I agree that negative votes have possibly too much weight in the current system. But there is one other problem with what we have: people from some cultures may be much more reluctant to cast tactical negative votes. If this is so, because of cultural differences we privilege cultures more flex about expressing dissent. James Alexander has promised to look into raw data, as this effect would be observable. If it shows up, it is yet another argument to drop the current voting method.
best,
dj
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 10:48 PM, James Alexander jalexander@wikimedia.org wrote:
[For the record I'm running the vote dumps now that should allow some of that analysis to be done by those interested. No exact promises on timing because while I'll send it out today it will take some time to approve for anonymization etc.]
James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
Well, the funny thing with current system is that if people had voted
in
most rational way - i.e. to maximize the impact of their votes - the results would have been negative for all candidates - as this year none
of
them got more than 50% of positive votes. But in fact if all people
would
vote in that way - negative votes would be negligible - as the result
will
be simple exactly the same as if there will be no "no" votes - in both methods of calculation :-) What makes negative votes so important is
just
because people are not voting in rational way as they have some mental objections to vote "no". But those brave ones (or smart ones or bad
ones)
enough to vote "no" have much higher impact on the results than the
others
- which I think is not good by itslef.
By the way would interesting to know how many voters voted only "yes"
and
"no", and how many voted "yes" for only one candidate and "no" for all others (the most impact for selected candidate).
Based on the numbers, it's likely that the voting was dominantly like: "I want this candidate or two"; "I have no opinion about these candidates"; and "I really really wouldn't like to see this one or two as Board members".
I'd say that our democracy depends on such behavior of voters, as at the end we are getting good people in the Board, no matter who has been elected particularly. However, it could change and it could have dramatic consequences, as we are operating with small numbers.
What's more likely to be seen as the outcome of "rational voting" is to get one or few candidates with 50% less opposing votes and although it wouldn't need to be bad in the sense of particular candidates, it would make very negative consequences to the rest of the community.
First time such thing happens, next time we'd have bitter fight for every vote. And that would be the changing point: from friendly to competitive atmosphere. It would also mean that we'd get serious hidden lobby groups. (We have them now, but it's relaxed and much more about "it would be great if our candidate would pass", than about serious fights for own candidates.)
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