Mailing List Archive

Betsy Megas <Betsy@strideth.com> wrote:
> Due to an error in a script that was used to generate the list of
> authorized voters for this election, roughly 300 votes were cast by
> users who were not qualified based on the posted election rules
> (requiring that voters have made at least 600 edits before 01 June
> 2009 across Wikimedia wikis and have made at least 50 edits between 01
> January and 01 July 2009).  Those votes will be removed by the
> election committee prior to the election being tallied by Software in
> the Public Interest.
> Once this is completed, the election results will be tallied and
> announced shortly thereafter.
> Questions regarding why a vote was struck can be addressed to
> board-elections@lists.wikimedia.org.

I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
the key to avoidance in the future!)

I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who
should have been permitted on account of this error?

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>>
>
> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
> the key to avoidance in the future!)
>
> I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who
> should have been permitted on account of this error?
>
> ____________________________________________

It was a coding error; it was corrected.

This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People
were given suffrage who weren't entitled.

Philippe

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On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Philippe Beaudette <
pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> >>
> >
> > I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
> > the key to avoidance in the future!)
> >
> > I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who
> > should have been permitted on account of this error?
> >
> > ____________________________________________
>
> It was a coding error; it was corrected.
>
> This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People
> were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
>
> Philippe
>
>
This comment makes my skin crawl. Everyone is entitled to have a voice and
it is only the Board's impoverished vision of the community and limited
sense of what technology can accomplish that has led them to create
arbitrary rules about how to best stifle the voices of the vast majority of
the actual community. Not only that, but the Board has forgotten the WMF's
original vision where all editors were highly valued members of the
community. Because the Board does not have to sit face to face with these
people they feel free to treat our community members as if they were not, in
fact, people, with highly valued and varied life experiences whose votes do
in fact contain useful information - in the information theoretic sense.
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On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Philippe
Beaudette<pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> [Greg]
>> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
>> the key to avoidance in the future!)
>>
>> I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who
>> should have been permitted on account of this error?
>
> It was a coding error; it was corrected.
>
> This is important: NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People
> were given suffrage who weren't entitled.

Thanks, Greg—that was my follow-up question, but you beat me to it. I
trust Philippe when he says that the error was on the side of
enfranchising people, but I'd like to know the exact nature of the
discrepancy.

My understanding is that Tim Starling can shed some light on this. Tim?

Austin

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On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Philippe
Beaudette<pbeaudette@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
>> the key to avoidance in the future!)
>>
>> I'd also like to know if any users were denied the ability to vote who
>> should have been permitted on account of this error?
>
> It was a coding error; it was corrected.

I am interested in the specific nature of the coding error, for
example "The script applied the wrong cutoff date" or "edits across
multiple projects for the 600 edit criteria were merged based on UID
rather than username" or "users from prior years were also permitted"
or "users whos name shared a common prefix with a permitted user were
additionally permitted".

The text I quoted began with "Due to an error in a script", so I had
expected my query would receive a response more specific than a mere
repetition of the already disclosed information. I hope that my
inquiry has now been made abundantly clear now.

Since the error has been corrected surely there can be no harm in
disclosing its specific nature.

(we've had problems with the automatic list in the past, best to
discuss these things so that they can be well understood)

> This is important:  NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People
> were given suffrage who weren't entitled.

Will people be given an opportunity to contest these strikes?

Without knowing the specific nature of the error I can only assume
that there may have been parties technically qualified, for example by
being system administrators or foundation staff, whom would have been
given a vote after being denied by the prior automatic rule who may
now be disenfranchised by a hasty correction.


It is my understanding that the parties incorrectly stricken
previously were not contacted. I believe that an attempt should be
made to contact stricken parties, even if it means delaying the
results.

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2009/8/12 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>:
> It is my understanding that the parties incorrectly stricken
> previously were not contacted. I believe that an attempt should be
> made to contact stricken parties, even if it means delaying the
> results.

Really? That amazes me. Surely everyone that has their vote stricken
for any reason should be informed. You can't accept a vote and then
throw it away without telling the voter, that's appalling.

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On Aug 11, 2009, at 10:58 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>
> I am interested in the specific nature of the coding error, for
> example "The script applied the wrong cutoff date" or "edits across
> multiple projects for the 600 edit criteria were merged based on UID
> rather than username" or "users from prior years were also permitted"
> or "users whos name shared a common prefix with a permitted user were
> additionally permitted".

My understanding is that some edits were incorrectly counted twice.
So, it artificially inflated the edit counts of everyone for the
suffrage counts. I'm not that technical, though, so I hope that
someone who is will explain, and I'll poke them :)



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On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/12 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>:
>> It is my understanding that the parties incorrectly stricken
>> previously were not contacted. I believe that an attempt should be
>> made to contact stricken parties, even if it means delaying the
>> results.
>
> Really? That amazes me. Surely everyone that has their vote stricken
> for any reason should be informed. You can't accept a vote and then
> throw it away without telling the voter, that's appalling.

Note: Even if I'm not incorrect, I'm speaking about people who were
stricken and later fixed, it may just be that they were fixed before a
message could have gone out.

I too agree that there is an obligation to contact, hopefully with
enough time to respond and point out an error, but I don't believe
that the the contact must be absolutely immediate.



(For those who might think we're just splitting hairs on this: In
last years election there were several pairs of candidates with a
fairly small margin between them, 8 votes in one case. With three
candidates being elected I don't believe its outrageous that the
striking might conceivably change the result of the election, so it
really should be handled with the utmost of care for practical reasons
as well as principled ones)

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2009/8/12 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>:
> I too agree that there is an obligation to contact, hopefully with
> enough time to respond and point out an error,  but I don't believe
> that the the contact must be absolutely immediate.

I agree that there is no real need for it to be immediate, but in most
cases I can't see a good reason for it not being. In this case where a
lot of votes have been stricken at once it might be a good idea to
keep quiet for a few hours, maybe a day, to check there wasn't a big
mistake made which would result in hundreds of identical complaints
being received if emails were sent out, but for one-offs like
sockpuppeting, the notification should probably just be sent
immediately.

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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
> the key to avoidance in the future!)

It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made
in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the
effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.

Avoiding it in the future remains basically the same as it was in
2007, either:

* Stop changing the voting rules every year so that I don't have to
keep rewriting the scripts. Obviously I can change the numbers and
dates, but the CentralAuth integration this year required a whole new
architecture.
* Assign someone to do this who doesn't have a hundred other
responsibilities and can afford the time to do rigorous testing of
every critical component.
* Have someone review critical parts of SecurePoll instead of just
trusting me to write perfect code.

-- Tim Starling


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On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tim Starling<tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
>> the key to avoidance in the future!)
>
> It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made
> in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the
> effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.


Thanks Tim. It sounded like what happened in the past. I apologize
for not doing my part and catching it this time. :(

To err is human... nice to know that at least some of us aren't bots.
;) May all future errors be as correctable!

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On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:50 PM, Brian<Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:
>> This is important:  NO ONE WAS DISENFRANCHISED BY THE ERROR. People
>> were given suffrage who weren't entitled.
>>
>>
> This comment makes my skin crawl. Everyone is entitled to have a voice and
> it is only the Board's impoverished vision of the community and limited
> sense of what technology can accomplish that has led them to create
> arbitrary rules about how to best stifle the voices of the vast majority of
> the actual community. Not only that, but the Board has forgotten the WMF's
> original vision where all editors were highly valued members of the
> community. Because the Board does not have to sit face to face with these
> people they feel free to treat our community members as if they were not, in
> fact, people, with highly valued and varied life experiences whose votes do
> in fact contain useful information - in the information theoretic sense.

Brian, I like many things you say while ranting, for instance I think
we need to think about suffrage as something essential to our identity
as a community, not a quick hack that balances commitment and
flood-proofing against openness of process. However, a prickly tone
tends to discourage people from responding to you.

Can you provide some positive examples of what you would like to see
instead? Would you prefer to have no requirements for editing or
contribution, only a requirement that a voter prove they are a real
and unique snowflak^B^B^B^Bperson?

SJ

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On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:02 AM, Samuel Klein<meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:50 PM, Brian<Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:
>> This comment makes my skin crawl. Everyone is entitled to have a voice and
>> it is only the Board's impoverished vision of the community and limited
...
>
> Brian, I like many things you say while ranting, for instance I think
> we need to think about suffrage as something essential to our identity
> as a community, not a quick hack that balances commitment and
> flood-proofing against openness of process. However, a prickly tone
> tends to discourage people from responding to you.
>
> Can you provide some positive examples of what you would like to see
> instead?  Would you prefer to have no requirements for editing or
> contribution, only a requirement that a voter prove they are a real
> and unique snowflak^B^B^B^Bperson?
>
> SJ

FYI to all: There's an on-wiki discussion of what suffrage
requirements should be here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2009/en#Post_mortem

-- phoebe

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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>>
>>> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
>>> the key to avoidance in the future!)
>>>
>> It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made
>> in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the
>> effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.
>>
> Thanks Tim. It sounded like what happened in the past. I apologize
> for not doing my part and catching it this time. :(
>
> To err is human... nice to know that at least some of us aren't bots.
> ;) May all future errors be as correctable!
>
>
It's also refreshing to see people who accept their share of
responsibility when something has gone. Kudos to both of you for such
rare kind of behaviour.


Ec

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On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Ray Saintonge<saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm interested in knowing the nature of the error (understanding is
>>>> the key to avoidance in the future!)
>>>>
>>> It was my fault, and it was pretty much identical to the error I made
>>> in 2007, where certain kinds of edits were double-counted and so the
>>> effective edit count threshold was lower than it should have been.
>>>
>> Thanks Tim.  It sounded like what happened in the past.  I apologize
>> for not doing my part and catching it this time. :(
>>
>> To err is human... nice to know that at least some of us aren't bots.
>> ;) May all future errors be as correctable!
>>
>>
> It's also refreshing to see people who accept their share of
> responsibility when something has gone.  Kudos to both of you for such
> rare kind of behaviour.
>
>
> Ec
>
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>

Maybe we need to clone Tim too? :p

-Chad

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