RationalWiki talk:Moderator elections/Results/Archive3

2012 results
Though which time zone the elections follow isn't specified, if we're going by server time, then the election should be over and voting disabled. If it's not, then could someone specify what time we're using for reference? 03:16, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think RW uses the Julian calendar, but I'm not sure. DickTurpis (talk) 03:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's what I get for following the lunar calendar.  03:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Dude, just use sundials and astrology. so much more accurate! [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 04:08, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Trent's on it. 04:36, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So I've been tuning in to CNN, figuring they'd give this at least as much cover as the Iowa Caucuses, but so far I got bupkis. What gives? DickTurpis (talk) 04:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hanging chads and all that, technical difficulties, asap, ect. Tmtoulouse (talk) 05:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard
How are people with little to no edits or history on this wiki winning election? I am pretty close to giving up. Tmtoulouse (talk)
 * Is this a joke? Osaka Sun (talk) 06:02, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * First thought was "no way." Second thought was "I wonder whose sock they are?"   06:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I can smell the HCM coming. Osaka Sun (talk) 06:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC x5) Either a lot of people wanted to make some sort of statement or there's something fishy afoot. 06:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh no, dirty socks! (Also, I approve of this title very much.) Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:05, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * @Osaka: Batten the hatches.  This is going to be ugly.   06:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Here it comes... Osaka Sun (talk) 06:14, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * @Tmtoulouse: Are you going to post the ballots like you did last time?   06:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)\-


 * I feel worse than bachmann. I came in not only behind other editors i either agree with or disagree with, but a guy named "i hate someone".  wehhh :-)  Now if i just could make my husband have a strange sick grin like Bachmann's did, all would be right with the wrold.--[[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 06:08, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm actually kind of amused that Nx still would've won if the joke candidates hadn't run. It seems being kind of an asshole is no detriment to being elected.  Gives me hope for next time around  :-)   06:14, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * And I didn't even vote for myself. -- Nx  / talk 07:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You should always vote for yourself. If you don't support yourself, why should anyone else?  First Law of Democracy!  02:06, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm the greatest and baddest joke candidate of them all! CRIMINALIZE MARATREANISM!--Colonel Sanders (talk) 17:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait dont freak out yet. Tmtoulouse (talk) 06:13, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The results are my error, I am actually feeling really really shitty tonight and not thinking straight. I am going to sleep and will redo everything in the morning to make sure I don't fuck up again. Repeat; The posted results are completely invalid because of technical error. Tmtoulouse (talk) 06:15, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow. Osaka Sun (talk) 06:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You know that rule that prevents doctors from pulling 72-hour shifts, so they don't make mistakes out of exhaustion? Maybe we need something like that for you  :-)   06:21, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Either that or the rule for pilots: "Eight hours from bottle to throttle." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:26, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Why don't you just post the raw ballot file and let us fight over it? -- Nx  / talk 07:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We should just do this from now on. Scarlet A.pngd hominem 09:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The only problem with your suggestion is that murder is illegal everywhere but Liberia and certain counties in Alabama. 14:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's only murder if you get caught. -- PsyGremlin  14:28, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Do hanging chads count for a person or not? steriletalk 14:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * my personal suggestion is just to randomly assign the position(s) to a new person each day, and tell them, with threat of an IRS (or equlivlent in your country) audit that they shall make no mistakes as leader, or they shall face consequences.  No one ever takes me up on that idea, and every 2 years, we have another election....[[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 16:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's pretty similar to what I suggested here, back in the Loya Jirga days. Nobody seemed very interested.  17:36, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I was being sillys, but that actually has some merit. Ah well. sings queen's "Those were the days of our lives, when bad things in life were so few... those days are all gone now, but one thing's still true"...[[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 17:52, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I know you were being silly, but rotational responsibilities aren't necessarily a bad thing. I think it could have worked for the Loya Jirga model, but that was only supposed to do anything when summoned.  Moderators are supposed to be proactive (at least to some extent) so it couldn't really work in the same way.  Plus there are no bureaucrats anymore, and sysops are still virtually everybody, so there's no ready-made pool of users who can be given responsibilities, as there was when I suggested that (in the days of bureaucrats).   18:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

So...
We have an electoral sytem that many don't understand, and that the bloke running it can't always do right. Switch to something simpler? Rennie McGreet (talk) 18:16, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh god good. a bit soon to be moaning.  he made ONE mistake, and admitted to being tired.  that's hardly "can't always do it right'.  [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 18:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, but the election system is overly dependant on one person to administer almost every aspect of it. The voting didn't start or finish on time, which isn't ideal for a vote of this nature.  This isn't a criticism of Trent, who I know has been busy, but if there's any way of sharing these responsibilities or automating some aspects of the election in the future, we should look into this.  18:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Very much agreed with that. I'm not sure why we are "ranking" our votes.  that seems an extra added problem.  In Colorado, if you are voting for a position that has multiple seats, you vote for as many (or less) as seats are open.  So if there are 5 candidates for 2 seats, you vote for 2.  The candidates with the most votes win.   It's pretty basic, and there's no "weighting" involved which must take some time and math.  [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 18:58, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Tsk, it's not like the missies fly if we don't instantly have all of the correct information posted. C ® ackeЯ
 * No, no, my god, we must have it now!  if we do not the sky shall fall.  I sware.  I've even seen a piece fall right down! [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 19:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Have the results been released and if so where are they?
Thanks. Can't seem to find what it is that people are bitching about above. PintOfStout Talk BRONIES! 18:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Never mind, saw how Trent said they were fucked up. PintOfStout Talk BRONIES! 18:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you want to know what they were, look here-- 18:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Damn, I was looking forward to working with Le Legislateur and Criminalize Maratreanism. (!) 20:02, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey, there's still a chance Trent was right the first time... Osaka Sun (talk) 20:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed, working with Criminalize Maratreanism would be great. Next time Criminalize BrxBrx should run. AceAce For Mod! 20:11, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Release the data! -- Seth Peck (talk) 20:08, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like an even split
Between chill-the-fuck-outers and the good guys-- 23:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * They're pretty much all good guys, AFAIC. Well done, mob. PintOfStout Talk BRONIES! 23:42, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I like this selection. 01:27, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

So we have our new mods
Thanks Tmt. I look forward to working with the other mods. AceAce For Mod! 23:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * When are you going to melt down and start harassment campaigns against other users? And how will that work with the other mods?--  23:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fuck off Brx. AceAce For Mod! 23:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not my fault I don't think you make for a good moderator. You accomplished that all by yourself.--  23:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fuck off Brx. AceAce For Mod! 23:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We work? when did that happen.  I thought this was an election for being prom queen and party king.  what gives....[[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 00:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Brx, while I sympathize with the fact that you are sometimes unfairly picked on (and sometimes fairly picked on, I'll add) you do your cause no credit when you bait people like this. DickTurpis (talk) 00:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Results redux
I apologize for last nights error, there were various causes (a no I was not drunk!) but I was not in a very focused frame of mind. A good nights rest and I am working a bit closer to normal capacity, I have stepped through the process carefully and double-checked everything before posting so these are the results. I need to format the raw ballot so we don't wind up with the confusion from last time and will get that posted soon. Congratulations to the winners, hopefully we can continue to push forward with shaping this community into something we can all enjoy interacting in.

By the way, do we have a set policy on when the new mods take over? I missed a lot of the meta-discussion leading up to this election. Tmtoulouse (talk) 23:42, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure you weren't drunk, suuuuure......Anyways, I look forward to creating some better mod rules (as opposed to community rules). Not sure about when we should start though. AceAce For Mod! 23:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe there is no lame-duck period. 00:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww...I wanted a Dubya!--Colonel Sanders (talk) 00:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * RECESS APPOINTMENTS!!! [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">Godot    Dear god, fucking grow up 00:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, oh yes!--Colonel Sanders (talk) 00:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd be in favor of waiting for the raw ballots to be posted before we go through with promotions. Just in case. DickTurpis (talk) 01:01, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to trust TMT's word for now, so I've added you, Ace, Human & WfGodot to the moderators group & removed myself. If there is any mistake, further changes can be made by any moderator.  I haven't de-modded Nutty, Nx or Pi, as it would feel like a bit of an intrusive thing for me to do, but they should also remove themselves from the group, or be removed by another mod when the ballot details are published & checked.  01:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I seriously doubt there's going to be any issues anyway. DickTurpis (talk) 01:28, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * When do I get my moderator bit, fuckers? Cretinous incompetent (talk) 03:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Quick question
Now that I'm apparently a mod, where's the "have other mods summarily arrested on trumped up charges to be disappeared without a trace and consolidate power making the wiki my own personal fiefdom" button? I don't see it in the sidebar. DickTurpis (talk) 00:58, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Nx is gonna install it, it's a new mediawiki extension. Next time recent changes disappears, that's when you can make your move--  02:17, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Mine is there, Dick. Shut the fuck up, bricks.  And can somebody do something about Nx' self-given rights?  03:03, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Jesus, Human, what is wrong with you?-- 06:21, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't be mean to Human, brx, you'll make him run off to Marcus' blog and write mean stuff about you. <font face="Wild Words"> PsyGremlin  07:51, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You know, I 'm kinda disappointed that there isn't yet an article about me over there...-- 08:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I feel'ya, man. I feel'ya… -- 09:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Good grief, is that turd pile still going? Last time I looked it was wallowing in a sea of red usernames and had no RC. 08:06, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Firstly I'd like to say to Psy - dude, get the fuck over it, build a bridge etc etc. Onwards and upwards and all that. MCWiki is buried, dead and as useless today as it was the day MC vomited it up. Secondly, Brx you keep asking people "What is wrong with you". You have asked so many people now that you should ask what is wrong with yourself as opposed to others. You are disliked, deal with it man. AceAce For Mod! 09:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * [[File:Th_hug.gif]] steriletalk 12:56, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Category
One of the mods, please put this page in Category: RationalWiki moderation. I've added the archive pages, but this one is locked to be edited by mods only. All the other election pages (nominations, campaigning, etc.) & their archives were already in this cat, so I figure this one should be there too. Thanks. 10:11, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. 10:20, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Cheers. 10:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Congrats to all our new Moderators! :-) <font color="#000066">Refugee <font color = "#00F0A20">talk page 19:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Post-election comment....
Wow! Only one of the people I voted for didn't get elected. Everyone else I voted for did. The electees we wound up with are all good choices, in my opinion. A good mix up of various personalities and idealogies, which will probably be a good thing in the end. 15:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Conversely I pretty much picked none of the eventual moderators. I could not have been more wrong in reading the mood of this place, not that it effected the way I voted, but I expected a different outcome. On a related note, when are the raw ballots going to be released so we can have a repeat of the SR meltdown from the last election? I look forward to crunching the numbers myself.Tielec01 (talk) 08:46, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What I like about the mix is that none of our newly elected moderators are of the same cloth. To an extent, it leaves a de-facto system of checks and balances in the system since none of them will see eye-to-eye on every thing in every situation. 13:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I would like to see the raw ballots too. Not that I suspect foul play, more out of curiousity, and also I think it's on the books that raw ballots and a rundown of the STV procedure are supposed to be part of the election process. Turpis 3:16 (talk) 15:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

System change
I'd like to support a change to the voting system.

The voting system we use asks to rate candidates in that "I would prefer x to y" and this means that your preferences are then carried on down in a complicated-seeming manner. Where there is an election which has a political "winner" this may be a very good system. But we are not electing a president and staff - all our moderators are of equal standing so we don't need to know who "wins". We only need to know those people who are felt to be acceptable mods.

I therefore propose the following change. When the list of mods is produced you vote for those you want to be mods and you don't vote for those you don't want to be mods. You can vote for all of them or just one of them if you wish.

The seven people who get the most votes win. No complicated maths and no reworking of the numbers after the event and a result which is understandable to all.--BobSpring is sprung! 15:11, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think this is a bad idea, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle of changing an established process. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Unless we have some indication that the process is broken. Turpis 3:16 (talk) 16:05, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * When the raw data appears, maybe somebody can try recounting it according to Bob's system to see how similar the results would have been (though admittedly this might not be very accurate, since some voters choose to rank everybody in the transferable system whereas they would vote for fewer people in a straight counting system). 22:13, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep in mind that voting systems are now a full blown area of study in major universities and NGOs. There are multiple peer-review journals that publish thousands of articles a year looking at complex simulations, real world examples, and tweaking hundreds of different systems of voting. The goal of any voting system is to assess the preference of the voters and insure that the actual winners reflects the actual preference of the voting population as closely as possible.


 * STV is considered by many to be one of the most robust systems for linking voter preference with election outcome. The method Bob proposes is basically "approval voting" and I could make a list of papers to read if your interested that have worked out why approval voting is actually a fairly bad system for representing preference of voters. I am happy to track down some that are freely available on-line if people want. I also have several in my personal collection I can't publish due to copy right but can share if you e-mail me about it. Approval voting is just not very robust and suffers some serious methodological flaws. If there are hundreds of thousands or millions of ballots some of the issues work themselves out because of the law of averages, but we are dealing with about 60 ballots consistently.


 * OpenSTV is also a very nice tool to handle the elections, and the ballot file that is created is designed to interface with it well. So for technical, practical and theoretical reasons I would argue that the system is good as it stands. If there really is a desire to see the voting method changed I won't flat refuse but would like to see some more discussion and points raised about why we should and to what. Tmtoulouse (talk) 15:38, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, where are the full results? 16:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Requires reformatting to avoid confusion like last time. Soon enough. Tmtoulouse (talk) 16:40, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fine, I didn't mean to pressurise you or anything as I realise you have real-life stuff to deal with. 16:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to briefly describe the methodological flaws?--BobSpring is sprung! 18:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * TMtoulouse, good to see you have awareness of voting systems. Approval Voting has some advantages for single-winner elections, but not necessarily for multiwinner elections. (Approval is an obvious and very simple reform as an improvement over single-winner plurality, and would improve top-two runoff, long story.) Multiwinner, Approval-at-Large can give total control -- all seats -- to a majority faction, sometimes just to a plurality faction. There is another method, Proportional Approval Voting, which is better. STV is, in fact, quite a good method for single-district multiwinner elections, which this was. (STV is lousy for single-winner elections, it's erratic and can pick a winner who would lose in a direct contest, based on the ballots, between the winner and another candidate. "Condorcet failure," and it happens in real elections, it happened in Burlington last time IRV was used there.)


 * There is only one clearly better multiwinner method that I know of, in fact, and that has only been tried experimentally once, AFAIK, even though it was invented by a major STV theoretician, Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), published in about 1883, it's now called Asset Voting, and it can produce perfect proportional representation. It's essentially STV with a tweak: exhausted ballots revert to the candidate in first place, who can recast them to create winners. I won't give all the details here, but it goes way beyond what is ordinarily expected possible with voting systems. (It was reinvented as Asset Voting by Warren Smith in about 2002, having been proposed on the Election Methods mailing list in the 1990s as "Candidate Proxy." Smith's Asset Voting is unnecessarily complex, he's a mathematician with little understanding of what people need.... but very bright in his field.)


 * If you are using STV, you are almost there, the only problem is that voters don't necessarily have the expertise to deeply rank, so you may will see exhausted ballots. Carroll recognized that very problem, and suggested Asset to fix it, since voters do know, usually, who their favorite is. With Asset, voters can just vote for their favorite, assuming they trust that person to make whatever decisions are needed to complete the process. With Asset, the original ballots can be secret, but vote reassignments are public. It is as if a fully representative Electoral College is created, with the candidates holding votes as proxies for the voters who voted for them. No wasted votes, unless they are for someone who fails to participate. TANSTAAFL.


 * A fly in the ointment is that you were not electing a representative assembly, which is what STV or Asset Voting will do well. You are electing a set of officers, effectively, each one of whom can exercise executive authority, independently, so you might not want real proportional representation. I.e., if the Troll Party can muster, say, 12.5%-14.3% of the vote (depends on what winning threshold you pick, Hare or Droop), should one of them have moderator buttons? What you've done is use a method that would create an Assembly or a body like the Wikipedia ArbComm, only better done. (They are effectively using Approval at Large, with all its flaws.) My guess is that what you'd really need would be that deliberative body with defined members, and that you only need a few actual moderators, serving at the pleasure of the deliberative body, replaceable at will. I.e., parliamentary system. On the deliberative body, you want full representation of all users. And there is much more I could offer in terms of organizational and voting systems theory.... --Abd (talk) 21:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Ballots released!
Gotta' love the protest vote for Criminalize Maratrean (candidate #7). 18:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Man, he got as many #1 votes as I did. Are we sure I'm a moderator? Turpis 3:16 (talk) 18:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Most of them are pretty unobjectionable, but I'm really amused at how insane a few ballots' picking orders are. Look at these:
 * Human, Ace, Titus Atticus, CRIMINALIZE MARATREANISM, then ListenerX. (Okay, good, batshit crazy, batshit crazy, good... what?)
 * Maratrean, Lumenos, Titus Atticus, then DickTurpis. (Batshit crazy, batshit crazy, batshit crazy, good.)   18:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It says 50 votes but I count 49. Is that because I used a sock to vote for no one as an experiment? Turpis 3:16 (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * My votes don't appear among those published . . . 01:23, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * & 50 votes doesn't sound that many, considering 85 voted in the first mod election & 60 in the by-election. 01:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have a couple of guesses as to why it's so low (aside from the ballot box malfunctioning). One is that the first election was the result of a massive HCM, so everybody was more interested in it, and we probably won't have a repeat of that for a long time.  The second is that, midway through the voting period, the intercom reminding people to vote (the only universally-seen method of informing people) was replaced with a different message talking about the Board of Trustees   01:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)