[WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

[geni]

On 5/4/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
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> geni wrote:
> > On 5/4/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I'd think this counts as a disruption of the normal workings of afd
> >> and is blockable on those grounds.   Isn't this exactly why we were so
> >> concerned about userboxes - to prevent this sort of thing from
> >> happening?
> >
> > That would depend on which set of claims you belived.
> >
> > In any case it appears at least one of the people used a list compiled
> > from past AFD votes.
>
> Well, specifically, a list of all of the people who had voted Delete in
> the previous vote.  That user made no attempt to notify any of the Keep
> voters.  It's this kind of selective voting recruitment (aka
> vote-stacking) that is so harmful to Wikipedia.  When I canceled that
> Afd it was leaning heavily towards Delete, but that was only because two
> Delete vote-stackers had been out campaigning heavily and there was only
> one Keep vote-stacker who had just begun operations.  The end result
> would've just been another no consensus once both sides were "properly"
> marshaled.
>

And the problem with that is?

> The kind of actions I'm describing here are pretty clearly disruptive
> and work against the policies we have in place for deciding issues.
> It's extremely harmful.  Note that the ArbCom has already come out
> against vote-stacking, in one form or another, in three separate instances:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/IZAK
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Guanaco%2C_MarkSweep%2C_et_al
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Jason_Gastrich
>

Arbcom can to a large degree do what it likes. Votestacking is hard to
define. If I post a notice to the rational skecpticism wikiproject
about a AFD of some alt med article is that vote stacking?

> In the past many blocks have been issued to deal with these issues.  Yet
> suddenly we're running into a lot of resistance from people who are
> saying it isn't explicitly listed in policy.  Well, since policy is
> simply a written-down version of what happens in practice, we need to
> modify policy.  The only single diehard policy is "Wikipedia is an
> encyclopedia",

Wrong. NPOV is hard policy.

> and it's pretty clear that these vote-stacking campaigns
> I've been describing go against that ultimate goal of making the best
> encyclopedia we can.
>

Nah not really. They tend to nullify themselves quite effectively.

--
geni