Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006

This is the page for discussing the voting procedure and other aspects of the arbcom election

Voting System

This year's (RFA based)

I don't think this will scale too well and there is still the problem that votes are visible.Geni 01:32, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

While I agree there are some possible issues with public voting, I didn't see them as a problem in any way in the 2006 election. I'm not opposed to keeping public voting for the next election. Ral315 (talk) 08:53, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I didn't vote at all in the last election because I think that open elections can cause problems. A lot of candidates dropped out mid-race. And there seemed to be some bickering IIRC. Boardvote seems to me to be a much better solution. — Ilyanep (Talk) 21:25, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Bad bad bad idea. [ælfəks] 05:55, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Previous system (using Special:Boardvote)

Much better. Votes are hidden for one thing. [ælfəks] 05:55, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

jimbo thinks otherwise.Geni 12:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think Boardvote is the way to go and here's why

1. Anon, no flame wars over who voted for who / no hurt feelings / loss of trust / etc
2. Technical measure to prevent duplicate voting
3. Overall easier interface for everyone

--Tawker 06:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Does anybody know why Jimbo prefers visible votes? Kusma (討論) 08:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

With open voting the entire community can serve as election officials, being able to input on duplicate votes/members failing to meet sufferage, and other issues. With closed, we have to enlist election officials to handle all of this, not even looking at the transparency issue. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

If the usernames of people who have votes are public as in the Board elections, the community can check for duplicate votes and suffrage. The amount of transparency offered in the board elections was sufficient for me, and I would definitely prefer a secret ballot. As the ArbCom is elected and not discussed and decided by consensus, let us run proper elections. Kusma (討論) 11:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's true since Jimbo theoretically has a lot of discression in how closely to follow the exact election ranking, so he may find the reasoning behind votes usefull. As a practial matter though, there seems to be a fair amount of sentiment in favour of a secret ballot. I would suggest a highly publicized straw poll in order to gauge consensus on whether we should change the system or not. It should be started fairly soon if we want to have the process ready by December. I propose

• The same system as last year: An Rfa style ballot in which each voter can vote support or oppose on each candidate. All candidates with >50% support (i.e. as many supports as opposes) are eligible for appointment to ArbCom.
• A secret ballot using Special:Boardvote: Aproval voting in which voters either support a candidate or do not. No limit on how many candidates a voter can support. The ten (?) candidates with the highest level of support are eligible for appointment to ArbCom.

Eluchil404 14:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I also support this, though I'd like a discussion page of some sort where we can...discuss...and possibly ask candidates questions like on RfA ST47Talk 15:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

We do have question-and-answer pages for each candidate. On the candidate statements page, under each candidate's statement is a list to his or her question page. Newyorkbrad 17:23, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

yeah, i just stumbled over this page and hadn't seen that yet. ST47Talk 18:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Decision needed

Can we please hurry up and decide whether to use Special:Boardvote or not? If Jimbo has objections, can he please post them here? If we need election officials, can we recruit some here? My current thought is that if we use the RFA system I shall boycott the elections and petition others to do likewise. [ælfəks] 05:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection in principle to a secret ballot, but the standard wiki voting system is much more in line with our traditions and appears to produce better results. When we used Special:BoardVote, we saw a significant amount of trolling and negative campaigning. With the wiki system, we get much better behavior. Additionally, even though Special:BoardVote is theoretically "approval voting", the fact of the matter is that people have tended to use it incorrectly (in my opinion) leading to very low rates of approval. Wiki voting tends to produce high levels of support, and this is important for the confidence and credibility of the committee. We can use the same system as last year again this year, so that we can get things moving quickly, and then after that, we can talk about possible alternatives going forward.--Jimbo Wales 18:56, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Suffrage for voters

3 months and 150 edits last time. I suggest bringing the edit count down to 100.Geni 17:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I suggest raising it to 3 months and 300 edits. Vandalfighting animated tools now make it easier to rack up a lot of edits without getting any experience... ++Lar: t/c 19:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not too concerned about that. I'm more interested in makeing it hard to use sleeper accounts for voteing manipulation.Geni 20:01, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Sleeper accounts can use such tools too. [ælfəks] 05:56, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

perhaps but at least we got some useful work out of them in that case.Geni 14:24, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Back to one colon. How are edits counted? I am a newish user (April) and have 200 edits, but only of about 30 - 40 pages. Am I eligible to vote? Jd2718 22:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Total edits. ST47Talk 22:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Voting should be raised to 150. Makes em' learn how to use the system.--The Fourth Swordsman 22:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Eligibility for candidacy

1000 edits minium. Doesn't effect those with any real chance and limits the election to those who can form a reasonable assment of their chances.Geni 01:32, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I dont think there should be any sufferage for candidacy at all, voting yes, but for the candidates keep it open. Mike _{(T C)} 01:44, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't scale with the RFA style elections. Firstly it takes effort to set up each voteing page and secondly we got complaints from voters about wasteing thier time on people with zero chance. From the candidate POV it was pretty clear that a number of those with low edit counts didn't realise they didn't have a chance.Geni 02:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Could we limit eligibility to candidates with 1000 edits minimum (or thereabouts, per Geni) or to candidates who are nominated by editors with those qualifications? Of course, the utility of such a scheme would be scuttled by one person who feels that we should 'just give everyone a chance', which would leave us back where we started—scores of hopeless candidates.

Perhaps a two-stage process?

• Stage one. Candidates put forward their names and a candidate statement. Editors may support the nominations only; there would be no oppose votes. Candidates would have to receive a minimum of ten (five? twenty? x?) nominations from individuals meeting some suffrage requirement to proceed to stage two. This would also be an excellent time for seasoned editors to encourage unlikely-to-succeed candidates to withdraw.
• Stage two. All candidates who receive the required number of nominations would be eligible (but not required) to participate in the full elections.

This mimics the common election practice of requiring nominators to support candidates for office before those candidates get their names on the ballot. It would also provide opportunities for candidates to gracefully bow out, be screened out, or to rethink their approach.

It cuts down on the time spent reading up on hopeless candidates—individuals who can't drum up support to clear the nomination threshold aren't going to make it in the general election. As the 'shoo-in' candidates clear the nomination bar in stage one, their nominations can be flagged to again reduce the amount of reading that nominators will have to do. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot. — Ilyanep (Talk) 21:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

If the voters find it wasteful to look at candidacies with no chance, and everyone with less than 1000 edits has no chance, then just include an edit count in the table of candidates and the voters can ignore people as needed. I don't see that this problem has to be resolved by any sort of central policy, especially one that requires us to speculate (needlessly) as to the minimum requirements for a viable candidacy. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:45, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

We know from the results last time what the minium edit requirement is (around 3000). Read Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2006/Vote for the various problems non chance candidates cause.Geni 08:21, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

At a minimum, I think candidacy requirements should be equal to voting requirements. What's the point of allowing their candidacy if they can't even vote on others' candidacies? Not sure about a minimum number of edits as high as 1,000, but certainly we should cut off at around the 3 month/150 edit mark. Ral315 (talk) 08:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. If you can't vote for someone, you shouldn't be able to be voted for. (Apologies for the horrible grammar.) Someone who has edited a bit and is still around after 3 months is far more likely to know what they are getting themselves into than, for example, either an inactive 3 month old account or a one-week old account with 150 edits. I would like to see if there is consensus for this before moving on. If there is no consensus for any qualifications for candidacy, and I believe that this is the bottom of suggestions, then there is no point in proposals based on actual voting behavior, such as "must have been an administrator for at least three months". - BanyanTree 20:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you really suggesting that there be a minimum number of edits to vote. (Of wich I stongley disagree, but will save my argument until someone confirms that is the idea) I do not think it is fair to have a minimum number of edits to run. Have you ver heard of a country that requires someone to work for 10 years so they have "experience" before they can run in an election?? I agree with Christopher Parham, noting the number of edits is the best way to go. (like RfA) And is it just me or is this a huge cas of Meta:Editcountitis, which says counting edits is to be avoided??? Please read that before continuingFlying Canuck 17:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

In the US, you must be 35 years old to run, and have been a natural born citizen. Well 1000 edits is our way of saying that you must be 35 years old. — Ilyanep (Talk) 21:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

150 edits last time. With the number of sleeper accounts around it is nessacery. Arbcom need quite a high level of knowlage about wikipedia. I doubt there are many people with 150 edits who have that and in any case they are going to have a hard time getting votes. Sometimes pragmatism has to overule idology.Geni 18:09, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

But if we just let people run regardless of their edit count, we can have our ideology with no costs to the pragmatists. Anybody can run (and theoretically win if the community and Jimbo find them qualified), while voters who feel that low-edit count candidates are no-hopers can simply refrain from looking at those candidates. (Admittedly this presumes that voters are capable of looking at a number next to a candidates name and checking if it is greater than whatever their standard is.) I don't see what the problem is with this solution. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

No cost? Someone has to set up the election page. We had 68 candidates last time. This time without some restiction it is likely to be 100.Geni 17:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

How about whoever feel like running regardless of time, or edit counts? Let's a have another rule, no badgering the voters with so called disruption votes, and all yes, and all no votes should be counted, as well as a rule allow for no answers needs to be given? --Masssiveego 09:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I very much agree that there is absolutely no need for any minimum requirements. I don't think that will bring any gain, and will just be extra rules and regulations. Let anybody who feels like running run. I see no problem with people dropping out of the race, be that even half of the people.

Besides, people have been saying that edit count is a bad metric. While it has some value in judging admin candidates, ArbCom elections are serious enough that I think one should allow people to candidate based on other standards, or even better, none at all. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Nod. My standards and evaluations weren't purely edit count driven by any means. But I probably fit the "2000-3000 edit cutoff --> probably not a viable candidate metric" being batted about. ++Lar: t/c 14:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that the requirements for candidate should be "X edits before the 20th of September" rather than "X edits", to prevent newbies from rushing to this threshold. As for value of X, I agree that it should be at least 150. Conscious 06:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Candidacy only through nomination

How about this? Personally, I find the concept of self-nomination both highly distasteful, and leads to, as Geni says, an excess of problems with people putting their names forward without a "snowball's chance in hell", as it were. Just an idea. James F. (talk) 15:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I like TenofAllTrades' idea up there. — Ilyanep (Talk) 21:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The TenofAllTrades approach is not bad at all, but adds a lot of process, doesn't it? This may be somewhat less process but still have a filtering effect. (but you have to put sufferage SOMEWHERE or new user A just gets nominated by new user B and we're back to the same situation except we had more process to get there)... ++Lar: t/c 19:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

TenofAllTrades' idea is very time, process and rescource heavy. I've never been happy about the idea of nominations. In any case most of the snowball candiates were very new. Even a fairly low entry requirement should be enough to make sure that the people running have a reasonable idea of their chances.Geni 20:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Right. The simpler the procedures are kept, the better. Let anybody who feels like running run, no need for nominations, etc. In several days after the voting starts half of the candidates will drop or get very bad percentages (support divided by total). After that, one may start thinking seriously on whom to support from the top 10-20 candidates. Least effort this way. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

are you volenteering to set up a 100 odd voteing pages?Geni 13:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

He has bots. So do lots of other people. If candidates sign up with just their userIDs, running a bot to create whatever structure is needed (including fetching edit count info and time on wiki info and all the other good stuff... most of which you get with templates already anyway) is work, yes, but not THAT much work. Heck I could probably do it and I'm not actually very good with code. I expect someone will volunteer once the requirements are clear, we have time for that yet. So.. not a showstopper, IMHO ++Lar: t/c 14:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

But still - it's a lot of work for the voters to sort through all the candidates. I'd be fine with a minimum edit count of 1000 (or even 2000 or 3000). No-one with less than that has any realistic chance and will be spared humiliation. But requiring nominations is just extra work which is hard to oversee. Haukur 13:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea to reduce the number of candidates just because Joe the voter will be overwhelmed. Besides, I don't think voters need to examine _all_ the candidates. Wikipedia's hive mind will quickly reduce the number of serious candidates to a handful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:13, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the number of candidates starting the process matters overmuch (although there is certainly no problem with giving them a realistic appraisal of chances of success, since nobody with under a few thousand edits is likely to get through), I think what needs to be done is to encourage people to withdraw once it is clear that they will not pass, and remove these from the main election page. If we can make the main campaign page just a list of names and current tally (or names, brief statement and current tally) - i.e. keep the long lists of sigs in a <noinclude> - and as I say encourage people to drop out to keep numbers down, that should achieve all we need to achieve. Anything else is vulnerable to end up as instruction creep. But I speak as one who does not consider the current process broken, just a bit unwieldy at times. Just zis Guy you know? 10:21, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I also like TenofAllTrades' nomination idea, slightly altered. You submit your name, and once you get ten people who nominate you, we pull your name and add you to the official candidate list. This prevents the spectacle of some popular people receiving 100+ nominations, while also politely rejecting those who have no real support in the community. NoSeptember ^talk 16:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Rather buracratic and rescource intensive.Geni 10:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Geni. Haukur 10:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Status of the elections?

As someone recently noted on the administrators' noticeboard, we seem to be a bit behind schedule here. The page indicates that candidate statements may be posted as of October 1 and the election will be held in December, but there are no statements posted and it appears the election rules have not yet been finalized. What is the current status and plan? Also, is there any indication whether the current ArbCom members whose terms are about to expire intend to run for re-election? Thanks, Newyorkbrad 20:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Currently the elections will be run in a simlar way to last year. Problem is that everyone except Jimbo thinks that way sucks but there isn't much we can do about that. No idea if which if any arbcom members will run.Geni 21:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think things sucked that much last year. OK, the devil may be in the details, but that open vote with support/oppose was definitely much better than the closed vote with supports only for the Wikimedia foundation. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Where should I look for the answers to these questions?

*How many positions are up for election?

*Are all the retiring arbitrators eligible for re-election?

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 17:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Some information can be found here. It appears there are five seats to be filled and retiring arbitrators may run for reelection. The seats to be filled are currently occupied by Jayjg, the Epopt (Sean Barrett), Theresa Knott, Sam Korn, and one vacancy. Newyorkbrad 18:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

By way of update, Theresa Knott has stated on her talkpage that for time reasons, she is not going to run for re-election to ArbCom this year. The others either haven't decided (that I know of) or haven't responded yet. Newyorkbrad 05:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The Epopt now has also announced he's not running again. Newyorkbrad 00:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

And to be pedantic, I'm assuming that arbitrators currently in place in another tranche can't run for a seat on this tranche. Well, they could resign their seat and run in this election, but that would be silly. </pedantry> Carcharoth 11:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll deal with that problem if it happens. most likely just leave it up to the electorate.Geni 11:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm somewhat bemused about this myself. Apparently statements have been accepted since about a month ago, but as long as the page says "Note this is not a final version" it doesn't seem rational to submit a statement - and currently there aren't any. Presumably there'll be a "ready, set, go" moment when the page is finalised, and it becomes widely advertised that statements are being accepted - any idea when? Tomorrow will be a month until the deadline for self-nominations. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 03:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Goiing by past experence. the version will be finalised about 15 mins before the start of voteing. Things are unlikely to chnage that much (special:boardvote is unlikely to be used).Geni 00:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

What the positions involve

Can someone provide links to pages describing the positions, what they involve, and how long the terms are? Apologies if this is all already written in planning documents, but just not made public yet. Also, can someone clarify how current ArbCom cases are handled in the period of transfer when current members stand down and newly elected members take up their posts? Thanks. Carcharoth 10:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added links to last years signpost series that should provide some info.Geni 12:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Number of seats

Do we want to increase the number of seats on the committee? The committee isn't always at full strength and maybe we need to expand a little more. I can't see any harm in adding another three seats, increasing the number up for election to 8. That would increase the committee to 17 and make it an odd number, a good idea in my mind for decision making committees. Steve block Talk 15:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

A little late to disscuss that one I feel.Geni 16:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The committee at full strength is 15 members (there is currently one vacancy that is one of the seats being filled in this election), so there is already an odd number of members (and in any event, it doesn't matter that much whether the number is even or odd, because it never happens that all the ArbCom members sit in any given case). Newyorkbrad 17:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I missed the vacant seat when I counted up at the committee page. I don't see that it's too late to discuss it since the page states "the number of seats that will be up for election is unknown but will probably be at least 5". I'd say it's too late when voting starts. So, given the committee is rarely at full strength, is expansion in order? Steve block Talk 20:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It's unknown because I don't know how many people will retire before their term is up. We expanded arbcom last year.Geni 20:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Expansion would also be something that current arbitrators might have views on. Is their workload too much? Would they welcome an expansion? If something like this was really needed, I think it would have been suggested before now. Carcharoth 13:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I suspect it's all up to Jimbo. Last year he increased the number of seats from 12 to 15 without any prior announcement or consultation. I suspect 15 is near the maximum practical number, but if there are more highly supported candidates then there are seats, he could conceivable do it again. Thatcher131 18:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

If there were further increases, they would be in multiples of three (one extra arbitrator per tranche). Fifteen could very well be near the upper practical limit for the current system where all active arbitrators hear every case. --bainer (talk) 09:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Bainer is probably right that if the number of Arbitors be extended to 18 or 21 it would make sense to split duties so that each member is assigned to only certain cases. I'd say 21, random assignment by senior member, each hear 50% or cases; but such a system may not be in the cards. Though it might be worth discussion as the caseload is likely to be increasing for the forseeable future. Seperately though, I see that there has been a vacancy on the arbcom since February only a month after the last election. If Jimbo didn't appoint anyone to that slot (as my reading of the election procedures suggests he could have), he presumably won't appoint anyone to fill vacancies in the coming year. Thus only five slots are likely to be filled based on these results unless someone without an expiring term resigns before the end of the year. Eluchil404 12:14, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

One thing I'm confused about. With the ongoing reorganisation of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, and Jimbo stepping down as Chair (see here), how does that impact Jimbo's relationship with the en wikipedia and its ArbCom? From the above, it sounds like business as usual, but I'm not sure. Carcharoth 06:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Tidbit of information at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Emeritus. Carcharoth 06:21, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The general opinion apears to be that it is irrelivant see here.Geni 19:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That explains a lot for those of us who don't follow the mailing lists. Carcharoth 20:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

From my reading of that thread, the situation seems to be "normal level of clarity, to wit mud-like". Is there a centralised discussion of this anywhere, either on the (en) mailing list, or on-wiki, or just brushfire outbreaks of confusion and doubt? Call me a dangerous radical, but I'm of the view that a) the election should be just that, an election, not "voting followed by semi-correlated appointments"; and b) the terms of same should be made explicit in advance, rather than declaring the numbers of vacancies/appointments after the fact, which is an extension of the above "not an election" practices. In the worst case, if JW is declared to have "reserve powers" by the WMF (or by the community, or as seems likely, by himself, recursively), at least have the provisions for "vetos" or "captain's picks" made expressly and explicitly in advance, not after the fact tinkering. Alai 06:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)