User:Happy-melon/sandbox1
Sent 18:03 03-12-2009
Hello all, and thanks for agreeing to fill the roles of scrutineers and election administrators, respectively, for the 2009 Arbitration Committee elections. For reference, there are three election administrators: Mr.Z-man, Tznkai and myself, and six scrutineers: Effeietsanders?, Laaknor, Mardetanha, Thogo, Millosh and Erwin. The election administrators are members of the enwiki community, while the scrutineers are stewards with no connection to enwiki. As these positions give access to information covered by the WMF privacy policy, we are all identified to the Foundation. Collectively, call us the 'election officials', for want of a better phrase.
This email is intended to explain the roles of the two groups in the election process, for those who were not involved with the previous AUSC elections. For those who were, the roles are essentially unchanged.
First, a quick rundown of the extra bells and whistles that election officials have access to. The public voting log at Special:SecurePoll/list/80 is enhanced for us with various checkuser-like data, including IP, User Agent, and XFF headers. The SecurePoll software also flags patterns which may indicate CSRF attacks (where a user views a separate badsite while logged in to wikipedia, and that badsite contains javascript or bad code that silently prompts the browser to vote in the election) and cookie collisions (which may indicate that the user has been the victim of a man in the middle attack). This page also contains the interface to strike and unstrike votes. You need JavaScript enabled to use the strike interface. Clicking on "Strike" changes the icon to "Unstrike", deletes the editor's votes and adds a note to the associated Vote Log (accessible via the details button in the adjacent column).
Secondly, we have access to the translation interface at Special:SecurePoll/translate/80/en, which allows us to change the messages that are displayed on the voting page. For security, these messages are not ordinary MediaWiki: namespace system messages, but are only editable by election officials.
Thirdly, we have access to the election tally at Special:SecurePoll/tally/80, although this will not become accessible until the voting has closed, when it will be automatically enabled by the software.
The primary role of the scrutineers is identical to that in a real-world election: to ensure that the election is properly conducted and that no abuse goes on in the background. This primarily involves ensuring that the election administrators, who have a nominal vested interest, do not commit electoral fraud, for example by striking candidate votes, or by changing election messages to benefit one particular candidate. This latter is particularly relevant because changes to election messages are not logged; there is nothing in principle stopping one of the election administrators from swapping the names of two of the candidates in the final minutes of the election, so that the votes previously cast for candidate A are counted for candidate B. Scrutineers should check regularly that the messages shown on Special:SecurePoll/translate/80/en have not changed, or that any such changes are reasonable.
The other role of the scrutineers is to identify and strike, in collaboration with the enwiki community, votes cast from inelegible voters. Editors who do not meet suffrage criteria of 150 mainspace edits prior to 1 November 2009, are prevented from accessing the voting interface by the software. There is also a real time check for blocked users, who may not vote while a block is in place. However, the criterion that people may only vote once and from one account, cannot be checked by the software. Essentially, scrutineers are searching for sockpuppet accounts which were set up and edited from to gain suffrage, and then used to vote multiple times in the election. You have access to the checkuser-like data in the voting log; clicking on the "details" link brings up a page aggregating other information about the user and the vote. Final discretion on whether to strike a vote lies with the scrutineers.
Once voting is concluded and all inelegible votes have been struck, the scrutineers should satisfy themselves as far as possible that the votes have been counted correctly, by reconciling the number of people voting (available via Special:SecurePoll/list/80), with the results shown on the tally screen. They should agree on, publish, and certify, the election results on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009#Results and inform Jimbo Wales and the sitting Arbitration Committee of the results. Once the results have been published, no further vote striking should take place.
The role of the election administrators is to interface with the enwiki community over the election, to maintain the vote pages and, where appropriate, make alterations to the interface messages. Election administrators should not strike or unstrike votes.
I hope this clarifies the roles and responsibilities you have signed up for. If you have any further questions, please get in touch, and thanks once again for being willing to help in this capacity. Many thanks also to Roger Davies, for forwarding me his notes from the AUSC elections, and for generally getting this election off the ground.
--HM
User:Happy-melon on all Wikimedia projects Volunteer Administrator, Oversight and MediaWiki Developer
Sent 00:02 15-12-2009
The elections have now closed, and the scrutineering phase of the election should now begin, if you haven't started peeking already. The scrutineers should take whatever time is required to identify and strike, in collaboration with the enwiki community, votes cast from inelegible voters. Editors who do not meet suffrage criteria of 150 mainspace edits prior to 1 November 2009, are prevented from accessing the voting interface by the software. There is also a real time check for blocked users, who may not vote while a block is in place. However, the criterion that people may only vote once and from one account, cannot be checked by the software. Essentially, scrutineers are searching for sockpuppet accounts which were set up and edited from to gain suffrage, and then used to vote multiple times in the election. You have access to the checkuser-like data in the voting log; clicking on the "details" link brings up a page aggregating other information about the user and the vote. Final discretion on whether to strike a vote lies with the scrutineers.
Once all inelegible votes have been struck, the scrutineers should satisfy themselves as far as possible that the votes have been counted correctly, by reconciling the number of people voting (available via Special:SecurePoll/list/80), with the results shown on the tally screen. They should agree on, publish, and certify, the election results on Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009#Results and inform Jimbo Wales and the sitting Arbitration Committee of the results. Once the results have been published, no further vote striking should take place.
A draft results table that you may wish to use as the format for this year's announcement is available [1]. The candidates are listed alphabetically, with sortable columns. There is sample data in the first row, which should be removed.
Many thanks once again for your help with these elections,
--HM