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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>
> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)
>
> Total ballots cast and certified:  17462
>

I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
there will be a board resolution soon.

Marco (Cruccone)

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>
>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
>> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)
>>
>> Total ballots cast and certified:  17462
>>
>
> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
> there will be a board resolution soon.

As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.

-Robert Rohde

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2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:

>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>
> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.

Do we have a rough estimate of qualifying voters who didn't vote?
17000 is pretty good, but it occurs to me I have no idea how large the
editing community really is!

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk

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2009/5/21 Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk>:
> 2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
>
>>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>>
>> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
>> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.
>
> Do we have a rough estimate of qualifying voters who didn't vote?
> 17000 is pretty good, but it occurs to me I have no idea how large the
> editing community really is!

Millions, presumably. The English Wikipedia has nearly 10 million
registered users, although a large portion of those won't have 25
edits (and some will be sockpuppets). Once you take the whole
Wikimedia movement into account, the number of eligible voters must
surely be over a million. A very large portion of those will no longer
be involved in the projects, though.

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I don't know how many people were eligible to vote in the license migration, but I believe there are currently about 150,000 active editors, if active is defined as "a registered user who has made more than five edits in the past month." Either Erik (Moeller or Zachte), or Frank, might be able to confirm that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk>

Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 18:47:05
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result


2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:

>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>
> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.

Do we have a rough estimate of qualifying voters who didn't vote?
17000 is pretty good, but it occurs to me I have no idea how large the
editing community really is!

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/5/21 Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk>:
>> 2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
>>
>>>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>>>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>>>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>>>
>>> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
>>> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.
>>
>> Do we have a rough estimate of qualifying voters who didn't vote?
>> 17000 is pretty good, but it occurs to me I have no idea how large the
>> editing community really is!
>
> Millions, presumably. The English Wikipedia has nearly 10 million
> registered users, although a large portion of those won't have 25
> edits (and some will be sockpuppets). Once you take the whole
> Wikimedia movement into account, the number of eligible voters must
> surely be over a million. A very large portion of those will no longer
> be involved in the projects, though.

I believe there are around 600,000 qualified accounts (roughly half of
which from enwiki). If you choose a historically active account at
random, there is somewhat less than a 10% chance that any given
account will edit in any given month. Which suggests that the pool of
people who are qualified and likely to have seen the site notice is
around 60,000. If that number is in the right ballpark, then actual
participation from qualified people who saw the announcement was
perhaps 20-30%.

-Robert Rohde

PS. Incidentally enwiki has 9.7 M registered accounts, but 70% of
these have exactly 0 edits and 90% have less than 5 edits.

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Sue Gardner <susanpgardner@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know how many people were eligible to vote in the license migration, but I believe there are currently about 150,000 active editors, if active is defined as "a registered user who has made more than five edits in the past month." Either Erik (Moeller or Zachte), or Frank, might be able to confirm that.

These numbers make sense to me. 10% voter turnout is relatively low
when compared to public elections in general. But then again there
aren't too many online votes of this size held among volunteers of
charitable organizations, so there isn't a lot of direct precedent to
compare to. I doubt any of the larger projects ever get to even 10%
turnout for their various community discussions, and important
decisions are routinely made in the project with far fewer votes then
that.

--Andrew Whitworth

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk>
>
> Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 18:47:05
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result
>
>
> 2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
>
>>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>>
>> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
>> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.
>
> Do we have a rough estimate of qualifying voters who didn't vote?
> 17000 is pretty good, but it occurs to me I have no idea how large the
> editing community really is!
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
>
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2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
> I believe there are around 600,000 qualified accounts (roughly half of
> which from enwiki).

What is your source for that?

> PS. Incidentally enwiki has 9.7 M registered accounts, but 70% of
> these have exactly 0 edits and 90% have less than 5 edits.

90% with less than 5 edits means about 1 million with more. I would
imagine a sizeable proportion of people with 5 edits have 25. 300,000
eligible enwiki accounts seems small to me. There are (as Sue rightly
says) half that many active accounts, and I doubt half of all
Wikipedians are still around (back when we had exponential growth of
users that might have been the case, but we levelled out a while
back).

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/5/21 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
>> I believe there are around 600,000 qualified accounts (roughly half of
>> which from enwiki).
>
> What is your source for that?
>
>> PS. Incidentally enwiki has 9.7 M registered accounts, but 70% of
>> these have exactly 0 edits and 90% have less than 5 edits.
>
> 90% with less than 5 edits means about 1 million with more. I would
> imagine a sizeable proportion of people with 5 edits have 25. 300,000
> eligible enwiki accounts seems small to me. There are (as Sue rightly
> says) half that many active accounts, and I doubt half of all
> Wikipedians are still around (back when we had exponential growth of
> users that might have been the case, but we levelled out a while
> back).

As of last September, exactly 297467 enwiki accounts had made 20 or
more edits. [1]

The distribution is compellingly log-log, which implies about 255,000
accounts on enwiki with 25+ edits on that date. Extrapolating the
rate of increase forward 6 months gets you to about 300,000. Other
analysis generally indicates that scaling enwiki results to the global
wiki community generally requires a factor of a little more than 2.
(Taking Sue's number at face value, which strikes me as a little high,
would imply a factor closer to 3.) Doubling 300,000 is 600,000.
Maybe that needs to be higher, e.g. 750,000 or something, but I'm
fairly confident it is in the right ballpark. Also, there is a good
deal of overcounting with individuals having accounts on multiple
wikis.

Incidentally, Tim Starling actually generated a list of qualified
accounts during the setup process. Assuming he still has it lying
around, we could possibly get an exact count.

-Robert Rohde

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_frequency/All_registered

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2009/5/20 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>
> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)

I do want to state for the record that the only reason a "no opinion"
option was included in the vote was to give users an option to "not
vote" explicitly if they didn't feel they could have an informed
opinion on such a complex issue, so that they wouldn't feel compelled
to make one up. In other words, it was a measure intended to increase
the quality of the yes/no votes. But I don't think these neutral votes
should be given greater weight than the people who expressed no
opinion by not voting.

In other words, I consider this for all intents and purposes an
88%/12% result (it was also stated in the proposal that "votes that
express a preference" would be the basis of any decision). I say this
because that is important if people want to view it through the lens
of our traditional standards of "rough consensus". :-)
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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>> I don't know how many people were eligible to vote in the license
>> migration, but I believe there are currently about 150,000 active
>> editors, if active is defined as "a registered user who has made more
>> than five edits in the past month." Either Erik (Moeller or Zachte), or
>> Frank, might be able to confirm that.
>
> These numbers make sense to me. 10% voter turnout is relatively low
> when compared to public elections in general. But then again there
> aren't too many online votes of this size held among volunteers of
> charitable organizations, so there isn't a lot of direct precedent to
> compare to. I doubt any of the larger projects ever get to even 10%
> turnout for their various community discussions, and important
> decisions are routinely made in the project with far fewer votes then
> that.
>
I did not vote myself, because I did not have an opinion on the issue, and
I did not want to vote on the issue I have no opinion of. On the other
hand, I would definitely consider myself as an active user with probably
around 1000 edits per month from my SUL. This is definitely not only the
issue of information.

Cheers
Yaroslav


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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 2009/5/20 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
> > The licensing update poll has been tallied.
> >
> > "Yes, I am in favor of this change" : 13242 (75.8%)
> > "No, I am opposed to this change" : 1829 (10.5%)
> > "I do not have an opinion on this change" : 2391 (13.7%)
>
> I do want to state for the record that the only reason a "no opinion"
> option was included in the vote was to give users an option to "not
> vote" explicitly if they didn't feel they could have an informed
> opinion on such a complex issue, so that they wouldn't feel compelled
> to make one up. In other words, it was a measure intended to increase
> the quality of the yes/no votes. But I don't think these neutral votes
> should be given greater weight than the people who expressed no
> opinion by not voting.
>
> In other words, I consider this for all intents and purposes an
> 88%/12% result (it was also stated in the proposal that "votes that
> express a preference" would be the basis of any decision). I say this
> because that is important if people want to view it through the lens
> of our traditional standards of "rough consensus". :-)


Which way do neutral votes count on RfA?
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2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>

>
>
> Which way do neutral votes count on RfA?
>

1) at which project (and please dont use enwiki abbreviations)
2) does it matter? :)

eia
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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:12 PM, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders@gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>
>
> >
> >
> > Which way do neutral votes count on RfA?
> >
>
> 1) at which project (and please dont use enwiki abbreviations)


The important one (and why not).


> 2) does it matter? :)


Just wondering.

I see from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_bureaucratship/Riana/Bureaucrat_discussionthat
they seem to be excluded from the %.
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2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>

> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:12 PM, effe iets anders <
> effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > Which way do neutral votes count on RfA?
>> >
>>
>> 1) at which project (and please dont use enwiki abbreviations)
>
>
> The important one (and why not).
>
Ah, meta? :) - seriously, i don't see why only to consider enwiki methods.
Sure, most voters came from there, but this is an interwiki decision, where
interwiki measures would make more sense. But well, not that it matters
anyway, these things should be decided /beforehand/ not afterwards.


>
>
>
>> 2) does it matter? :)
>
>
> Just wondering.
>
> I see from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_bureaucratship/Riana/Bureaucrat_discussionthat they seem to be excluded from the %.
>
well, since those are about people, and this isn't, I dont see any relevance
:P Usually the two categories are treated differently.

-- eia
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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:19 PM, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> 2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>
>
>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:12 PM, effe iets anders <
>> effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>
>>>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Which way do neutral votes count on RfA?
>>> >
>>>
>>> 1) at which project (and please dont use enwiki abbreviations)
>>
>>
>> The important one (and why not).
>>
> Ah, meta? :) - seriously, i don't see why only to consider enwiki methods.
> Sure, most voters came from there, but this is an interwiki decision, where
> interwiki measures would make more sense.
>

In my opinion it shouldn't have ever been put to a vote in the first place,
so I guess I agree with you.


> But well, not that it matters anyway, these things should be decided
> /beforehand/ not afterwards.
>

50% was decided beforehand as the threshold for sending to the board.


> 2) does it matter? :)
>>
>>
>> Just wondering.
>>
>> I see from
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_bureaucratship/Riana/Bureaucrat_discussionthat they seem to be excluded from the %.
>>
> well, since those are about people, and this isn't, I dont see any
> relevance :P
>

Whatever. I didn't ask the question for your benefit.


> Usually the two categories are treated differently.
>

As they should be.
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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>>
>>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
>>> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
>>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)
>>>
>>> Total ballots cast and certified:  17462
>>>
>>
>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>
> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.

Yes -- I think this is definitely the largest group of Wikimedians to
ever collectively express an opinion on anything! It'd be worth
figuring out why the vote was successful, if possible (long period of
voting? ubiquitous sitenotices? Important topic? Lots of outside
interest?)

-- phoebe

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phoebe ayers wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>>>
>>>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" : 13242 (75.8%)
>>>> "No, I am opposed to this change" : 1829 (10.5%)
>>>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" : 2391 (13.7%)
>>>>
>>>> Total ballots cast and certified: 17462
>>>>
>>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>>>
>> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
>> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.
>>
> Yes -- I think this is definitely the largest group of Wikimedians to
> ever collectively express an opinion on anything! It'd be worth
> figuring out why the vote was successful, if possible (long period of
> voting? ubiquitous sitenotices? Important topic? Lots of outside
> interest?)
>
Deliberately low threshold for eligibility.

--Michael Snow

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:

> phoebe ayers wrote:
> > On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
> >>>>
> >>>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" : 13242 (75.8%)
> >>>> "No, I am opposed to this change" : 1829 (10.5%)
> >>>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" : 2391 (13.7%)
> >>>>
> >>>> Total ballots cast and certified: 17462
> >>>>
> >>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks
> great to me!
> >>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
> >>> there will be a board resolution soon.
> >>>
> >> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
> >> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.
> >>
> > Yes -- I think this is definitely the largest group of Wikimedians to
> > ever collectively express an opinion on anything! It'd be worth
> > figuring out why the vote was successful, if possible (long period of
> > voting? ubiquitous sitenotices? Important topic? Lots of outside
> > interest?)
> >
> Deliberately low threshold for eligibility.
>
> --Michael Snow


And yet the "threshold for eligibility" hypothesis has not been tested on
the projects. You have no idea whether allowing only those with the most
biased opinions to vote (as most project votes are conducted) skews the
outcome towards or away from the rational or optimal choice, or whether it
has any effect on the outcome at all. Indeed, we have no idea whether the
wording or presentation or usability of the votes matters. It could matter a
great deal, changing the outcome in a statistically significant matter, or
it could matter not at all, rendering the threshold for eligibility
hypothesis meaningless. The current methods amount to folk statistics
because nobody has any clue what matters and what doesn't. That's why I
continue to encourage the WMF to adopt scientific thinking.
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2009/5/22 Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net>:
> Deliberately low threshold for eligibility.

Do we have any statistics for what the turnout was among different
demographics? In particular, do we know how many people voted that
wouldn't have been eligible under the board election suffrage rules?
If it isn't many then that can't be the explanation.

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On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:43 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes -- I think this is definitely the largest group of Wikimedians to
> ever collectively express an opinion on anything! It'd be worth
> figuring out why the vote was successful, if possible (long period of
> voting? ubiquitous sitenotices? Important topic? Lots of outside
> interest?)


I'm going to speculate and suggest "ease of decision making", perhaps even
"polarizing topic". "Rank the following people that you've never met and
know nothing about from 1 to 12" is a much more intense task compared to
"You want CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL? Yes, no, or maybe?"
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2009/5/22 Anthony <wikimail@inbox.org>:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:43 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes -- I think this is definitely the largest group of Wikimedians to
>> ever collectively express an opinion on anything! It'd be worth
>> figuring out why the vote was successful, if possible (long period of
>> voting? ubiquitous sitenotices? Important topic? Lots of outside
>> interest?)
>
>
> I'm going to speculate and suggest "ease of decision making", perhaps even
> "polarizing topic".  "Rank the following people that you've never met and
> know nothing about from 1 to 12" is a much more intense task compared to
> "You want CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL? Yes, no, or maybe?"

You're probably on to something there.

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Robert Rohde wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>>
>>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" : 13242 (75.8%)
>>> "No, I am opposed to this change" : 1829 (10.5%)
>>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" : 2391 (13.7%)
>>>
>>> Total ballots cast and certified: 17462
>>>
>> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me!
>> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
>> there will be a board resolution soon.
>>
> As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
> votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.

At the risk of stating the obvious it's easier to cast a yes/no vote
than to rank 15 candidates.

Ec

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No opinion means no opinion and should not be interpreted in any way,
the group represents an uncertainty in the result.
John

Erik Moeller skrev:
> 2009/5/20 Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>:
>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>
>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" : 13242 (75.8%)
>> "No, I am opposed to this change" : 1829 (10.5%)
>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" : 2391 (13.7%)
>
> I do want to state for the record that the only reason a "no opinion"
> option was included in the vote was to give users an option to "not
> vote" explicitly if they didn't feel they could have an informed
> opinion on such a complex issue, so that they wouldn't feel compelled
> to make one up. In other words, it was a measure intended to increase
> the quality of the yes/no votes. But I don't think these neutral votes
> should be given greater weight than the people who expressed no
> opinion by not voting.
>
> In other words, I consider this for all intents and purposes an
> 88%/12% result (it was also stated in the proposal that "votes that
> express a preference" would be the basis of any decision). I say this
> because that is important if people want to view it through the lens
> of our traditional standards of "rough consensus". :-)

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