RationalWiki:Moderator elections/Campaigning

Please remember to keep RationalWiki:Moderators in mind when making serious proposals as to what you want to do as a Mod. Please sign your posts as normal. This is a discussion space! You can check the archives for what crazy shit people said in previous years.

A few voter pointers
For our users who are appalled by the US Electoral Collage System, it may be edifying to point out that the order in which you vote for the candidates does indeed matter very much. At first I thought the system used on this wiki was not unusual, except that it is weighted in favor of proportional representation. I find the following example instructive:

Suppose four members are running for one of three positions as representatives in a small organization and 27 total members vote. The candidates are W, X, Y, and Z. The first three candidates' followers are equally divided for first place votes, that is each receives 9 votes and so W, X, and Y are elected. This can happen if for some reason candidate Z is either unable to vote or out of some sentiment decides to vote for X or Y. Now here is the interesting part: if every voter voted for Z as their second or third choice and W was the fourth choice on every ballot not naming W as the first choice then, although Z was not elected, everyone who voted thought Z should be elected and W would be elected despite two thirds of the voters having rejected W as a preferred candidate.

The moral of this tale is, under this system, candidates should always vote for themselves first if they hope to be elected. In addition, if one wishes to replace an incumbent with a new comer, one should push the non-incumbent towards the top of the list of preferable candidates, rather than adding them on at the tail end of the ballot. UncleKrampus (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok...thanks for the information. Andrew5 (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This hurts my parliamentarian brain. Thank you for the explanation. Kntai (talk) 12:02, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I actually omitted voting for myself in the first few elections iirc because I thought voting for yourself made yourself look bad the same way how people react with "like" to their own posts look stupid. Haha! 03:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes. Well, it is nevertheless a classy thing to do (if I do say so myself).Ariel31459 (talk) 18:47, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * if you dont vote yourself, why should any one else? lead by example. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:57, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Question
I take it that the reason there's all this convoluted nonsense (no offence) for voting is for secrecy, right? I was gonna ask why votes aren't just held out in the open (it's less maintenance that way for one), but then I realized I would be asking a stupid question. Vee (talk) 16:15, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
 * It's more because this way we can easily use single transferable vote. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 16:24, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
 * This is the equivalent of Wikipedia’s ArbCom elections, which is also private. Also, what Rabbits said is 100% true. Andrew5 mobile (talk) 18:34, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
 * To be clear: a list of who voted is published along with the results, but you don’t see which user cast which vote. I think we started doing that after some “voter fraud” allegations in 2018. Christopher (talk) 18:45, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
 * A bit more detail as someone who has been a ballot reader: STV is a pretty complex voting system from a technical perspective. It's easy enough to understand as a user ("vote for who you like the most in ranking order"), but the technical implementation to determine the results is quite messy. As for the secrecy - it's partially incidental, partially just good form. A good democratic system allows for secret votes that are validated correctly so that they cannot be unduly influenced by outside groups. With real life, this usually takes the form of someones boss trying to force people to vote a certain way. For the wiki... the site can be somewhat prone to passive opinion cliques forming. Keeping the votes for the most direct power granting positions on the wiki (mods and the RWF board) semi-secret (we can actually cross-reference votes to users if we wanted to if there's a potential for fraud, it's just so much of a technical hassle that it's really not worth doing unless there's something blatantly wrong with the results) helps to keep that the case. The other reason there's so much ceremonial "nominations" and "campaigning" is because we have a userbase that can sometimes just have other things going on for a few weeks. Spreading it out across 3 weeks with a clear schedule helps to keep everyone on the same page when the voting occurs and gives as many people as possible a chance to vote. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:19, 3 November 2022 (UTC)