Well, the funny thing with current system is that if people had voted in
most rational way - i.e. to maximize the impact of their votes - the
results would have been negative for all candidates - as this year none of
them got more than 50% of positive votes. But in fact if all people would
vote in that way - negative votes would be negligible - as the result will
be simple exactly the same as if there will be no "no" votes - in both
methods of calculation :-) What makes negative votes so important is just
because people are not voting in rational way as they have some mental
objections to vote "no". But those brave ones (or smart ones or bad ones)
enough to vote "no" have much higher impact on the results than the others
- which I think is not good by itslef.
By the way would interesting to know how many voters voted only "yes" and
"no", and how many voted "yes" for only one candidate and
"no" for all
others (the most impact for selected candidate).
2015-06-06 19:15 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com>om>:
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:
I have a lot of personal opinions on the method,
questions process, etc.
Many of them will be shared in the committee's post mortem (others I will
be discarding as I now process the last several weeks).
Also, we are beginning to post some statistics that folks may find
helpful:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats
> We will be posting more on the blog
next week about what all goes into
> running the elections, and I am open to feedback on what additional
> information we can share that would be helpful to the community. Our
group
> made an early commitment to transparency, and I hope that has come across
> in our posting of major meeting minutes, posting of these stats, open
> dialogue on Meta and email, a post mortem from the committee, and the
> upcoming blog post.
> Finally, I want to give a big thank
you to my colleagues on the Elections
> Committee. I was, by the nature of my tasks, a bit more visible - but
> please know that everyone worked very hard, did a great job, and deserves
> equal gratitude. Thank you Adrian, Anders, Daniel, Katie, Mardetanha,
> Ruslan, Savh, and Trijnstel - as well as Risker, James, Alice, Philippe,
> Geoff, Stephen, Sylvia, Heather, Tim, and a few others I'm sure I'm
> forgetting.
> -greg (User:Varnent)
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:19 AM, Chris
Keating <
chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Congratulations to the new Board
members - I am sure you will do a great
>> job. And commiserations to those who will be leaving the Board - thank
you
> for all your hard work over many years.
>
> Also it is good to see a much higher turnout in this year's elections
than
>> in 2013 - well done to those involved :)
>>
>> On the subject of voting systems, though...
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Anders Wennersten <
>> mail(a)anderswennersten.se>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > David Cuenca Tudela
skrev den 2015-06-06 09:01:
>>
>> >> However I must
say that the results of this election are hilarious.
The
> >> person with the most support votes
doesn't win because of oppose
votes
> :D
> >>
> >> Why hilarious? We had a full consensus in the election Committee to
go
>> > for S/N/O voting, it is a kind of standard procedure in the Wikimedia
>> world.
>>
>>
>> Many people looked at voting systems before the Wikimedia movement
existed
> and virtually none of them settled on the
system we ended up with.
Perhaps
> this should tell us something!
>
> To my mind the key problems with the present system are:
> 1) Oppose votes have greater weight than support votes. In this case,
Maria
> would have needed 136 additional support
votes to win, or 46 fewer
oppose
> votes. In effect an Oppose vote was worth
2.96 times as much as a
support
> vote for her. As a result, being non-opposed
is much more important than
> being supported. The penalty for doing anything controversial is
> significant.
>
> 2) There is nothing in the process to produce any diversity in the
result.
> Say that there was a 2/3 to 1/3 split in the
electorate on some
important
> issue. The right answer would surely be that
you elect 2 people with one
> view and 1 with the other. However, in this voting system you would
likely
> end up electing 3 people from the majority
point of view. Because the
> Wikimedia movement is much more complex than this it is difficult to
> conclude that there was any particular issue like this that would have
> affected the result, but still, the point applies. The voting system
builds
in
homogeneity not diversity.
Regards,
Chris
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