Talk:Standing Election Committee

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

I fimd this to be an excellent proposal that have my support in all its different parts.Anders Wennersten (talk) 15:35, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Voting System[edit]

The report says:

It is very unrealistic to expect the committee to set up the analysis of external voting systems; the last time that a committee was allowed to do that, they decided to use the single-successful-candidate version of the Schulze system, which is specifically not designed to produce multiple successful candidates and is ridiculously complex to understand. It's the kind of voting system that people obsessed with voting systems come up with, not the kind of system that people wanting to ensure good voter understanding and participation would select.

Actually, also this year's Support/Neutral/Oppose voting system is "not designed to produce multiple successful candidates". Furthermore, I believe that the result of a Condorcet method is easy to understand when the pairwise matrix is posted. Furthermore, the participation dropped from 3368 valid ballots in 2011 (when the Schulze method was used) to 1809 valid ballots in 2013 (when Support/Neutral/Oppose voting was used). Markus Schulze (talk) 16:14, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Markus, I agree that the Support/Oppose/Neutral system was not ideal, but at least voters understood it, and the results were straightforward and did not require extensive computer programming to calculate. It is far more likely that the complexity of the ballot (because we had to do three elections on a single ballot) and the huge number of candidates, as well as decreased activity and interest on the largest and most "meta-focused" projects, and the fact that the election was delayed for a week because of technical problems, had to do with the reduced votes. Risker (talk) 16:24, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's possible to state what's more likely. As for delays, we had some in the past, so maybe we could check precedents. As for the voting system, the one chosen this year is more complex to use (requires tactical voting to get the indended results) and poses an higher burden/knowledge requirement/information cost on voters (whatever you vote, you're judging all candidates at once, which is a big problem if you don't know them all; while with Schulze you're only requested to do a "local" evaluation with your limited knowledge, e.g. ranking the two candidates you know without saying anything on those you don't know), so it's not unreasonable to think it might have reduced participation. Though for sure there are other reasons that no election committee can address. --Nemo 21:04, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Qualitatively, I can tell you that we received far fewer "i'm confused, how does this system work" questions/comments through the election this year. That could also represent the diminished number of voters, but I really got the feeling that the number of people who engage in tactical voting is very small, and most people sort of grok'd the system. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What have they done with it? --MF-W 23:42, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think Philippe meant that that most people inherently understood the effects of their vote using the S/N/O system better than they understood the effects of their vote (or non-vote) using the Schulze system. Risker (talk) 00:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion is the same. Having read about the differences between the two election systems [when the election this year happened], I felt that my vote would likely have more the effect I intended if Schulze's method had been used instead of simply Support/Oppose. --MF-W 23:42, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The comments above all indicate the need for a group to evaluate a range of available voting methodologies. One of the issues that arose with the Schulze system is that there is no effective way to actually oppose a candidate whom one believes is likely to be harmful if elected, and many complained of its complexity. At the same time, many voters would like the opportunity to rank candidates or to weight their votes. There is no voting method that is going to satisfy everyone, but the way that election committees have been set up over the last several elections, there has been no opportunity to evaluate different systems, or to write and test the necessary software to expand the range of options available. Risker (talk) 00:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FDC Election frequency[edit]

As per Framework, the election for FDC is done every alternate year not every year. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is certainly the current framework. The challenge is that it means holding a very large and complex election to select individuals for the Board, the FDC and the FDC Ombud, which is very onerous on voters. The Board can alter the framework if it wishes. It can also alter the time for selecting its own community-selected members. Risker (talk) 05:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]