[Wikipedia-l] Methods of electing an arbitration committée

[Michael Snow]

habj wrote:

> 2006/9/19, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
>> They didn't. The last election was an open and publicly visible vote,
>> and possibly the most acrimonious possible method of running it.
>
> English Wikipedia has used a more or less modified version of the 
> BoardVote
> software at least once
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_July_2004 
>
> and as it looks to me actually twice
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2004 
>
> Maybe someone who knows the whereabouts of elections to enwikis arb 
> com can
> tell us the story of how enwiki, as it seems, decided to have secret 
> ballots
> in elections to arb com, used it a couple of times and then abandoned it?
>
> What are the conclusions after the last round of elections at enwiki,
> regarding the method?

The use of the Boardvote software was dropped for the last election 
because a significant concern about the Arbitration Committee was the 
lack of majority support from voters. That is to say, since voters could 
vote for as many or as few candidates as they wished, only one candidate 
received more than 50% of the vote. In order to fill seven open seats, 
you had to go down to candidates who received only 31% of the vote. The 
publicly conducted vote more closely resembled requests for adminship 
and ensured that quite a large number of candidates received majority 
support, because those who did not explicitly vote on a candidate were 
not counted in that person's totals.

Regarding the acrimony involved, David's characterization is not 
unreasonable, although I would point out that the previous election was 
also acrimonious. However, that manifested itself during the campaign 
via endorsements and "disendorsements", instead of directly during the 
voting process.

I still think the secret ballot has considerable merit to it. However, I 
also appreciate the importance of the winning candidates enjoying 
majority support. This can be accomplished without completely 
overhauling how we conduct elections.

Personally, I would support changing the interface to allow for people 
to vote Yes or No on each individual candidate, and to only count their 
ballot as to that candidate if they choose one of these. In other words, 
in the current board election, I'd have the ability to vote for AaronSw, 
against Alex756, and not vote at all regarding Arno Lagrange (example 
unrelated to how I actually voted). Candidates would be chosen on the 
basis of percentages rather than raw vote totals. A minimum vote total 
might be set to prevent surprise victories by obscure candidates, 
although I suspect that enough people would vote against unknowns that 
this isn't really necessary.

--Michael Snow