User talk:SMcCandlish/RfC-replacement voting system

Trying new procedures in Move discussions

Hi User:SMcCandlish, I seem to have stumbled across your essay at just the right time.

I've been trying out some new procedures in move discussions. Basically saying let's try a different approach this time, explaining why, and adapting each new procedure in response to concerns. If a new technique turns out to work really well, maybe it will spread, and then become a guideline. This is the Wikipedia way, isn't it?

At the CrowdStruck move discussion, I did this several times:

I guided the transition from brainstorming to "vague cardinal voting", in the hope of identifying top contenders to focus on.
I posted a "Recap" of the discussion so far, but invited others to edit it (directly, not threaded). It listed 4 top contenders for the new title, and identified many of the remaining questions.
Then I immediately opened a new threaded section to discuss each of the remaining questions. By this time each question was largely independent from the others. It looks like we will be able to gauge consensus on each aspect of the title.
Next, I plan to open a new question: are we ready to motion for closure – do we have consensus that there is consensus? This !vote will have the advantage of simplicity, having only two options, "Snow" and "Wait".

At Talk:House_demolition#Requested_move_13_July_2024, I'm trying a table-based approach, but it's too early to tell whether it will work. I'll invite more editors to join the discussion once I'm less busy with CrowdStruck. Jruderman (talk) 04:05, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussing procedures in the CrowdStruck move discussion

@Jruderman: I applaud the efforts. It can be difficult sometimes to get people to stick to a "new-fangled" approach of any kind around here, but if they do it, and it works well, and gets re-used, then that is indeed how procedural change tends to be effected. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:39, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a editor involved in the 2024 CrowdStrike Incident Move discussions. I have full support for @Jruderman's procedures. They are going smoothly and definitely have less anarchy and more civility. FloridaMan21 (talk) 23:20, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What can you tell me about the civility shift? I didn't get a good read on the temperature during the brainstorming phase (before I took over). Jruderman (talk) 23:25, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the poll had more Focus on the Outcome because the poll shifted the focus from debating the merits of different titles to simply selecting one. The poll allowed for broader participation and gave everyone an equal say in the final decision (example: putting your decision was hard because of all the code in the source editing.) There was no clear place to reply. It reduced feelings of being overruled. The poll was structured with clear guidelines for voting, preventing misunderstandings and reducing the potential for disagreements. The poll quickly gathered data and generated a clear result, saving time compared to extended discussions. By focusing on the options rather than the people proposing them, the poll minimized personal attacks and create a more respectful environment. FloridaMan21 (talk) 23:36, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is very helpful. Knowing how and why procedures work will help me craft better procedures in the future, as well as select them appropriately. For example, perhaps cardinal voting is a good one to bring in when discussion get heated. Jruderman (talk) 23:59, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about this some more, straw polls are tricky when discussions are already heated. All of the normal dangers of voting are present, including strategic nomination and tactical voting. Using a tactics-resistant electoral method such as STAR voting helps, but only insofar as participants believe in it.

Plus there are dangers of voting unique to heated wiki discussions, such as sockpuppetry and accusations of sockpuppetry.

Finally, heated discussions are often heated because no good synthesis position has been found. No electoral system can select a good synthesis position, the kind worthy of becoming consensus, when the only three candidates nominated are side A, side B, and a mushy compromise. In fact, many of the voting system I like are biased toward compromises, regardless of whether the compromises are actually fair or good.

If the participants have been misunderstanding each other (another common feature of heated discussions), [...]

When a heated discussion is in need of a "recap"-style section, it probably needs something other than a vote. Perhaps what it needs is a good summary of the discussion so far and a reset. Either a third-party opinion, or a whiteboard where adversaries collaborate to explain everyone's concerns in a manner that is as neutral as possible. Jruderman (talk) 20:58, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did not like the attempt to close the process early. Also, it is not clear when new options cannot be added anymore. I was revising my votes as I got more information and in the end I derived a new option. I don't know how many people rethink their votes or go back to look at the options. Trigenibinion (talk) 00:05, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Selecting a voting system

Majority judgment probably comes the closest to what Wikipedia calls "consensus". It has many of the advantages of range voting while being more resilient to the occasional weird-scale voter. In my mind, the CrowdStruck poll was a majority judgment poll, although any sane voting system would have agreed on which candidate title was "winning".

If a Condorcet winner is easily identified, I'm always happy to call it the "winner". But sometimes there is no Condorcet winner.

Sometimes it's possible to narrow things down to two options, which makes both !voting and gauging consensus easier.

The trickier part is deciding when to shift a move discussion to a new mode, and in what direction. Jruderman (talk) 04:10, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, except "majority judgment" selects the option with the highest median rating, and our consensus system often does not. Most often, it's because no option gets enough of a rating to represent even a marginal consensus. Having, say, 32% support (when other options have even less) does not translate into a call for action, but a finding of "no consensus" or even "consensus to not change the status quo". That is, WP doesn't do Condorcet winners, at least not in the usual sense of "most popular, but failed to achieve an actual >50% majority", and pretty often we still rule "no consensus" even if there is >50% but under around 2/3, though (at least in good closes) policy- and/or source-strength of the comments matters at least as much as the headcount.

More rarely, a popular option that achieves a clear majority among respondents to an RfC or similar process is not enacted simply because it is not actually compatible with policy. This doesn't occur too often, but it has happened, and more to the point, people keep trying to make it happen, more so all the time. A stand-out example would be the football draft capitalization debacle, which had only one possible policy-compliant outcome (lower-case) for at least three reasons, yet fans of absuing capitalization for emphasis and marketing continued to push and push and push to get the over-capitalization they wanted, including really blatant canvassing, personal attacks, and even trying to overturn the RfC result via WP:AN, all to no avail. Yet it dragged on for over a month, and they got closer to getting what they wanted than should have ever been possible. (And of course none of the blatant policy violators, including the serial canvasser, had any sanctions or restraints of any kind imposed on them by admin or community action, during or afterward, while those supportive of actually following policy, and pointing out blatant fabrication in the alleged sourcing, were repeatedly threatened with inappropriate sanctions.) That entire thing should have been shut down the very day it was opened, as a foregone conclusion, a waste of time, and a drain on editorial goodwill. But the community tends, to its detriment, to tolerate unbelievable amounts of internal disruption to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who strikes an underdog pose (this has much, also, to do with why WP:ANI is such a shit-show). This problem is not going to go away, but actually get worse, especially when it comes to socio-political "lobbying" to bend WP coverage and wording and policy to suit particular off-site agendas that most editors happen to agree with personally. They are naturally, humanly disinclined to stick to WP:NPOV and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX policy when it comes to any message or stance they align with, especially if there is any "cancel-culture" risk associated with opposing, which of course there often will be.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:36, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Experience with cardinal !voting

During the CrowdStruck move discussion, I had to watch the votes very closely to get the most out of the process.

When comparing votes across items, I looked closely to identify the difference between "option A is strictly preferred over option B" in contrast to "some participants prefer A and some prefer B").
It also required judgment of which word options could be discussed independently (e.g. global vs worldwide, tech vs IT), and which titles had to be compared as a whole.
I had to make judgment calls about how many candidates to !advance to the next round of discussion, and whether it was appropriate to make up new titles as I was doing so.
I picked up on subtle patterns within families (suggesting e.g. that word A is preferred over word B), even when the family was not popular overall. I used this information to synthesize two new titles which appeared for the first time in the recap.
I nudged one participant to provide more ratings after one of their ratings surprised me.
Some ideas were expressed for the first time in the mini-explanations that some participants put next to their ratings. When I noticed this, I started a new discussion thread about the ide right away.

I'm still very glad we did it this way. I don't think I would have picked up on those patterns, or synthesized titles as good as the ones I synthesized, through threaded discussion alone. Jruderman (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Someone wrote 0/10. I like 0 for NO WAY. Trigenibinion (talk) 23:13, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like 0/10 for NO WAY as well.

What I'm leaning toward at the moment is either a numeric scale with an odd number of choices (0 to 10, or 1 to 5), or an emotive scale with an even number of choices [worst / bad / sketchy / (blank = meh) / tolerable / good / best].

— Jruderman (talk) 21:19, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You wrote 11/10 and 12/10. It was not clear if they were typos. Trigenibinion (talk) 23:18, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Well my edit summary was "this is probably a bad idea". What I was trying to express is: "this is better than what 10 meant earlier, and I didn't think enough participants would rebalance their ratings in order to really be able to express which was best among three very similar choices." Jruderman (talk) 23:57, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Maybe this could be addressed by changing the instructions along the lines of "Due to the new options appearing that might be EVEN BETTER, the scale now goes from one to TWELVE. consider adjusting any of your older votes that are 8/10 or higher." Jruderman (talk) 23:57, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote 5/10 three times (don't care) and then went back and revised it to 5,6,7, but this meant my preferred option was only 8 (misleading), as I downgraded it twice. Trigenibinion (talk) 00:10, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So 0 to 20 (more dynamic range). Trigenibinion (talk) 00:15, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I used all values from 1 to 8. Trigenibinion (talk) 00:19, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Next time I think I'll do an odd number of options, because 5 is actually midway between 1 and 9. Between 1 and 10, the midpoint is 5.5, but people don't think that way when choosing a whole number. I also have secret other reasons to prefer 1–9 over 1–10. Jruderman (talk) 04:08, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]