[Wikimedia-l] Voting system (was: Results of 2015 WMF Board elections)

Moving this discussion into a separate thread, to leave the main one for best wishes and similar :) Before I start talking about the voting system itself, I have to say that, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't imagine better outcome: a Polish steward (my favorite Wikimedian group :) ), a Croat founder of Wikidata (whom I consider as a friend) and a very prominent English Wikipedian, with significant record of working with smaller languages (BTW, I didn't know that he's a candidate till I saw the results; I didn't vote, as I still don't think I am able to make informed decision; useful note: one year out of movement requires more than one year to be able to fully participate again). When I read the results for the first time, I thought that it's about structural changes. However, it was not. Present Board members were just punished as present board members (some people will always object your work) with negative votes, as well as Sj was punished with lack of positive votes because of his laziness :P The problem is obviously the voting system. And it's one more reason why standing committee should be created. With more time, they would know why it's perfect for stewards and why it isn't for any kind of democratic representatives (including English Wikipedia ArbCom; as far as I remember, this is exactly the method how en.wp ArbCom is elected). Stewards have to be trusted all over the projects and 80% threshold follows that idea. However, stewards are not reelected, they have to show to that they are doing good job and there is the space for those who are doing important, but not visible job. Bottom line is that stewards themselves decide if somebody would stay a steward or not. (If there were objections from the community.) And stewards are doing that job perfectly. It should be also noted that stewards are elected managers, not democratic representatives, which Board members and en.wp ArbCom members are. This system is bad because of two main reasons: (1) it isn't suitable for electing democratic representatives; and (2) it's very vulnerable to abuse, which could easily create negative culture. Applying this to the democratic elections consistently means one of two things: we want to have conformists in the Board or we want to change Board members every two years. I hope the first is not our idea. The second could be, but two years in office is too short period of time for a Board member to do anything substantially. So, this method would be a valid one if the term of a Board member would be, let's say, four years. The output of the elections is not democratic, as well. It's obvious that Maria got the most support and it's 5% more than the first one, as well as Phoebe had more support than the second one. While I think that opposing votes are important, they shouldn't be *that* important. Successful candidate had to gather 3 supporting votes for every opposing one. If the supporting and opposing votes have the same weight, it would be more fair. With the formula S-O, the results would be: 1) Dariusz: 2028-556=1472 2) Maria: 2184-775=1409 3) Phoebe: 1995-714=1281 4) James: 1857-578=1279 5) Denny: 1628-544=1084 And the results would be much more according to the expressed will of the community: Dariusz is well respected steward and community has given him a lot of support, and as he is a new candidate he didn't do anything which would annoy a part of the community. Maria had significant opposition, but also the biggest number of supporters, which has to be acknowledged. Phoebe and James would have been very close, while Denny wouldn't reach support threshold. If one opposing vote has weight of three supporting votes, this could easily change the strategy of the groups interested to see one of their candidates as Board members. Instead of "vote for", we'd get "vote against" attitude. That's not just abusive toward the system, but also creates negative atmosphere, where candidates and supporting groups could start looking into each other as enemies, not as fellow Wikimedians. So, while the current voting system has given refreshing results, it would be bad to keep it as it's now. To be honest, I would avoid negative votes at all, as I am sure that even more fair system would be implemented, if it contains negative votes next time, we'll get much more negative votes than this time, with negative consequences for our culture. On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 2:16 PM, Gregory Varnum <gregory.varnum(a)gmail.com> wrote: