Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/Comments

Two queries
Two queries:

"You must remain civil while voting; votes with personal attacks or other problems may be removed entirely." Can the "other problems" be categorised? It looks a bit cryptic at the moment.

Should the instructions be more explicit about voting with alternate accounts? As the wording is currently (whether before or after I changed it to second person), the proscription against multiple voting by a single editor is buried at WP:SOCKPUPPET. Maybe it's too obvious to bother stating, though ... Tony  (talk)  13:55, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Another query: "Voter includes comment longer than 2 sentences, 100 words, 5 formatted lines, or containing more than 3 diffs." This is at the Voting process, but not in the instructions here. Tony  (talk)  14:13, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Other problems would essentially be anything that would cause an editor to ask the voter to refactor. Overt Personal Attacks are easy, and are explicitly stated. Other problems might be better termed as "Disruption" of the vote. Accusing other voters of acting in Bad Faith might be a good example. Bear in mind that very few (if any) votes were removed last year or the year before for this reasoning.


 * The way it was viewed in the past, the admonition that you can only vote once for a candidate covered the sock issue. If someone votes for some candidates with their regular account, and others with some public sock account (Openly declared and linked, maybe for editing from public computers or whatever), then that's fine. Part of the checking for socks after voting is to make sure that each account that voted isn't a declared (or undeclared) sock, and if they are, whether their owner's other account(s) also voted for or against that candidate. We can firm that up if you like, though.


 * The instructions should be consistent, unless we say "Long comments (as described Here) will be moved to the talk page." This might be simpler, actually. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 15:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Breaking the rules on a secret ballot
I am trying to figure out how you could do any of these things with a secret electronic ballot if you wanted to. I suggest removing them, as it appears to be a vestige from the public voting system we had last year. Sjakkalle (Check!)  08:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) You may not edit the votes of other editors while placing your own vote. Minor fixes (such as correcting indentation or numbering formats) are acceptable, but please do these fixes with a different edit than that containing your vote.
 * 2) You must remain civil while voting; votes with personal attacks or other problems will be removed entirely.
 * 3) Candidates may not vote for or against themselves, but may vote for or against other candidates if they wish.
 * The page needs to be updated to reflect the outcome of the recent RfC.  Skomorokh,  barbarian   08:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Candidates may not vote for or against themselves, but may vote for or against other candidates if they wish. is also problematic, though possibly for a different reason: even if we wanted this, there is no way to check by definition (since the votes are on a secret ballot).  Then again, I never quite understood that requirement in the first place:  it's pretty much traditional in most electoral systems for candidates to vote for themselves&mdash; an in real life that usually means a photo op of the candidate dropping their bulletin in the urn.  :-)  &mdash; Coren (talk) 23:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, simplicity and common-sense suggest that the self-vote rule be dropped. Tony   (talk)  10:33, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

SecurePoll: the page can now be trimmed right back
As far as I can see, the "Voter eligibility" section should be changed as set out below:

==Voter eligibility==

Voting eligibility criterion: To vote, you must have an account registered with at least 150 mainspace edits before 23:59 UTC on 1 November 2009. This total includes deleted edits. You may use this utility to check your eligibility. If you have questions about the voting process, or to have an administrator verify your deleted edits, please [&section=new ask].

You may vote for or against as few or as many candidates as you wish. However, two restrictions apply: You may vote for or against as few or as many candidates as you wish. However, two restrictions apply:
 * you may vote only once for a candidate, whether it is Support or Oppose, though you may change this original vote.
 * candidates may not vote for or against themselves, but may vote for or against other candidates.

should be changed to this:

==Voting rules==
 * To vote, a user must have an account registered with at least 150 mainspace edits before 23:59 UTC on 1 November 2009. This total includes deleted edits. You may use this utility to check your eligibility. To ask questions about the voting process, or to have an administrator verify your deleted edits, please [&section=new ask].
 * An eligible user may vote for or against as few or as many candidates as they wish, but may not vote for or against any candidate more than once.

There may be a few more changes when the SecurePoll system is put in place, but this seems to be a good start. Please let me know if I should not implement this change overleaf.

The "Problem votes" section should probably be removed altogether. Is there a point to it now? Tony  (talk)  11:09, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I've implemented the change. Will contact Skomorokh et al. to ensure it's ok. Tony   (talk)  12:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure we need this page at all Tony; the main election page should suffice for what little we need to say.  Skomorokh   19:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)