Forwarded from Betsy Megas, who's subscribed under a different address. Please read.
Austin
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Betsy Megas Betsy@strideth.com Date: Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:26 PM Subject: Election vote strikes To: "foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org" foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
Due to an error in a script that was used to generate the list of authorized voters for this election, roughly 300 votes were cast by users who were not qualified based on the posted election rules (requiring that voters have made at least 600 edits before 01 June 2009 across Wikimedia wikis and have made at least 50 edits between 01 January and 01 July 2009). Those votes will be removed by the election committee prior to the election being tallied by Software in the Public Interest.
Once this is completed, the election results will be tallied and announced shortly thereafter.
Questions regarding why a vote was struck can be addressed to board-elections@lists.wikimedia.org.
For the committee,
Dvortygirl
Betsy Megas Betsy@strideth.com wrote:
Due to an error in a script that was used to generate the list of authorized voters for this election, roughly 300 votes were cast by users who were not qualified based on the posted election rules (requiring that voters have made at least 600 edits before 01 June 2009 across Wikimedia wikis and have made at least 50 edits between 01 January and 01 July 2009). Those votes will be removed by the election committee prior to the election being tallied by Software in the Public Interest. Once this is completed, the election results will be tallied and announced shortly thereafter. Questions regarding why a vote was struck can be addressed to board-elections@lists.wikimedia.org.
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who should have been permitted on account of this error?
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who should have been permitted on account of this error?
It was a coding error; it was corrected.
This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
Philippe
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Philippe Beaudette < pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who should have been permitted on account of this error?
It was a coding error; it was corrected.
This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
Philippe
This comment makes my skin crawl. Everyone is entitled to have a voice and it is only the Board's impoverished vision of the community and limited sense of what technology can accomplish that has led them to create arbitrary rules about how to best stifle the voices of the vast majority of the actual community. Not only that, but the Board has forgotten the WMF's original vision where all editors were highly valued members of the community. Because the Board does not have to sit face to face with these people they feel free to treat our community members as if they were not, in fact, people, with highly valued and varied life experiences whose votes do in fact contain useful information - in the information theoretic sense.
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:50 PM, BrianBrian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
This comment makes my skin crawl. Everyone is entitled to have a voice and it is only the Board's impoverished vision of the community and limited sense of what technology can accomplish that has led them to create arbitrary rules about how to best stifle the voices of the vast majority of the actual community. Not only that, but the Board has forgotten the WMF's original vision where all editors were highly valued members of the community. Because the Board does not have to sit face to face with these people they feel free to treat our community members as if they were not, in fact, people, with highly valued and varied life experiences whose votes do in fact contain useful information - in the information theoretic sense.
Brian, I like many things you say while ranting, for instance I think we need to think about suffrage as something essential to our identity as a community, not a quick hack that balances commitment and flood-proofing against openness of process. However, a prickly tone tends to discourage people from responding to you.
Can you provide some positive examples of what you would like to see instead? Would you prefer to have no requirements for editing or contribution, only a requirement that a voter prove they are a real and unique snowflak^B^B^B^Bperson?
SJ
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:02 AM, Samuel Kleinmeta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:50 PM, BrianBrian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
This comment makes my skin crawl. Everyone is entitled to have a voice and it is only the Board's impoverished vision of the community and limited
...
Brian, I like many things you say while ranting, for instance I think we need to think about suffrage as something essential to our identity as a community, not a quick hack that balances commitment and flood-proofing against openness of process. However, a prickly tone tends to discourage people from responding to you.
Can you provide some positive examples of what you would like to see instead? Would you prefer to have no requirements for editing or contribution, only a requirement that a voter prove they are a real and unique snowflak^B^B^B^Bperson?
SJ
FYI to all: There's an on-wiki discussion of what suffrage requirements should be here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2009/en#Post_mortem
-- phoebe
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaudette@wikimedia.org wrote:
[Greg] I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who should have been permitted on account of this error?
It was a coding error; it was corrected.
This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
Thanks, Greg—that was my follow-up question, but you beat me to it. I trust Philippe when he says that the error was on the side of enfranchising people, but I'd like to know the exact nature of the discrepancy.
My understanding is that Tim Starling can shed some light on this. Tim?
Austin
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaudette@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who should have been permitted on account of this error?
It was a coding error; it was corrected.
I am interested in the specific nature of the coding error, for example "The script applied the wrong cutoff date" or "edits across multiple projects for the 600 edit criteria were merged based on UID rather than username" or "users from prior years were also permitted" or "users whos name shared a common prefix with a permitted user were additionally permitted".
The text I quoted began with "Due to an error in a script", so I had expected my query would receive a response more specific than a mere repetition of the already disclosed information. I hope that my inquiry has now been made abundantly clear now.
Since the error has been corrected surely there can be no harm in disclosing its specific nature.
(we've had problems with the automatic list in the past, best to discuss these things so that they can be well understood)
This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
Will people be given an opportunity to contest these strikes?
Without knowing the specific nature of the error I can only assume that there may have been parties technically qualified, for example by being system administrators or foundation staff, whom would have been given a vote after being denied by the prior automatic rule who may now be disenfranchised by a hasty correction.
It is my understanding that the parties incorrectly stricken previously were not contacted. I believe that an attempt should be made to contact stricken parties, even if it means delaying the results.
2009/8/12 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
It is my understanding that the parties incorrectly stricken previously were not contacted. I believe that an attempt should be made to contact stricken parties, even if it means delaying the results.
Really? That amazes me. Surely everyone that has their vote stricken for any reason should be informed. You can't accept a vote and then throw it away without telling the voter, that's appalling.
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/8/12 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
It is my understanding that the parties incorrectly stricken previously were not contacted. I believe that an attempt should be made to contact stricken parties, even if it means delaying the results.
Really? That amazes me. Surely everyone that has their vote stricken for any reason should be informed. You can't accept a vote and then throw it away without telling the voter, that's appalling.
Note: Even if I'm not incorrect, I'm speaking about people who were stricken and later fixed, it may just be that they were fixed before a message could have gone out.
I too agree that there is an obligation to contact, hopefully with enough time to respond and point out an error, but I don't believe that the the contact must be absolutely immediate.
(For those who might think we're just splitting hairs on this: In last years election there were several pairs of candidates with a fairly small margin between them, 8 votes in one case. With three candidates being elected I don't believe its outrageous that the striking might conceivably change the result of the election, so it really should be handled with the utmost of care for practical reasons as well as principled ones)
2009/8/12 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
I too agree that there is an obligation to contact, hopefully with enough time to respond and point out an error, but I don't believe that the the contact must be absolutely immediate.
I agree that there is no real need for it to be immediate, but in most cases I can't see a good reason for it not being. In this case where a lot of votes have been stricken at once it might be a good idea to keep quiet for a few hours, maybe a day, to check there wasn't a big mistake made which would result in hundreds of identical complaints being received if emails were sent out, but for one-offs like sockpuppeting, the notification should probably just be sent immediately.
On Aug 11, 2009, at 10:58 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I am interested in the specific nature of the coding error, for example "The script applied the wrong cutoff date" or "edits across multiple projects for the 600 edit criteria were merged based on UID rather than username" or "users from prior years were also permitted" or "users whos name shared a common prefix with a permitted user were additionally permitted".
My understanding is that some edits were incorrectly counted twice. So, it artificially inflated the edit counts of everyone for the suffrage counts. I'm not that technical, though, so I hope that someone who is will explain, and I'll poke them :)
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.
Avoiding it in the future remains basically the same as it was in 2007, either:
* Stop changing the voting rules every year so that I don't have to keep rewriting the scripts. Obviously I can change the numbers and dates, but the CentralAuth integration this year required a whole new architecture. * Assign someone to do this who doesn't have a hundred other responsibilities and can afford the time to do rigorous testing of every critical component. * Have someone review critical parts of SecurePoll instead of just trusting me to write perfect code.
-- Tim Starling
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tim Starlingtstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.
Thanks Tim. It sounded like what happened in the past. I apologize for not doing my part and catching it this time. :(
To err is human... nice to know that at least some of us aren't bots. ;) May all future errors be as correctable!
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.
Thanks Tim. It sounded like what happened in the past. I apologize for not doing my part and catching it this time. :(
To err is human... nice to know that at least some of us aren't bots. ;) May all future errors be as correctable!
It's also refreshing to see people who accept their share of responsibility when something has gone. Kudos to both of you for such rare kind of behaviour.
Ec
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Ray Saintongesaintonge@telus.net wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is the key to avoidance in the future!)
It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.
Thanks Tim. It sounded like what happened in the past. I apologize for not doing my part and catching it this time. :(
To err is human... nice to know that at least some of us aren't bots. ;) May all future errors be as correctable!
It's also refreshing to see people who accept their share of responsibility when something has gone. Kudos to both of you for such rare kind of behaviour.
Ec
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Maybe we need to clone Tim too? :p
-Chad
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