Is there ... an explanation which explains what it all
means?
It's an attempted improvement on the policy survey at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey
"A survey about the importance of various policy issues ... given the
highest priority by our community."
If you are having trouble working the preference ballot at
http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft
then please try the demonstration, instructions, and background
material at
http://demochoice.org/
The ranked-preference ballot makes respondents consider choices
pairwise, which has an accuracy advantage over approval (yes or no to
each) or Likert scale (e.g. 1 "strongly agree" to 5 "strongly
disagree") responses when respondents are not familiar with all the
options. Approval on an issues survey can have problems with
relatively disproportionate numbers of responses with only a few
options or all or almost all options selected, and the Likert scale
gets fewer responses on issues less familiar to respondents than
ranking.
Best regards,
James