Mailing List Archive

You know, this comes up every year. And there's always good argument to
both sides but there's never consensus to actually change it. There has
been an election in one form or another since 2004, and except in 2004
where the requirement was having an account that is at least 3 months
old or be a sysop on a project that is less than 3 months old (hey,
Wikimedia *was* new after all :D), there has been an edit requirement to
vote. Between 2005 to 2007, a voter was required to have had made at
least 400 edits to a particular project (by roughly a month before
voting) and be at least 3 months old. Last year, the requirement were
raised to 600 edits by 3 months prior and 50 edits any time in the
previous 6 months with exceptions granted to server administrators, paid
staff of at least 3 months old, and current or former trustees. This
year the requirement were relaxed slightly such that the 600 edits can
be made up to 2 months prior, and with unified accounts combined votes
across projects.

At the end of the day, what form the suffrage requirements take depends
on what group of people we want making that decision. Is it on one
extreme the end user of the product, i.e. the readers of Wikipedia,
Wikinews, etc...? Is it on the other extreme only people the editing
community has decided to entrust with additional privileges, i.e.
sysops? Or perhaps only people who have supported the projects in the
form of monetary contributions? Or somewhere in between the two extreme,
as we have now.

Once that has been decided, the technical means of restricting voters to
only that group of people can be arrived at, hopefully relatively
easily. X number of edits by Y time is just a method of restricting
suffrage to the group of people we want. It's a waste of time arguing X
should be Z, or edits should include mailing list posting (which mailing
list?), MediaWiki commits, Bugzilla bug tickets, ... We could spend all
day doing it. Instead of arguing over the method of restriction, define
who we want to restrict it to first.

KTC

--
Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc@ktchan.info> wrote:

> You know, this comes up every year. And there's always good argument to
> both sides but there's never consensus to actually change it. There has been
> an election in one form or another since 2004, and except in 2004 where the
> requirement was having an account that is at least 3 months old or be a
> sysop on a project that is less than 3 months old (hey, Wikimedia *was* new
> after all :D), there has been an edit requirement to vote. Between 2005 to
> 2007, a voter was required to have had made at least 400 edits to a
> particular project (by roughly a month before voting) and be at least 3
> months old. Last year, the requirement were raised to 600 edits by 3 months
> prior and 50 edits any time in the previous 6 months with exceptions granted
> to server administrators, paid staff of at least 3 months old, and current
> or former trustees. This year the requirement were relaxed slightly such
> that the 600 edits can be made up to 2 months prior, and with unified
> accounts combined votes across projects.
>
> At the end of the day, what form the suffrage requirements take depends on
> what group of people we want making that decision. Is it on one extreme the
> end user of the product, i.e. the readers of Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc...? Is
> it on the other extreme only people the editing community has decided to
> entrust with additional privileges, i.e. sysops? Or perhaps only people who
> have supported the projects in the form of monetary contributions? Or
> somewhere in between the two extreme, as we have now.
>
> Once that has been decided, the technical means of restricting voters to
> only that group of people can be arrived at, hopefully relatively easily. X
> number of edits by Y time is just a method of restricting suffrage to the
> group of people we want. It's a waste of time arguing X should be Z, or
> edits should include mailing list posting (which mailing list?), MediaWiki
> commits, Bugzilla bug tickets, ... We could spend all day doing it. Instead
> of arguing over the method of restriction, define who we want to restrict it
> to first.
>
> KTC
>
> --
> Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
> - Heinrich Heine
>

Speaking of consensus, where can I find the consensus for severely
restricting the number of people who can vote by an arbitrary rule, and
where is the consensus for the particular rule? You make it clear that The
Powers That Be sit around a coffee table and pick whatever they think is
best. In the absence of such a consensus the default would be a more
permissive voting system.
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