these issues are definitely worth keeping in mind in the context of the secret ballot system. Skomorokh 03:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to repeat this, cut straight from my comments above, as I find this issue to be one that bothered be greatly. This election, two editors signed up as coordinators and were subsequently asked to step down (by editors at large, not by election staff or other coordinators.) One did not. One did, and then rejoined after I persuaded him to do so. Asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable. Like all other non-elected positions and tasks on Wikipedia, being a coordinator is an individual editor's personal choice. If you believe that there should be a guideline as to who is eligible to serve as a coordinator, bring it up in an RfC. Barring that, let me repeat, asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:48, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Three factors militate against abuse and manipulation by the election coordinators: (1) anyone can self-select, and that goes for editors who do not trust anyone who has already self-selected; (2) the actions of coordinators are largely exposed to scrutiny and community complaint; and (3) those same actions are subject to scrutiny by the independent stewards.
I am more concerned that running the election smoothly now requires experience and skill that are not readily transferable. Thanks to Happy-melon, we now have a page that sets out the scrutineers' and election admins' roles; we need an equivalent for the election coordinators, so that a larger pool of editors might feel reasonably confident in walking into the role in future years. Skomorokh and I both had the advantage of experience from ACE2009; I don't know how it could have been done without this experience. We need the process to be viable with totally new personnel, if that were to be necessary. Tony (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Being an arb can be stressful, and is a drag on your time. It can involve unpleasant pressure from parties. But it has rewards in the high-profile of the role. My hope is that the procedures of the Committee can be gradually reformed to make the job less time-consuming. Tony (talk) 07:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I liked that the elections were held a week or two earlier than last year, but feel that they could be moved to another time of year entirely. In previous years, the elections interfered with the holidays (Jimbo had to announce the next year's arbitrators on Christmas Eve!), and this year it interfered with Thanksgiving in the U.S. Especially with the short amount of time between the end of nominations (Tuesday before Thanksgiving) and the beginning of voting (day after Thanksgiving), it took some tricky scheduling on my part to make time to do a proper review of the candidates, and I still felt very rushed. Maybe in 2011, we could move the election process to a less stressful time of year? August, October? And then instead of having new arbs start on January 1 (which again is interfering with holidays), have an "arb changeover" date of something more reasonable, such as November 1? -- El on ka 04:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Date | Number of voters |
---|---|
26 November 2010 | 216 |
27 November 2010 | 91 |
28 November 2010 | 70 |
29 November 2010 | 95 |
30 November 2010 | 62 |
1 December 2010 | 77 |
2 December 2010 | 55 |
3 December 2010 | 40 |
4 December 2010 | 57 |
5 December 2010 | 91 |
Agree. Elections should have lasted longer, and should not have ended during the weekend William M. Connolley ( talk) 17:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not too sussed about the absolute timings with respect to the calendar but I am among those who think we need more time between the end of nominations and the start of voting, to allow voters to more thoroughly question and evaluate candidates, including followup as needed. ++ Lar: t/ c 15:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
The elections came when I had a lot of coursework to do for my degree course, which rather limited how much time I could spend reviewing candidates, though I still found time to review them all and create a guide. I don't have a problem with the existing ten day voting period, though I wouldn't have a problem with either extending it to fourteen days, or better still, increasing the time between the nominations and the voting to four or five days, to give more time to review last minute candidates, as suggested by Tony1. CT Cooper · talk 23:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
A point I raised in the RFC prior to this election, and which continues to raise its head in discussions, is minimal criteria for election/appointment to the Arbitration Committee. The three points that are discussed are:
Thoughts to start off this discussion. Risker ( talk) 17:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Now that Jimbo has just announced the appointments, it occurs to me that one thing we should consider about the 50%/60% issue, reflecting what has just been practiced, is to say 60% is required for a two-year appointment, and 50% is required for a one-year appointment. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
This election saw a great deal of discussion generated from a lack of clarity or disputed legitimacy of aspects of the process. Contentious issues included the voter guides, the guidelines for questions and the eligibility criteria for candidates. To take a look at the volume of discord over the last issue, here are some of the longer discussions:
Many areas of the election saw a great deal of latitude in what the election volunteers could establish, including the questions guidelines, candidate eligibility criteria (uncharted waters regarding identification and disclosure of alt accounts), and the directions to the scrutineers (making inroads into steward permissions locally).
The problem is that although some of these instances of editorial boldness passed without comment this year, an editor who chose to pick a fight over them at the next election might ignite another firestorm of fractious, ill-tempered and confused discussion. The identification fracas linked above shows, I think, that we as a community are no longer satisfied to accept precedent-as-policy as an acceptable justification for election procedure, and are demanding community- or foundation-derived justification for contentious practices in order to satisfy ourselves as to their legitimacy.
So the question that comes to mind is "do we run the next elections on the fly, or is there a need for policy?" Comments solicited, Skomorokh 15:04, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
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2010
Arbitration Committee Election status
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This page is for feedback on the December 2010 Arbitration Committee elections from all involved. Constructive reviews, comments and suggestions for future elections are most welcome.
I'd like to thank the election coordinators, scrutineers, and everyone else who handled (or is now handling) the logistics of the elections, as well as the authors of candidate guides and all the voters. Beyond that, I like the idea of asking for input at this time while any issues with the election are fresh in everyone's mind, but I don't have much to add: apart from the obvious controversies, the election process unfolded reasonably smoothly from my point of view. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 02:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with what Newyorkbrad and Casliber said: the elections were conducted smoothly and in a calm, professional manner. I appreciated the number of interesting questions that were asked of me. What I appreciated less was several people wanting to copy-paste a huge catalogue of generic questions to each candidate's talk page, even though there was presumably a reason that there was no consensus to include these questions in the community-developed set of general questions (probably because several of these questions dealt with nuances of wikipolitics that are only interesting to a rather limited number of people, and have little relevance to the job of arbitrator). I also found it rather odd that the many "election guides", which reflected the private views of individuals, were prominently linked to from the "official" election template. Sandstein 07:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Didn't mind the questions, but did find it a bit difficult having them in two places. This could be because every page starts withWikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010, so I found it somewhat difficult to spot 'em apart. I'd also prefer if the questions were formatted into individual sections - I did that on the talkpage but wasn't sure if I was allowed to fiddle with the 'front' page, as I thought it was being transcluded. I don't mind if guides are written wholly on the basis of which candidates the guide writer would like to buy them a beer, but I found it somewhat confusing when a guide writer who seemed to be working on that basis, then said he hadn't read anything I'd written and asked if I wanted him to read it. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
There were a few comments here and there alluding to the paperwork candidates had to get through as an impediment to standing. I wonder if any of you would care to comment on this – was there anything superfluous, unnecessarily difficult, or better handled by volunteers other than the candidates? Were the templates, preloaders and whatnot a help or a hindrance in getting your statements and question pages set up correctly? Skomorokh 18:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The first thing that I want to do is publicly go on the record and thank fellow coordinators Skomorokh and Tony1. Everyone should follow suit. Most of the coordinators did minor things, template maintenance, rules compliance, and the like. I made questions number properly. That's all well and good, but none of it would have been possible without Skomorokh and Tony1. The two of them ran the show: they planned everything out, recruited the election admins, stewards, and technical coordinator, wrote for the signpost, manned the IRC channel, were a constant presence in answering the questions at the various election pages, and directed the rest of us.
There would not be an election if it were not for those two users. Period. A hearty round of applause is in order from all.
Moving to a less positive note, I would also like to go on the record and register my displeasure in a number of issues that plagued this election. I could write paragraphs and paragraphs of observations, there were several issues, not the least of which were a drop in votes, a less than ideal spread of candidates (both in quality and quantity), and the seemingly endless flow of unnecessary, often uncivil, and certainly unproductive flow of drama.
What I am instead choosing to focus on is the community's poor sense of timing on changing or trying to change the policy and procedure of the election. There was an RfC preceding the election by a few weeks, where changes to the rules were proposed, voted on, and finalized. Participation was decent, about 100 people were involved, and most of the consensuses were clear. However, the RfC forced mainly on the voting method. Once that was decided, and the election began, people began complaining about the voting method, the page layouts, whether or not guides should be included on the ACE2010 template, and confoundingly enough, whether or not we should enforce the preexisting policy on identifying to the foundation.
All of these are valid topics for the community to decide, but doing so in the middle of an election, where it would be confusing and disruptive to actually change anything, seems insane to me. If people have suggestions or problems, these need to be raised before the elections began. Considering that the placement and quantity of questions was an issue in the 2009 election, someone should have thought to raise the issue in an RfC in August or October. Without the voice of the community in an RfC, the coordinators had to rely on the community voice from the various pages in the 2009 election, hence the changes made this year. We can only work with what we know.
I know from asking around that in previous years, RfCs on various facets of the ArbCom election were attempted after elections, and months before elections. Those RfCs, which I have not myself seen, allegedly died from a lack of participation. If January won't work for the community and August won't work for the community, and no one cares to bring these things up in the October RfC, then in my opinion the community has no right to complain about the processes used in the elections. It is clear that there are issues in need of a community decision. It is also clear that there is a poor track record for RfCs not immediately proceeding the elections. If changes are to be made, someone has to either organize an RfC or bring it up in next year's October RfC. Therefore, my proposal is simple. If someone really cares about an issue that they feel was problematic form this election, or wants something to be adopted as policy for 2011, they need to push it. They need to set up the RfC, they need post the question, and they need to fight to ensure that the discussion gets adequate participation. If no one is willing to do that, I propose that no one have the right to complain.
One final note. This election, two editors signed up as coordinators and were subsequently asked to step down (by editors at large, not by election staff or other coordinators.) One did not. One did, and then rejoined after I persuaded him to do so. Asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable. Like all other non-elected positions and tasks on Wikipedia, being a coordinator is an individual editor's personal choice. If you believe that there should be a guideline as to who is eligible to serve as a coordinator, bring it up in an RfC. Barring that, let me repeat, asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable.
TLDR
Sven Manguard Wha? 05:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'll add to this as issues occur to me.
First off, I'll add that this was my first year helping out of sorts with the ArbCom election, and I am amazed of how much work goes into running it.
While I did start Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure (which was mainly out of community need and that time was rather short), for the most part, I did relegate myself to observing the odds and ends, consistently watching the WT:ACE2010 page. On the CheckUser end, I assisted in two CheckUser investigations, both of which sock puppetry was discovered.
Anyways, here are some of my comments and observations:
I look forward to looking at the results and especially seeing where the percentages stand per my RfC statement here. – MuZemike 19:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I would first of all like to echo the thanks that have been given to the other election volunteers, especially Tony1 and Skomorokh. The success of this election is largely thanks to their foresightedness and commitment.
The biggest concern for me was the community's willingness to attempt to change the policy and procedure governing the election in midswing, something which has been frowned upon in recent RfCs as well as being just plain stupid. 90% of the discussion about identification needn't have happened: as soon as Jimbo said the first time that he would not seat an unidentified candidate, that should have been the end of it for this election, because the procedure for this election is that Jimbo takes the results as advisory and reserves the right to seat or not seat candidates as he chooses. All further discussion should have focused on reviewing that procedure for the next election. There were other similar issues of smaller scale, particularly the withdrawals; fortunately it was fairly easy to curtail discussion there by indicating "there are only three users who have the technical means to make the change that you want, and we all agree that it should not be made". But people really do need to get into the habit of accepting that an election is not amenable to being rewired midway through.
The proliferation of fragmented discussions on numerous disparate talkpages was, frankly, a mess. I have sixteen ACE10-related pages on my watchlist, and I'm sure I haven't covered them all. Much more thought needs to be given to which talkpages should stand alone (and what they should be for), and which should be redirected to one of said consolidated discussion fora.
There are still a number of things which need to be done to SecurePoll, the top priority of which is proper logging of tally generation and of edits to messages. I'd say that the community needs to thoroughly review the voting method before next year (by which I mean well before next year). And ArbCom really need to finish off WP:ARBPOLDRAFT; it clears up so many ambiguities which exist in the current ArbCom policy. That's my £0.03. (also) Happy‑ melon 20:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Just to start things off, it seems like we need more clarity next year about exactly what the expectations are regarding identification--how it is done, what happens to the identifying information after the age/identity is confirmed, what is done to ensure the identification actually represents the editor in question, and what happens to candidates who refuse to identify. Now, perhaps we should hold of on such a discussion until this years appointments are determined, but I think that next year we could definitely do with an upfront, unambiguous statement. I don't know how much of that statement would need to be authored by the Foundation and how much could be authored by the community, but the current confusion seems...undesirable. Qwyrxian ( talk) 02:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Not quite sure where to ask this, but if there is anyone reading this who considered putting their name forward as a candidate, but decided not to for reasons that could be taken into consideration for next year, would they consider stating those reasons here, or submitting them in confidence to the election co-ordinators? Carcharoth ( talk) 03:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The question limitation was useless and unhelpful. It was a nice experiment, but it should be reverted to the previous rules. NW ( Talk) 02:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the limitations foundered because they were unsuccessful in encouraging questioners to alter their behaviour. The main effect was to split the questions across multiple locations. Skomorokh 02:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I didn't find the general questions to be that useful since so many of the answers were similar (especially the ones on principles). To me, the only two that really helped were the one of a case the user agreed and disagreed with and the last question on changes they'd propose. I'd also like to see a few days added to the period after noms end and before voting so actual discussion can take place. DC T• C 02:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Hypothetically speaking, how would those opposed to the mass-questioning propose to put a stop to it, in light of the failure of the measures adopted this year? The point has been made that prohibiting questioners from engaging in this activity on election pages wouldn't stop them from doing so on candidate user talk pages, for example. Skomorokh 22:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
As in past years, my questions are liked by some and disliked by others (I think rather less but I could be wrong). Most (although not all) candidates found them thought provoking, if they took the time to answer them. Some candidates couldn't be bothered. I put to you that those candidates would make poor arbcom members since they don't want us to know how they think on important matters. Yes, my questions were wide ranging. That's because the official questions, with a couple of exceptions, are sadly lacking in depth and nuance. They're softballs, for the most part. Nothing prevents mine from being adopted as official questions, of course. If some scheme is come up with to make it more difficult to ask them next year, in direct contravention of what the majority of people want, I will nevertheless ask them, in a way that adheres to whatever Byzantine apparatus is necessary. As I did this year, what I did was completely within the rules, and it was of substantial benefit to the electorate and the candidates. Despite the best efforts of the self-appointed squelchers. ++ Lar: t/ c 02:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I hope Lar joins in the discussion about the general questions next year. Why doesn't he join the team of election coordinators? Then he might see things from a different perspective—one of streamlining the whole process for all concerned.
Unlike Skomorokh, I do not see the guidelines for questioning as having "failed"; no one has presented evidence that the voters wanted to wade through more text, or that discussion with and about candidates was truncated. Tony (talk) 07:40, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Limiting questions cannot be done unless we're going to patrol the candidates' talk pages and remove them, which would be patently inappropriate. Candidates may ignore questions as they choose. That is what they should do if they feel overburdened by questions, not try to limit them. And before the candidates complain about too many questions, remember this: You are asking for a vote on binding sanctions. Voters have every right to want to know a lot about your views and if you don't want to talk about them at length, maybe you just shouldn't be on the committee. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree that limiting questions is a bad idea. There is no such thing as too many questions, and pretty much no such thing as a "bad" question. If the questions are repetitious, the candidate can refer to his/her answer previously. My main concern about the process is that discussion of the candidates was scattered on a bunch of pages. There should be one centralized discussion page for each candidate, where voters could discuss why each particular candidate was good, bad or indifferent. For instance, I had profoundly mixed feelings about candidate X (no point in naming the person now) but I was unclear as to where to voice my misgivings. I think the profusion of pages might have discouraged voters from participating in the process. Yes, I could have established my own "voter guide," but a problem with the guides is that they are not conducive to dialogue with other editors about the candidates. So if I say, "I am troubled by candidate X for this and that reason," there's no simple way for another user to step in to say "yes, but take into consideration y and z." ScottyBerg ( talk) 14:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
A few months back, the election for Checkusers and Oversighters yielded fewer successful candidates than the number of positions that we had hoped to fill. There was some discussion then about whether the Secure Poll system had led to more voters opposing than public voting had used to do. In the ArbCom vote that we just had, there were some candidates with support at more than 50% and less than 60%. Perhaps there should be some discussion to assess what the community thinks about the proper threshold for success in Secure Poll elections, both for ArbCom and for the other positions, and maybe it would be better to have that discussion soon, rather than putting it off until just before the next elections. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I disliked these last minute changes to the template. A format should be decided upon early and then not changed after that. NW ( Talk) 02:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Rather late in the election, as the number of voter guides had grown to overwhelm the template, the list of guides was placed in a collapse box. For next year, I think a list of all the candidates should be placed inside a similar collapse box, and the voter guides only accessed through a single link. Voter guides are all very well, but the focus should be on what the candidates themselves are saying, not an undue focus on what others are saying about the candidates. Carcharoth ( talk) 02:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Linking voter guides in a template is unnecessary and should be dispensed with next year in favor of a subpage of WP:ACE2011. jps ( talk) 03:45, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Voting guides were helpful. What wasn't and isn't is that some editors decided that they have the right to come up with unclear inclusion criteria (how do you judge good faith or whether the guide is written responsibly, and why they have to be serious, and satire is not allowed...). The self-appointed censors intervention is not welcome; by calling some guides inappropriate, their actions might have created the same bias that (AGF) they wanted to eliminate. I believe that all guides should be eligible for inclusion, unless there is a consensus from at least five editors other than the guide's author (or 80% of discussion participants, min 6) that it is unhelpful and needs to be removed. (For the record, my guide was uncontroversial and was never removed by anybody, but at least one other guide I enjoyed reading was subject to censors' cuts). In a free society, people should be allowed to express their opinions, as long as the guides don't violate our policies (such as CIV/NPA), censorship of them should not be allowed. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:33, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The following was initially placed on the main discussion page
I have put together the page traffic stats for the election guide pages (see figure) I am aware of how crude this measurement is. For example, some guides were not even available for the whole of this period. Also guides being worked on extensively by their authors during the election will have a boost to their traffic, although many of the guides were completed before voting began and I have purposefully left out the pre voting period to reduce this anomaly.
I find it interesting but not surprising that three well established guides come out on top in the page traffic, possibly giving them considerable influence. SandyGeorgia (1051), Lar (889) and Elonka (837) were 1, 2 and 3 respectively, these guide writers also published guides linked to by the election templates in 2008 and 2009. Two other guides came close to these established guides in traffic numbers and those were NuclearWarfare's (825) and my own Polargeo (768) at 4 and 5. The rest of the guides were some way behind in the traffic stats and headed up by Wizardman (582).
I invited and engaged in a discussion before the voting regarding election guides being linked to from the template (see Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010/Archive 1#Election_guides) because I was concerned about the potential for excessive influence of established users on the election. Several established guide writers defended their positions at the time. I think it is good to have some post election reflection, rather than just leave it to the mayhem of the run up next year. I also think the guide writers (including myself) should not dominate any discussion as involved users. Obviously I hope to be able to write a guide next year :). Polargeo ( talk) 11:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Merely measuring page views doesn't really measure how influential a guide is. VM's guide got a lot of views but I would be very surprised if it had a lot of influence. I think people went to your guide out of novelty, to see what the "bad boy" was up to. Since it (while amusing) was almost entirely content free, I expect your numbers might be somewhat lower next year, unless you actually do more than come up with amusing/insulting pictures of the candidates. Do some analysis and give some reasons for your views on candidates, reasons that other voters can use to help form their own opinions. Sandy's views, NW's views, and mine (as well as the views of other serious writers) differed in many areas, but since we gave some analysis, some background, some examples, voters could use our various lenses to get a better picture of the candidate than if they just read the candidate's (severely length limited and thus mostly worthless) statement and answers to the standard (softball, and thus mostly worthless) questions. That's the point of a guide, which as I said before, I think you entirely missed. ++ Lar: t/ c 14:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
One thing that tends to get underestimated when considering what draws people to a particular guide is the number of times it is linked from elsewhere. By this I mean linked from places outside of the template, or just mentioned offhand during discussions of the election. Some guide writers are very active in discussions and (naturally) care about their guides and mention them a fair amount to others. Other guide writers don't mention their guides. Some guides are also mentioned by others. All this helps to 'promote' some guides more than others. Also, some guides get mentioned/discussed on the user talk page of the author, and this will also drive traffic to those guides, especially if the author's user talk page is heavily watched or followed by active users (note that this is a different value to the number of talk page watchers). Any consideration of which guides are more influential has to take all this into account. Carcharoth ( talk) 10:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I didn't put much work into my guide, I'm surpriced that my guide was the most accurate, also one of the lowest seen guides. Secret account 20:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I am concerned that some of the post election analysis is taking place at User:SandyGeorgia/ArbVotes2010/Guides and not here. I was also far more concerned that during the election the author of perhaps the most popular guide selected her own group of "the most helpful ArbCom election guides." on that page. This selection was then able to draw even more attention to a limited portion of the guides that were endorsed by that user. When a guide is linked to from the template using that guide as a vehicle for the selection of other guides is not something that should be allowed to be repeated in future elections. In a way it semi bypasses the fairness and equal treatment which the template at least tries to achieve. Polargeo ( talk) 15:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is an ongoing discussion about the RfC for ACE2011. If there are suggestions about the types of things that need to be discussed for ACE2011 voter guides, now is the time to bring up the questions. See Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee#RfC on WP:ACE2011 in the works. -- El on ka 04:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I think there needs to be a well-planned, well-publicized, multi-step process to discuss any potential changes in the voting method. This year, in a sort-of rushed RfC before the election, there was a proposal for the Schulze method and one for the Single Transferable Vote method (by the same editor I believe). There were one or two people who claimed that the Schulze method (which I believe was supported by 11 people) won a consensus, leading to some debate over the results of the RfC. (The portion of the RfC regarding changes to the voting method was closed as "No consensus.) Hopefully a new process can involve many more editors. It would also have to end with a definite result some months before the election so that the WMF software developers (who do a great job by the way) can have enough time to make it happen. Maybe I am just dreaming here, because I have observed past RfC's on complex subjects with multiple possible outcomes (which I think the issue of voting systems is) end in a torrent of arguments about not only what the result should be, but what the result was. Hopefully that can be avoided this time. I also think that, because there are many different voting methods to choose from, the first step should not be an RfC, but sort of a brainstorming process to get all the ideas that have some level of support on the table, and then a discussion to winnow those ideas down to a manageable few for consideration in an RfC.
As for the specific methods themselves, since there seems to be some support for the Schulze method, I just have a few comments about that. I know the Schulze method is used in WMF board elections, though I don't know exactly how that came about. I do not know whether there was a consensus in each project for that, or whether it was decreed top-down by the Foundation. The reason I am curious about these questions is, after reading our article on the Schulze method, I have to wonder how many Wikipedia editors really understand it. I have to say, after reading that article, I don't understand it any better than before I read it (and I have actually read it three or four times now.) If we do get into a full-fledged discussion of the Schulze method, my first question to its supporters will be, can you please explain it in plain English? In other words, when I vote I will indicate on the ballot my preferences for the candidates... and what happens then? And no fair talking about the Schwartz set heuristic, sequential dropping or for all i = 1,...,(n-1): d[C(i),C(i+1)] > d[C(i+1),C(i)]. I think that I The Voter have a right to know how my ballot is counted and what impact it has on the election even though I am not a mathematician. The current support/oppose method has faults, but one of its strengths is that the voter knows exactly how his/her vote impacts on the outcome. In my opinion, although STV is a little murkier in that regard, it is still simple enough that the average voter can understand how his/her ballot contributes to the result. Maybe someone will be able to explain Schulze so that it meets this criterion as well -- but it hasn't happened yet. Neutron ( talk) 23:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Candidate | Support | Oppose | S/(S+O) | S/voters |
---|---|---|---|---|
Alice | 5 | 5 | 50% | 50% |
Bob | 7 | 1 | 88 | 70 |
Lewis | 1 | 5 | 17 | 10 |
Candidate | Support | Oppose | S/(S+O) | S/voters |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fred | 2 | 0 | 100% | 20% |
Jane | 2 | 2 | 50 | 20 |
Kate | 2 | 1 | 67 | 20 |
We would elect these lower three candidates, even though only 20% of voters voted for them. In fact, by assuming that around half of votes cast were neutral, I managed to get a result where 8 candidates were elected, but only two of them had the support of 50% or more of voters. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 13:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Dare I suggest that my arcane fiddling about with Excel suggests that we would do just as well offering a simple "vote only for the ones you want to get elected" poll, and picking the ones that more than X% of voters supported. That avoids all the uncertainty of "ooh, never heard of Kate, should I oppose or leave it neutral?" which has a significant influence on the outcome of the election. MHO - whether the voters understood the instructions should never be the deciding factor in who wins the election. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 17:02, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
As to "lesser known" candidates getting in with lots of neutral votes, last year's experience didn't bear that out. We'll see what this year's experience tells us, though; I don't think one year's worth of data is sufficient to really assess whether this voting system is the best for our community. Risker ( talk) 19:26, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I hope that what everybody takes away from this discussion is that when we reach the final step in the decision-making process about next year's election -- regardless of whether that is in the form of an RfC, a "poll" or something else -- the different options need to spelled out clearly as mutually exclusive choices, with all the "brainstorming" having been done at a previous stage in the process. Since there are more than two choices and some of the choices may have variations, people should be permitted to give rankings of the choices, i.e., First choice, Second choice, Third choice, much as the ArbCom itself does when voting on a proposed decision. I have seen some "community polls" on Wikipedia that worked that way, but others that did not, and I'm hoping that this one does. For example, it may be that someone whose first choice is "Support/Oppose voting with a 60% support requirement" would not favor "Support/Oppose voting with a 50% support requirement" and should therefore have the ability to make one of the other options (i.e. approval voting, Schulze, etc.) their second choice. I want to make it clear I am not arguing in favor of or against any of the options right now (although I guess I have hinted at my reservations about the Schulze method earlier), but rather I am focusing on the process for arriving at a community decision. Neutron ( talk) 21:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I like the idea of maybe two or three levels of "Support", although I don't see any real benefit in having different levels of "Neutral" or "Oppose". If we allowed, for instance, "Strong Support," "Support", and "Weak Support," with no more candidates in the higher positions than the number of spaces open, I think it would allow voters to indicate which candidates they really want to see elected, while also indicating those that they would accept if that were how things developed. In this scenario, those with the higher degrees of support would be more likely to be chosen, while those who received weaker support would still be eligible if there weren't enough candidates with more support to fill the positions. John Carter ( talk) 19:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
The fact that the developer, scrutineers and election admins were headhunted and selected by myself and the other self-appointed coordinators to operate a system that selects the most powerful group of editors of the project as well as allow officials to see any voter's IP info without having that logged sits very uneasily with me. Coordinators have a great deal of discretion, and the setup is ripe for abuse, cabalism and manipulation given the small number of people involved and the lack of any community mandate. Pre-selection by voting would likely be overly bureaucratic but these issues are definitely worth keeping in mind in the context of the secret ballot system. Skomorokh 03:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to repeat this, cut straight from my comments above, as I find this issue to be one that bothered be greatly. This election, two editors signed up as coordinators and were subsequently asked to step down (by editors at large, not by election staff or other coordinators.) One did not. One did, and then rejoined after I persuaded him to do so. Asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable. Like all other non-elected positions and tasks on Wikipedia, being a coordinator is an individual editor's personal choice. If you believe that there should be a guideline as to who is eligible to serve as a coordinator, bring it up in an RfC. Barring that, let me repeat, asking, telling, or demanding people not to be coordinators is completely and utterly unacceptable. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:48, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Three factors militate against abuse and manipulation by the election coordinators: (1) anyone can self-select, and that goes for editors who do not trust anyone who has already self-selected; (2) the actions of coordinators are largely exposed to scrutiny and community complaint; and (3) those same actions are subject to scrutiny by the independent stewards.
I am more concerned that running the election smoothly now requires experience and skill that are not readily transferable. Thanks to Happy-melon, we now have a page that sets out the scrutineers' and election admins' roles; we need an equivalent for the election coordinators, so that a larger pool of editors might feel reasonably confident in walking into the role in future years. Skomorokh and I both had the advantage of experience from ACE2009; I don't know how it could have been done without this experience. We need the process to be viable with totally new personnel, if that were to be necessary. Tony (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Being an arb can be stressful, and is a drag on your time. It can involve unpleasant pressure from parties. But it has rewards in the high-profile of the role. My hope is that the procedures of the Committee can be gradually reformed to make the job less time-consuming. Tony (talk) 07:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I liked that the elections were held a week or two earlier than last year, but feel that they could be moved to another time of year entirely. In previous years, the elections interfered with the holidays (Jimbo had to announce the next year's arbitrators on Christmas Eve!), and this year it interfered with Thanksgiving in the U.S. Especially with the short amount of time between the end of nominations (Tuesday before Thanksgiving) and the beginning of voting (day after Thanksgiving), it took some tricky scheduling on my part to make time to do a proper review of the candidates, and I still felt very rushed. Maybe in 2011, we could move the election process to a less stressful time of year? August, October? And then instead of having new arbs start on January 1 (which again is interfering with holidays), have an "arb changeover" date of something more reasonable, such as November 1? -- El on ka 04:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Date | Number of voters |
---|---|
26 November 2010 | 216 |
27 November 2010 | 91 |
28 November 2010 | 70 |
29 November 2010 | 95 |
30 November 2010 | 62 |
1 December 2010 | 77 |
2 December 2010 | 55 |
3 December 2010 | 40 |
4 December 2010 | 57 |
5 December 2010 | 91 |
Agree. Elections should have lasted longer, and should not have ended during the weekend William M. Connolley ( talk) 17:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not too sussed about the absolute timings with respect to the calendar but I am among those who think we need more time between the end of nominations and the start of voting, to allow voters to more thoroughly question and evaluate candidates, including followup as needed. ++ Lar: t/ c 15:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
The elections came when I had a lot of coursework to do for my degree course, which rather limited how much time I could spend reviewing candidates, though I still found time to review them all and create a guide. I don't have a problem with the existing ten day voting period, though I wouldn't have a problem with either extending it to fourteen days, or better still, increasing the time between the nominations and the voting to four or five days, to give more time to review last minute candidates, as suggested by Tony1. CT Cooper · talk 23:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
A point I raised in the RFC prior to this election, and which continues to raise its head in discussions, is minimal criteria for election/appointment to the Arbitration Committee. The three points that are discussed are:
Thoughts to start off this discussion. Risker ( talk) 17:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Now that Jimbo has just announced the appointments, it occurs to me that one thing we should consider about the 50%/60% issue, reflecting what has just been practiced, is to say 60% is required for a two-year appointment, and 50% is required for a one-year appointment. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
This election saw a great deal of discussion generated from a lack of clarity or disputed legitimacy of aspects of the process. Contentious issues included the voter guides, the guidelines for questions and the eligibility criteria for candidates. To take a look at the volume of discord over the last issue, here are some of the longer discussions:
Many areas of the election saw a great deal of latitude in what the election volunteers could establish, including the questions guidelines, candidate eligibility criteria (uncharted waters regarding identification and disclosure of alt accounts), and the directions to the scrutineers (making inroads into steward permissions locally).
The problem is that although some of these instances of editorial boldness passed without comment this year, an editor who chose to pick a fight over them at the next election might ignite another firestorm of fractious, ill-tempered and confused discussion. The identification fracas linked above shows, I think, that we as a community are no longer satisfied to accept precedent-as-policy as an acceptable justification for election procedure, and are demanding community- or foundation-derived justification for contentious practices in order to satisfy ourselves as to their legitimacy.
So the question that comes to mind is "do we run the next elections on the fly, or is there a need for policy?" Comments solicited, Skomorokh 15:04, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
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