Wikipedia talk:Suffrage

Should VFD suffrage be formalized?

Latest comment: 19 years ago9 comments6 people in discussion

I see the advantage of being able to point new users (or potential socks) to a plain policy page that says they cannot vote on VFD (which of course does not prevent them from commenting). I see the disadvantage that setting strict rules makes it possible for people to 'game the system' (e.g. if N edits are required, to make precisely N+1 minor edits and then start voting). Radiant_>|< 08:11, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

I see the benefit of a formalized policy, as long as the bar isn't set too high. (For example, I'm pretty active (1600+ edits to date), but I was inelgible for the Board vote because I was cautious about editing until recently.) If the bar is set high enough (100+ edits) then the system gaming problem should decrease, and if accounts created after the start of the vote are prohibited, the sock problem should be eliminated. A question that occurs to me is: Should there be a system wide policy, or should there be a fallback policy that only involves votes where no other policy was set? -- Essjay · Talk 08:18, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

• System wide sounds good for consistency. However, we'd arguably need several levels, as the suffrage required to vote on local issues (such as VFD) should be less than that required to vote on global issues (such as policy proposals or board votes). It is debatable whether RFA is the former or the latter. I believe the simplest way of wording it is requiring X edits at the beginning of the vote - that would automatically invalidate any accounts created after the vote started.
• On most such debates it is already assumed that anonymous users can't vote (since an IP address can have been used by a wide variety of people, it's hard to check that). We should make a provision for users changing account names, but that is relatively rare anyway. Radiant_>|< 10:58, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. Pcb21| Pete 11:41, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
• I prefer to leave the standard ambiguous for VfD decisions. The current guideline and precedent is very useful but we need the ability to exercise judicial discretion based on the specific facts at hand. As you say, it is far to easy to game the system once a rigid standard is set. Allowing and expecting the closing admin to do some research is the best way to meet our community goal. I'm inclined to think that some ambiguity is also a good thing for the larger policy votes although I can understand that there is a greater need for a more structured guideline in those cases. VfD has a lot of precedent to draw on. Other policy votes, etc do not have as much and can benefit from a "sufferage" requirement. Rossami (talk) 12:10, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
• I believe the number of edits is coincidence rather than any strong indication: a large number of edits gives you an assurance of a legitimate user, but a small number of edits gives you nothing either way, going with the number of edits alone to identify active users will give you false negatives, and it can vary often for users when articles they edited to got deleted. I think the opposite a rule should be set firmly that the number of edits alone should never be used to exclude any user, except perhaps at a very base level (such as the 25 non-minor-edit-flagged article edits in the Vfu policy which seems somewhat reasonable). --Mysidia 13:13, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
• Establishing a strict suffrage policy runs counter to the openness with is required for Wikipedia to function effectively, IMO. It is my personal opinion that no suffrage requirements should exist, save the very obvious (no anon. votes, no votes from accounts that were created after the vote was begun). Beyond that, I agree, by and large, with what Rossami has said about leaving individual cases to the discretion of the admin. For global, high-profile votes, some gamed votes will probably slide through, but if the number of those is large enough to seriously throw the total, then there is in all likelihood a greater problem at work, and one that setting a strict suffrage requirement is going to do very little to allievate. – Seancdaug 13:15, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Concur with Rossami, Mysidia and Seancdaug (although anons can vote; admins can ignore said votes; see WP:GVFD.) Unless you can come up with some evidence that excessive sock/meatpuppet voting is actually causing some serious problems with admins accurately closing votes, I'd view this as bureauracracy creep. Soundguy99 13:39, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • It's not creep, nobody is as of yet proposing anything. This is just a gauge of public opinion (and discussion thereof) in reaction to the subject recently coming up in a number of places. Radiant_>|< 13:46, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
• I support this idea. Furthermore, I think the Suffrage would be a lot easier to "enforce" if Kate's Tool were expanded to include an edit count up to a specified date. That way, you can have a clear idea of how many edits a certain account made up to the time a vote was started. --Deathphoenix 13:54, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • Consider the case of the newly registered user, whose first action since being a long time anonymous contributor, is a vote on an issue. This user then continues to edit, and accumulates hundreds of good edits in the week or two before the vote closes. Why should anyone attempt to codify restrictions of the bureaucrat's ability to use their discretion and accept that vote? What if a recently registered anon can point to hundreds of edits under his static IP number? Voting is a primary factor in getting anonymous users to register in the first place. Let's be careful not to ruin that motivation. Unfocused 14:27, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
    • But isn't that already stigmatised in practise? On a VfD, for instance, if there is a new user who suddenly votes, people often include a bulleted comment below the vote stating that it is "User's 2nd edit" or something similar. I know the vote itself isn't invalidated, but vote closers often see that comment and ignore the vote by the new user. --Deathphoenix 15:37, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
      • The vote closer is easily able to establish whether the anon is contributing something useful to the debate. Knowing it is the second edit helps, but that is just one more tool that helps the admin make a good decision. If an admin is using that info as the be-all-and-all, then they shouldn't be trusted to close votes. Pcb21| Pete 17:19, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
        • Exactly. Edit count is just one factor in making a decision. I think it's a useful first-line filter. --Deathphoenix 17:58, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Consistency

Latest comment: 19 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

It can reasonably be assumed that whatever suffrage is the guideline for VFD, will also apply to IFD, CFD, TFD and RFD. It would be easiest (once we have consensus for that) for all those pages to link here. However, VFU presently has its own, very strict, suffrage criteria. Shouldn't those then be dropped to make it consistent with the rest of the lot? [Radiant]

The VfU criteria is wrong and should be changed back in line with all the others. Pcb21| Pete 17:14, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

What about RFA? What about RFC endorsement? What about random votes about article style that occasionally pop up? Radiant_>|< 12:38, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's good to have a set suffrage for the general case to be consistent. VFU has a very strict suffrage because VFU is a very specific case. Undeleting an article is fairly serious because it indicates that an admin (who is a trusted member of the community) deleted something out of process. If I were an admin, I'd rather know that my actions were decided to be out of process by a group of members that passed a suffrage. So, a general voting page could have a little note pointing to the general Suffrage page while another voting page that has more strict requirements may have its own Suffrage section (say, with the VFU, if it still requires a more strict suffrage than the general case). --Deathphoenix 13:53, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

• In the first place, the suffrage requirements for VfU don't seem all that strict to me. In the second place, since VfU is essentially an appeals court that is often concerned more with process than content or subject, discussion rather than counting votes is even more important there than on VfD and sock/meatpuppet voting is more disruptive. Plus, we need some way to prevent articles from simply ping-ponging between VfD and VfU. I've got no problem with the situation as it stands. As far as the rest of the questions go, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. IMHO, trying to institute a variety of suffrage policies is wandering perilously close to violating m:Foundation issues - specifically "Ability of anyone to edit articles without registering." True, voting is not editing, but still. . . . . Soundguy99 13:56, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Those whole proposal strikes me as unnecessary instruction creep →Raul654 15:32, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

• I don't see it as such. If this were okayed, it might actually reduce instruction creep. If it's decided that a particular vote needs a suffrage, instead of having to decide upon a suffrage for each vote, one can just slap on "This vote has a Wikipedia:Suffrage" (or something similar) on top of the vote page. Instead of wasting time deciding on a specific suffrage, the only thing we'd need to decide is if it needs a suffrage. --Deathphoenix 15:41, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • We don't need suffrage restrictions. Clueful admins with the experience to judge all comments on their merits are far better than any gamable system about edit counts. Thus it is instruction creep. Pcb21| Pete 17:14, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
    • Well, I suppose in that case, you could count it as instruction creep wrt admins using their judgement on a case. I personally think having a suffrage helps filter out the chaff. That's not to say that you should only use a suffrage while ignoring everything else. Making the suffrage the end all and be all is like putting all your security at the point of entry while having no security on the inside, which I disagree with. The suffrage represents the entry point. Anyone that passes that first entry point can go through the scrutiny of any admin who wants to interpret the user's vote. --Deathphoenix 17:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

History of sockpuppetry

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Pcb21 made a change to the wording of one of the paragraphs on this page. See this diff. Based on my own recollection, sockpuppetry was always a problem. Sockpuppets were used to attempt to bias discussion threads, obscure the obviousness of edit wars, etc. It did not appear to me to have been caused solely or even primarily by the community's increased reliance on voting. I am going to revert the paragraph to the previous version because it is closer the way I remember the problem evolving. Would others who have also been watching the changes in our community processes also please comment? Rossami (talk) 18:24, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

"Some people assert..." - this wording is unacceptable. It is like poor attempt to write in an NPOV style, but in the Wikipedia namespace!

I know Radiant! doesn't necessarily know because he wasn't there, but you should know better. Sockpuppetry has sprung everywhere in the last year or two as voting has spread. VfD has had supposed-consensus-reaching-that-is-actually-more-like-voting for longer, and so was an early breeding ground for sockpuppets. And coincidentally, probably the most disliked page on Wikipedia!

But in short, if this page is to become a useful guideline, that passage has got to change. Pcb21| Pete 21:13, 12 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Suffrage for moving?

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

IIRC there was some talk about a minimum number of edits required to use the 'move' button. Does someone know the specifics about this maybe? Radiant_>|< 07:05, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Are you talking about the various bits of weaponry against page move vandalism? Or some other proposal, related to seniority? Pcb21| Pete 07:23, 13 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

• I seem to recall the move button only working if you had more than X edits, or that option being proposed. But I couldn't find it, hence the question. Radiant_>|< 08:17, July 13, 2005 (UTC)