I am writing to ask all of you to think carefully when you vote.
The board election is very important and many good people are running.
But it is better for Wikipedia's future to keep a bad person off than to have the best people on.
There are three seats open. When you make your three choices if you think only to choose the best you risk making an opening for someone bad, so '''you must also consider who can win'''.
Look at the endorsements: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements
It is clear that only some have the standing to keep a bad person off the board. So even if you know in your heart that someone else is better, you should not pick them because if you do your vote is WASTED.
If you have already voted and made the error of picking the wrong people you can still change your vote but you must do it right away before the election closes.
On 7/1/07, Søren Kiersted wisewisard@googlemail.com wrote:
I am writing to ask all of you to think carefully when you vote.
The board election is very important and many good people are running.
But it is better for Wikipedia's future to keep a bad person off than to have the best people on.
There are three seats open. When you make your three choices if you think only to choose the best you risk making an opening for someone bad, so '''you must also consider who can win'''.
Look at the endorsements: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements
It is clear that only some have the standing to keep a bad person off the board. So even if you know in your heart that someone else is better, you should not pick them because if you do your vote is WASTED.
Your model is flawed in that is ignores the issue of placing for future elections.
On Sun, July 1, 2007 00:17, Søren Kiersted wrote:
Look at the endorsements: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements
It is clear that only some have the standing to keep a bad person off the board. So even if you know in your heart that someone else is better, you should not pick them because if you do your vote is WASTED.
Apart from finding much of this post objectionable, the number of people endorsing each candidate is, in fact, irrelevant given that many editors (myself included) were quite capable of reading the page concerned and, having noted that there was a particular number of endorsements required to validate a candidacy and noting that any candidates whom we supported had already received the required number, could see no point in adding to a 'beauty contest' there when it is the actual *votes* now that matter.
The number of supporters corralled into adding pointless endorsements just shows who made the most noise, not who actually may have the most support or would be the best for the future of Wikimedia and the projects.
One should always vote *for* a candidate, never against, imho.
Alison Wheeler (writing purely personally)
On 6/30/07, Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com wrote:
One should always vote *for* a candidate, never against, imho.
Alison Wheeler (writing purely personally)
The people who write the rules do not agree with your personal view.
"Approval voting" is just a polite word for "disapproval voting". When you do not select someone you are disapproving them and the ones with the least disapproval win. It is exactly equal only the name changes.
On 01/07/07, Søren Kiersted wisewisard@googlemail.com wrote:
On 6/30/07, Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com wrote:
One should always vote *for* a candidate, never against, imho.
Alison Wheeler (writing purely personally)
The people who write the rules do not agree with your personal view.
"Approval voting" is just a polite word for "disapproval voting". When you do not select someone you are disapproving them and the ones with the least disapproval win. It is exactly equal only the name changes.
Alison is talking about how one makes their choice of who to vote for, she isn't talking about how the voting system works. Approval voting is just a yes/no vote on each candidate and the one(s) with the most yes's (or least no's, it is, indeed, the same thing) wins. If you really hate one candidate, your best bet is to vote for everyone except that candidate.
On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Alison is talking about how one makes their choice of who to vote for, she isn't talking about how the voting system works. Approval voting is just a yes/no vote on each candidate and the one(s) with the most yes's (or least no's, it is, indeed, the same thing) wins. If you really hate one candidate, your best bet is to vote for everyone except that candidate.
This would only be true if you had no idea who else had a chance of winning. Even without the pre-election we are not so foolish.
This would only be true if you had no idea who else had a chance of winning. Even without the pre-election we are not so foolish.
Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from winning, you should vote to everyone else. That way, if, without your vote, the candidate you dislike would win by one vote, they will now draw, regardless of who is in 2nd place. If there is candidate other than the one you dislike that you do not vote for, and that candidate comes in 2nd, one vote behind the candidate you dislike, then you could have stopped them winning by voting for them and have failed in your objective.
On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from winning, you should vote to everyone else. That way, if, without your
But what person has only one aim? There are people I think are best, people I think are good, people I think are less good, people I think don't matter, and a person I think is bad.
If I select the only best, if they do not have a good chance to win then it creates a chance to let the bad in. If I select all but the bad, I risk helping the less good win.
So the most desired result comes from picking only the good who are likely to win. If I waste my selection on unlikely options then I am not doing all I could to keep out the bad. If I vote for everyone except the bad I am not expressing my preference for good.
Søren Kiersted wrote:
So the most desired result comes from picking only the good who are likely to win. If I waste my selection on unlikely options then I am not doing all I could to keep out the bad. If I vote for everyone except the bad I am not expressing my preference for good.
This seems to be straight from the lottery-ticket philosophy of politics.
Ec
But what person has only one aim? There are people I think are best, people I think are good, people I think are less good, people I think don't matter, and a person I think is bad.
If I select the only best, if they do not have a good chance to win then it creates a chance to let the bad in. If I select all but the bad, I risk helping the less good win.
So the most desired result comes from picking only the good who are likely to win. If I waste my selection on unlikely options then I am not doing all I could to keep out the bad. If I vote for everyone except the bad I am not expressing my preference for good.
What harm is there in voting for someone you think is good but you don't think has any chance of winning? It doesn't stop you from being able to vote for someone else - you can vote for as many people as you like.
You should definitely vote for everyone you think would be good. The only difficult bit is with the people you think would be ok. If there is someone you think would be ok but not good, and they are the person most likely to beat a person you think would be bad, then it might be a good idea to vote for them in order to prevent the person you don't like from winning (ie. lesser of two evils). So, in some circumstances, it might be good to vote for someone you don't like much, but there is never a reason not to vote for someone you do like.
On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from winning, you should vote to everyone else.
That's what I did in the first election. For this election, I'm not voting. I don't really feel comfortable supporting any of the candidates, and one vote isn't going to change the election anyway. I thought about submitting a blank ballot. Might still do that.
That way, if, without your vote, the candidate you dislike would win by one vote, they will now draw, regardless of who is in 2nd place. If there is candidate other than the one you dislike that you do not vote for, and that candidate comes in 2nd, one vote behind the candidate you dislike, then you could have stopped them winning by voting for them and have failed in your objective.
One problem with that strategy is that this election isn't really a binding election. If two candidates really did tie for the last seat with a lot of support, the board would probably just add an extra seat. Remember the last election? Jimbo campaigned against Erik and then after Erik won the board decided to add three seats instead of one, effectively canceling out the election results.
On 7/1/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from winning, you should vote to everyone else.
<snip>(...) and one vote isn't going to change the election anyway.
</snip>
Yay, that's the attitude. If just everyone else realised what you have realised, I would be GodKing of the World by now.</irony>
Everyone should use their right to vote, both on-wiki and in real life; it is true, your vote only has a small impact, but it still has small impact. Think about it; what if all the other people who didn't vote agreed with you, think of the impact you could make together. (I'm not saying that people should be coordinating their votes here, just that this is people's one chance at influencing, and should seize it. It doesn't even cost you anything.)
On 7/1/07, Jon Harald Søby jhsoby@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/1/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from winning, you should vote to everyone else.
<snip>(...) and one vote isn't going to change the election anyway.
</snip>
Yay, that's the attitude. If just everyone else realised what you have realised, I would be GodKing of the World by now.</irony>
Actually, if everyone else realised what I have realised, it'd no longer be true.
Everyone should use their right to vote, both on-wiki and in real life; it is true, your vote only has a small impact, but it still has small impact.
In a normal large election, 99.99999% of the time your vote has no impact. 0.00001% of the time your vote has an impact. Of course, 0.0001% of the time you die in an accident on your way to the polls. Percentages made up, of course, but I do believe the chances of dying on my way to the polls outweigh the chances of having my vote make a positive impact (which is even less than the chance my vote will make an impact at all).
Of course, Wikipedia elections aren't that large, but also aren't normal.
Think about it; what if all the other people who didn't vote agreed with you, think of the impact you could make together.
OTOH, if you know someone who is going to vote in the opposite way as you, the two of you can simply agree to both not vote, and your non-votes cancel out (and not-voting is carbon-neutral, unlike driving to the polls).
(I'm not saying that people should be coordinating their votes here, just that this is people's one chance at influencing, and should seize it. It doesn't even cost you anything.)
As the "cost" of voting on a Wikipedia election is small, I do agree with you that it doesn't hurt to vote. I thought about casting a blank ballot for this reason, but so far I've been too lazy to bother.
You know, Jhs as Godking of the world is NOT the worst idea I've ever heard...
Philippe ----- Original Message ----- From: Jon Harald Søby To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 3:50 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Don't waste your vote!
On 7/1/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/30/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not true. If your only aim is to prevent a particular candidate from winning, you should vote to everyone else.
<snip>(...) and one vote isn't going to change the election anyway.
</snip>
Yay, that's the attitude. If just everyone else realised what you have realised, I would be GodKing of the World by now.</irony>
Everyone should use their right to vote, both on-wiki and in real life; it is true, your vote only has a small impact, but it still has small impact. Think about it; what if all the other people who didn't vote agreed with you, think of the impact you could make together. (I'm not saying that people should be coordinating their votes here, just that this is people's one chance at influencing, and should seize it. It doesn't even cost you anything.)
-- Jon Harald Søby http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Alison is talking about how one makes their choice of who to vote for,
she isn't talking about how the voting system works. Approval voting is just a yes/no vote on each candidate and the one(s) with the most yes's (or least no's, it is, indeed, the same thing) wins. If you really hate one candidate, your best bet is to vote for everyone except that candidate.
It's not exactly a yes/no vote. If that were the case the option would be between voting "yes" (=+1)if you really liked the person, voting "no" (=-1) if you really didn't like him, or not voting at all (=0) if it you didn't care either way about the person. The dynamic could be quite different.
Ec
Søren Kiersted wrote:
On 6/30/07, Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com wrote:
One should always vote *for* a candidate, never against, imho.
Alison Wheeler (writing purely personally)
The people who write the rules do not agree with your personal view.
"Approval voting" is just a polite word for "disapproval voting". When you do not select someone you are disapproving them and the ones with the least disapproval win. It is exactly equal only the name changes.
At least one person on the Wikibooks Staff Lounge has announced a blank ballot sheet. I.E. they have voted for absolutely nobody, but voted "present". I have absolutely no idea what that means in terms of vote totals and how that impacts the election, but it would be an interesting sentiment to see how many do just that (in this case intentionally). Or those who voted for "everybody".
Approval voting can be gamed like many other voting systems, but it at least is a consistent system that was known about ahead of time prior to the election. I voted a mixed ticket myself (several votes of approval and several that I did not vote for).
-- Robert Horning
Søren Kiersted wrote:
When you make your three choices if you [...]
The election uses approval voting. You can vote for as many candidates as you like, not just three. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting.
Dominic
On 7/1/07, Søren Kiersted wisewisard@googlemail.com wrote:
I am writing to ask all of you to think carefully when you vote.
Thank you,
The board election is very important and many good people are running.
Completely agreed.
But it is better for Wikipedia's future to keep a bad person off than to have the best people on.
In my opinion it is a possible idea you may want to consider when you choose who you will vote, in the general context, but in this Election, your argument missed the point, I am afraid.
In the approval voting, you cannot do in the way you proposed below. If you decide not to vote don't user:GOODCANDIDATE, it make only the other candidates more successful - both user:BADCANDIDATE and BETTERCANDIDATE. It doesn't help "keep a bad person off" at all.
And I fully support Jon in this thread. You should vote, since you could make impact, even small. In this system all voters has the vote of same weight.
I don't want to proud my effort to organize this Election, if I should do such publicly, it were better for me to die. However I would like strongly light up all the other people involved - both the generous administrators of Software in the Public Interest and Wikimedians: my respectable colleagues, translators, informal helpers for organizing both on meta and the local wikis, people who are willing to help advertisements both unofficial and official, people who submit their endorsements, people who noticed the problems to fix, shortly, people who I am proud of belonging to the same community - Wikimedia. All of them have helped it out to realize this Election and poured their energy, wisdom and time.
In my humble opinion, calling for no vote is equal to calling for waising their time. I might feel saddened, if such thing happens.
There are three seats open. When you make your three choices if you think only to choose the best you risk making an opening for someone bad, so '''you must also consider who can win'''.
Look at the endorsements: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements
It is clear that only some have the standing to keep a bad person off the board. So even if you know in your heart that someone else is better, you should not pick them because if you do your vote is WASTED.
If you have already voted and made the error of picking the wrong people you can still change your vote but you must do it right away before the election closes.
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