On Jun 7, 2015 9:31 PM, "Milos Rancic" millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 9:02 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
# We use S/N/O for many other kinds of votes, including FDC, steward, Arbitration Committee, and featured content votes. I have not heard disagreement with it until now, which suggests that generally there is consensus for this system. ... # One of the best features of S/N/O is that it works to favor candidates who have consensus for them, i.e. have both a good quantity of
supporters
and have few people who oppose their election. If someone has many
support
votes and many oppose votes, this suggests that the person is relatively controversial, which probably makes them a less optimal choice for roles like FDC, Steward, Arbitration Committee, and WMF Board roles.
From my perspective, and I don't think it's unique, those elections are quite different:
- FDC: Realistically, just people from chapters and thematic
organizations are interested in this. And if I am a Board member of a chapter, my rational approach would be to approach other chapters and make a deal with them who should be elected. Basically, that population decides anyway. Besides the fact that a lot of us don't feel comfortable to make political decision for expert seats, while we don't have precise clue what we should require from the candidates. It's not the duty of *every* member of the community to be an expert in hiring grantmaking staff.
- English Wikipedia ArbCom: At some point of time I was very active on
en.wp, but I was never interested in en.wp governance (not even to become an admin). I think that the majority of non-native English speakers have such approach to en.wp. On the other side, I would note that being a member of en.wp's ArbCom is highly stressful position and I don't think that there are many of long-term ArbCom members (in comparison to, let's say, WMF Board). I am sure that one of the most important reasons are negative votes, exactly. You can't do good job if you want to be reelected.
- Stewards are the third category and this system is actually perfect
for their elections: both public and requiring 80% of support. Stewards are not going to reelections. Other stewards review their work, while openness of the group is guarantied by constant elections.
- Negative votes tend to make the whole atmosphere much more tense,
stressful for both the community and Board members. Besides the reasons I (and others) have given into the previous emails.
Just to put into perspective what risker said about neutral votes: it is technical because one needs to click something. There is no way to remove a radio button, and neutral was the default. I find therefore the naming confusing or the user interface.
But for the results I am happy. I fully agree with others already noting that controversial candidates are and imo should not be favoured. There must be a reason Maria last time was elected and got an impressive number of counter votes this time. It might be that denny really did awesome stuff in the last years and one did not hear a lot from Maria the last years. For phoebe it might have been a diversity vote, as there are already a lot of persons from the US in the board.
Diversity can imo best reached when more candidates can be elected. I think this would also work with experience in needed areas, not only continents, language groups or gender.
If we have quotas or whatever to get diversity we approach a FIFA system. Which would maybe work if we have organisations and elections for the diverse groups.
Rupert.