--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
What I think we should do, and could do, is implement a basic voting system in the Wikipedia engine that would allow people to create polls (ideally offering different voting methods -- if you just have yes/no as choices, first past the post seems fine). These could
be used to collect data informally in various situations, like the recent moderation debate. They would NOT be accepted, by policy, as a way to assert that X or Y should be done, just a method to tabulate/quantify opinions.
That's unrealistic: in reality, once an issue has been put up for a vote and one side has lost, the issue would be considered pretty much settled and anybody arguing further would be considered a sore loser. This is why many people rush to ad-hoc votes: they want the debate to end.
After all, what is the point of "collecting data informally and to tabulate/quantify opinions", if not to make a decision? The fact that 56.4% of all Wikipedians favor XYZ is clearly no substantial argument for or against XYZ.
What I think we should resist is the temptation to avoid changing our process because of fear of change itself.
I don't think the motive fear-of-change has been expressed in this debate, so this is a strawman. The argument voting-is-bad has been expressed repeatedly in this debate, by various people.
Axel
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com