Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022/Feedback

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Can the poll ticket be sorted alphabetically?
also, can it be mandated to include any former username of each user?

it'll be easier to check each candidate's history. i personally keep a blacklist. RZuo (talk) 08:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @RZuo for the most part other accounts are included in the official guide, however it will not include every possible "rename". The poll order is random on purpose, per a prior RfC. For the renames, you may still ask candidates Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2022/Questions, so you could ask them. You may propose changes to the rules during next year's RFC, and may want to make a note about your ideas here for now. — xaosflux  Talk 10:27, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I added "rename map" for discussion next year, I really don't think it would be on the ballot itself - but perhaps in the Candidate guide. — xaosflux  Talk 13:49, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hmm, my only objection would be that sometimes people rename themselves for privacy reasons, perhaps because their previous username had some kind of link to their personal identity or their account on another website. Obviously, renaming wouldn't remove this connection in the same way a clean start would, but I would still be respectful of the candidate's privacy, especially if the rename happened relatively early on in their Wikipedia career. Mz7 (talk) 18:53, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Renames are rarely "secret". However, perhaps renames within in "x years". Would require discussion as to what, if anything, is appropriate. — xaosflux  Talk 20:49, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I've boldly added renames to this year's candidate guide to facilitate transparency. If candidates would like previous renames to be hidden, they can consider requesting oversight / revdel. — Frostly (talk) 21:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment for my votes
Good day,

I'm still not sure if we really need these elections. Therefore, unfortunately, I had to enter my rejection for all candidates. I know and trust stewards like User:DerHexer. That should be enough. Best regards Ｔｏｍ (talk) 13:40, 29 November 2022 (UTC)


 * @Ｔｏｍ: This is an election for a local arbitration body on the English Wikipedia (equivalent to the Schiedsgericht). I'm not sure what the Stewards have to do with that? --Blablubbs (talk) 13:43, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback, could you elaborate? There really is no overlap between the steward role and the local arbitration committee; were the committee disbanded (such as by the majority of voters repeatedly rejecting all candidates) none of the committees duties would be picked up by stewards. — xaosflux  Talk 13:45, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Ok. mixed up with meta. should not hurt the process. Ｔｏｍ (talk) 13:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @Ｔｏｍ no worries, there are a lot of governance parts across the projects. If you want to change your votes you may at any time, by voting "Neutral" for all candidates it will be as if you did not vote at all; whatever you feel is best. —  xaosflux  Talk 13:51, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

My own comments
I have also voted against all candidates. This is nothing personal: I simply think that we need a radical review of the way that wikipedia governance and editorial control is becoming concentrated in the hands of a small technocratic elite who make and adjudicate all the incredibly complicated rules: meaning that I am abstaining until things improve and simplify. Many of our pages simply should not exist at all: the whole Project has become bloated and impossible to manage. In particular, the coverage of Covid-19 is infuriating and thoroughly biased by the extensive involvement of 'agents' of Big Pharma, but it goes far deeper than that. Excalibur (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2022 (UTC)


 * You're not really abstaining by voting against all candidates. Abstaining means leaving all your votes in the neutral field. — CYBERPOWER  (Around ) 01:50, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
 * To me this reads like another comment by someone who does not actually understand what the committee does. The committee has absolutely no authority over article content. (and of course Cyberpower is correct about the meaning of "abstaining") Beeblebrox (talk) 03:45, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

My comments
Good day to all of you

I have voted for all candidates... there is no one who can go against because all are creators and authors who know what to deliver to the wide audience by giving the exact information which is happening around the world. Sometimes there can be small mistakes including me, but all of us deliver the best content for the world to know about it... so whosoever wins the contest, hearty congratulations for that..👍👍💕💕 Santosh4118 (talk) 03:14, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Is this sort of commentary even what this page is for?
I assumed this was for feedback on the process, like the first section, not for talking about who you voted for and why, or for complaining about article content. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)


 * ...I guess it's good for all the yahoos to have some place to comment? Valereee (talk) 04:31, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
 * If I have my facts straight, I believe this is why the electoral college existed in the first place. — CYBERPOWER  ( Message ) 11:44, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Poll design
The poll doesn't seem to have enough buttons to accurately reflect my preferences when I support fewer candidates than the number of vacant seats. I have X people I want to support, so I support. I want to oppose Y people so I do. Now I am left with Z people whom I don't want in the committee but not as badly as the Y group. If I put them for support, I help them get the percent, even though I'd rather not do that. If I oppose, I give them no advantage over the people I actively want to stop getting in. What's more, within people in the individual categories, I have preference order for whom I support before everyone else who's left.

Ideally, for the Z group, I would want to put them in oppose as long as none of the Y+Z cross 50%. If one among them gets above 50%, I would want to promote one candidate of my choice from oppose to support. And I would want to do so in order of my preference for as many times as that happens. And same thing for the 60% threshold.

Might there be a way to improve the poll to work that way? Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:14, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * One approach would be to have both an approval vote like now to screen out candidates with less than 50% support, and a ranked voting ballot, where a preference order could be determined in some manner amongst those who passed the approval vote (Single Transferable Vote with Droop quota would probably be a popular suggestion, as it has been used for other Wikimedia-related elections). As far as I know, this would require changes to SecurePoll to support this type of chained election poll (a workaround would be to hold the ranked vote after the approval vote rather than combining them into one ballot; I suspect many in the community would resist this, though). Building up consensus support for a change in how the election runs, though, is going to need some groundwork to lay out the case for a new system, and to ensure implementation, deployment, and testing are done. This is all theoretically possible, but some users will have to be willing to spend significant time driving everything forward to convince enough people to establish consensus support, and it would help if they could implement the necessary changes and then work with the WMF to get them tested and deployed.
 * (Implementation note: rather than the ballot having an approval vote section and a preferential ranking section, it could be implemented by adding a "none of the following" pseudo-candidate to be ranked. Note that changes are still required to SecurePoll to implement this, in order to drop candidates who fail to meet the 50% threshold before determining the ranking. The "re-open nominations" option that is used by some single-transferable vote elections is not the same, as it can get eliminated if it fails to meet quota and then the votes will be distributed to any subsequent ranked choices.) isaacl (talk) 04:45, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * One part of this is philosophical, the other technical. On the first part, the current poll is designed for you to first evaluate each candidate as an individual: Is this specific person someone I approve to be on this committee and get the associated personal elevated access that comes with it? It doesn't really ask the question, "Do I trust Candidate X to both personally gain access to privileged information and to jointly make binding decisions; but only if Candidate Y isn't more supported by others". There are certain technical limitations with the polling software - but addressing them would be secondary to defining what the goals of the election are first. — xaosflux  Talk 10:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I am not sure if "but only if Candidate Y isn't more supported by others" says the same thing, but from my perspective, I trust 5. But 8 are going to get elected. So, I want to give max support to my 5, and at the same time, be able to pick the rest of the 3 such that ideally, I want those seats vacant but if the rest of the community votes to fill those seats, I still have a say on which three should get in from among the ones I don't want. Because, of course, among the people I don't want, there are those whom I am only unsure about, those who I think would do poorly and those who would be an absolute disaster.
 * I think we are conducting a simple poll to decide a complicated election. Consequently, it is not representative of people's wishes. If the goal of an election is foremost to get an accurate reflection of people's wishes, one of the two needs to be modified to bring them in sync, IMO. Usedtobecool ☎️ 10:47, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * 8 don't have to be elected. Unlike in things like municipal elections, even ones with instant run off, it is OK if <8 (even 0!) editors get added to this committee in this election. —  xaosflux  Talk 18:26, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, but they will, both theoretically and in practice. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:26, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * There are preferential voting systems designed to determine a ranking of the candidates (and in cases where the community does not have a consistent ranking, a ranking that goes against the fewest individual decisions). This allows voters to specify their relative preferences between candidates they don't support. If we want to also determine if a candidate has consensus support to serve, then an approval vote is also required (or some other screening mechanism). I agree the community has to decide what goals it wants to achieve, and that's why I said some users will have to be willing to invest significant time in building consensus for a change. isaacl (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * So practically in terms of using Secure poll "None of the following" never gets eliminated so the votes never get redistributed? That's a STV that I think could work in an ACE context. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:21, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm having a bit of a problem parsing your first sentence. My implementation note regarding having a "none of the following" option was about a way for a ballot to allow both approval voting and ranking to take place in one list. All of the choices above "none of the following" would count as support for an approval vote, and the choices below would be counted as opposition. The result would be applied to filter out candidates that fail to meet the desired threshold. After that, the entire ranked list from each voter (ignoring the "none of the following" option) would be used as an order of preference, with STV rules followed. isaacl (talk) 21:56, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

♬ Left right, left right, left ♬
Was support always on the right and oppose on the left? I've almost just submitted a vote where my opposes were supports and supports were opposes! El_C 16:57, 10 December 2022 (UTC)


 * @El C I looked back to to the config from 2018, each year the order was Oppose, Neutral, Support. — xaosflux  Talk 12:21, 11 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Oh. Well, it's very weird. In right-to-left Hebrew for example (random example from Ynet, see bottom), it is actually like that: support on the right, oppose on the left. But in left-to-right English (like YouTube, etc.) it's support on the left, oppose on the right. As someone who often open new books in Hebrew/English at the end instead of the beginning (because my mind has long melted), it's rather confusing, visually. I seriously wonder if I ever inverted support/oppose on Wikimedia online poll due to this inexplicable yes-is-no, no-is-yes. Anyway, carry on! El_C 15:15, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @El C it can be changed, if you want to propose an order change next year please bring it up when 2023 ACE RFC opens. — xaosflux  Talk 15:59, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Xaosflux, thanks, but the odds that I'll remember any of this are... not high. El_C 16:07, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Here's an article that discusses the placement of the primary and secondary action buttons on Windows, Mac, and Android, as well as arguments for both options on web pages (the reading order direction actually being used as an argument for putting the primary action at the end). In polls with a spectrum of choices (such as 1-to-5 rankings), though, I suspect that the prevalent method is to order the choices from least supported to most supported, and I imagine that's why this order was originally selected. Ultimately, personally I feel the current order should be kept for the reason you originally raised: to preserve familiarity with past polls. isaacl (talk) 17:24, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Attacks after election
I participated in the Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022. For that, I am facing some issues probably. Suppose, my stubbed article Arshiya Das has been nominated for deletion. But the subject is definitely a notable one and she also got recognition Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar from government of India for her outstanding career graph. I think I am possibly right on the topic. So, I shall not participate in the next elections anymore. Wikifulness (talk) 12:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)


 * @Wikifulness would you be able to share what part of your participation you think is related to your troubles? Actual votes are secret, and I don't see you made any edits to any of the election pages such as candidate questions. — xaosflux  Talk 14:20, 9 January 2023 (UTC)