Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2008/Results

Suggestion
Shouldn't the linked text under the "Name" heading link to the candidate statement--or even to the voting page, rather than to the user page? I keep accidentally clicking on the candidate's name to learn more about his/her views, but I keep winding up on their user page. If we're going to link to their user page at all, maybe put that link in a separate column. Any thoughts?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 01:25, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I admit I have had the same problem – I keep clicking on the name hoping to come to the candidate's questions and answers. An extra column linking to that would be welcome. Jayen  466  01:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You probably need to address this to User:Gurch who runs the bot - I doubt he has this watchlisted, given that the page updates every five minutes. –  iride scent  01:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I asked him.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 01:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually I do; however, I have eat, work and sleep as well as run this bot... -- Gurch (talk) 10:18, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your hard work and the new functions. They're great to have! Cheers, Jayen  466  13:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Gurch.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 14:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Very minor suggestion for future improvement
When you order by "percent support", a candidate's name can determine sometimes their order in the list. This occurs when two candidates have the same "percent support"-- the order is then alphabetical.

Looking at the behavior, the "percent support" numbers are rounded (or truncated??) to the nearest integer. The script could be improved by:
 * 1) If it's truncating, it should round.
 * 2) Determine order by the actual calculated percentile support, rather than the rounded integer.
 * 3) If two candidates should have the same same percentile support, list the one with the higher vote total as the "higher" percentage.  Someone with 10 opposes and 100 supports gets ranked higher than someone with 1 oppose and 10 supports.
 * 4) Lastly, for maximum analness, if someone has the exact same number of total votes, flip a coin to determine order. lol.

Incredibly low priority, and I'd be shocked if anyone ever implemented any of the suggestions beyond #2.

Incidentally, whoever is responsible for this script-- genuinely good work. Thank you for it. I'm married to a programmer, and they never get enough thankyous for their hard work. --Alecmconroy (talk) 09:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot outputs results in alphabetical order. Table sorting is done by javascript which is part of MediaWiki; if there's a bug in that, there's nothing I can do about it -- Gurch (talk) 10:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The MediaWiki table sort sorts on the actual displayed value, and as far as I can tell breaks ties by keeping the prior order. So to achieve the results of #3, first sort by the total column, then sort by the percentage.  I don't see any way the viewer can achieve the coin flip results. GRBerry 15:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Top 7 divider?
Would it be feasible to have it apply a divider, perhaps a thicker line, to differentiate the top 7 in some way? rootology ( C )( T ) 21:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I would tend to oppose this suggestion as it could encourage trend following rather than independent analysis. Not a big deal either way, though. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:42, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Especially at this stage where several candidates around the 7th-place mark are all so close together. Plus, it's probably not technically feasible anyway, given that the page is posted in alphabetical order, not rank order, and sorting happens only on-the-fly by way of script. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:51, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with SBHB. There are 12 days left and fractions of a percentage separate 7th from 8th at this point. A dividing line seems unhelpful right now. Should discourage this kind of blow-by-blow vote counting; I think it's less evil this way. Cool Hand Luke 22:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, it was just curiosity more than anything, in particular if it was technically feasible. rootology ( C )( T ) 22:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The table is sorted by name. Sorting by other columns is a piece of javascript that is part of MediaWiki and nothing to do with the script that is providing the results. So no, it is not possible to do this as it would make no sense in a table sorted by name -- Gurch (talk) 02:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Can someone point at the ranking rule here?
I get different "top 7" depending on which column I sort by, and can't find the authoritative source for the "percentage" calculation. Can someone give me a pointer? --Alvestrand (talk) 06:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure there is an authoritative source. The winners are chosen by Jimbo. For the last two years, he has gone by percentage. In 2005, he hand-picked a few who got more than 2/3 support but weren't in the top 8 to fill extra seats. I don't think he would do that these days, but you never know.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  06:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If the percentage is the percentage of "yes" compared to the total number of votes cast for that candidate, that would fit with the table-as-is. Given that we can only cast "yes" and "no", no "neutral", that makes sense. --Alvestrand (talk) 07:06, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what the percentage is.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  08:42, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2008 ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:16, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Alphabetical?
It's not quite in alphabetical order; there are a handful of people swapped. I don't want to correct it in case it screws up or is overwritten by the next edit, but surely it should be alphabetical by default? Happy‑melon 17:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's in code point order, same as Special:Allpages... as far as I can tell only RHMED is out of place, if it bothers you click the little arrow at the top of the column to sort it (requires JavaScript) -- Gurch (talk) 17:54, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Page updates
I don't think the votes are updating properly, or else they update very infrequently. For example, Casliber shows currently as having 277 supporting votes but he's been on 280 for a couple of hours. 92.39.200.36 (talk) 12:21, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
 * User:ST47/ACE 2008. Carcharoth (talk) 13:21, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks 92.39.200.36 (talk) 14:02, 6 December 2008 (UTC)