This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. 
Anıl Şerifoğlu (talk) 16:26, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Anıl Şerifoğlu (talk) 16:26, 20 March 2024 (UTC)Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Voting eligibility pt. 2
Hi again.
So, recently ran through a tweak to get rid of one clause in voting eligibility, which went really smoothly. However, I'd like to dive a bit deeper with a second round of proposed changes that might have a bit of a harder time passing—then, I'll leave the policy alone, and sorry for the back-to-back SHs; at least it's easier to sort through piece by piece.
There's a handful of clauses that I've heard from other Wookieepedians that we might not need. But there's also mixed opinions, so I'd like to perhaps run all of the contested through CT just to see what sticks and what doesn't, if only because the clauses are so old, and should probably be re-voted on anyway. This Senate Hall is somewhat of a text wall, a summary of the changes, if all the below passed (even if that's unlikely), can be found here.
A list of the topics and reasonings I've heard about them:
- Additional provisions, pt. 1: "Userpage and talk page edits do not count toward this total."—
- Reasoning: The sentence prior to this specifies that Main namespace edits are required; unnecessary to also state afterward that userspace doesn't apply.
- Additional provisions, pt. 1: Probably needs to mention the social media team nominations too, and board membership removals.
- Additional provisions, pt. 2: Minor, but it's a bit long. We can probably take " Discussions moderators may include their individual moderator action counts from the last 3 months (visible to them and administrators through Special:Insights) as part of their total post count." and turn it into its own bullet point.
- "Users returning from a block of one month or longer are not immediately eligible to vote on Consensus votes (as defined above), requests for user rights/removal of user rights votes, review board membership/removal of review board membership nominations, or social media team/removal of social media team nominations. They regain their voting eligibility after two weeks from the expiration of their block."
- I've heard several people mention this one to me actually, though it's a bit mixed/didn't get a lot of comments. I'd like to bring it to CT anyway just to see where everyone stands. One of the main arguments I've heard for removing it is that people do make mistakes, and we should welcome back users after their sanctions with open arms. Of course, this is not condoning anything they have done; and if a user was banned for over six months, per other clauses, they would need to get 50 more edits. Or if they're permanently banned, they can't vote anyway (a given). But, if someone was given a temporary ban for a shorter period—which happens sometimes, as people learn and grow—there is the argument that they don't necessarily need to wait upon their return. For me personally anyway, it seems like a remnant of an era in which admins sought to control things a bit too much; but, the current revamped blocking policy poses blocking as an action that an admin takes to protect the community—not (always) to punish an individual—but only to stop them from harming Wookieepedia.
- "Regardless of the overall total number of edits, a user's combined total of content namespace, Wookieepedia:, and MediaWiki: edits must be at least double the combined total of Forum:, User:, and User_talk: namespace edits in order to vote on any of the aforementioned forums. This works in conjunction with all aforementioned provisions required to vote but does not apply to "fun" votes, such as Star Wars Character of the Year."
- Reasoning: Some things I've heard about this clause from various folk is that it's overly bureaucratic and also not mindful of that some people do a lot of userspace drafting (of large pages, to put in mainspace). Within the last year, we updated the user page policy to be less restrictive regarding over-editing userpages. Also, it just really isn't an issue from what I've seen, honestly? If we did have a lot of people constantly editing their userpages—and perhaps that was the case whenever this was created a decade ago—but less so now. It seems to fall under instruction creep, so I can see why we might want to remove it because a user would be required to have 50 mainspace edits in the last 6 months to vote anyway per other clauses, so what difference does it make how much they've edited their userpage?
- Other item of note: Featured article reviews, Good article reviews, and Comprehensive article reviews to be added to the "Non-consensus votes" section as they're governed by their own respective rules.
Text walls! For a tldr; if all of the above passed, this would be the final result. If some of it passes, just tweak that part back to whatever it is currently in the policy at the moment. I suspect this will be a several part CT, but it should be the last time we have to touch this policy for awhile. Happy editing? Love ya'll.—spookywillowwtalk 05:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
Put this up in a multi-part CT allowing folk plenty of options, will see how goes.—spookywillowwtalk 18:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
- Full support OOM 224 (he/him) 08:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- 1-3 and 6 look like straightforward cleanup to me, so that's a yes. Personally, I feel like 4 can just be nuked, yeah. And 5 raises some good points about that clause needlessly excluding editors who are potentially engaging in practices that can actually be very productive and useful to the wiki - like the already mentioned userpage drafting, or actively engaging with/providing input on Forum threads despite maybe not being that focused on editing mainspace and such themselves. Imperators II(Talk) 09:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- These all look like good ideas to me. Rsand 30 (talk) 11:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- FWIW I believe we could further cut down on the requirements in Additional provision 1. Personally I don't really see a good justification for retaining the "prior to the start of the vote" qualifier, we could just have it be as simple as "you must have had 50 edits by the time of your signature for your vote to count." Imperators II(Talk) 12:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- IIRC it's to stop people from just hopping on to the wiki and making 50 edits just for the sake of participating in the vote, the hope being that 50 edits would have already been made without the express intention of participating in said vote, demonstrating a sincere desire to contribute to Wookieepedia rather than just sign their username next to a bullet point. SorcererSupreme21 (talk) 15:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- My point is this, though: how is it not contributing to Wookieepedia if a) you do contribute the required 50 edits on Wookieepedia anyway, and b) you're voting on a vote that affects Wookieepedia? Imperators II(Talk) 15:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- I'll certainly include a sub-CT point for this specific point, perhaps with one variation to pick between. Mainly, I definitely see that we could open it as you suggested. On the other hand, it does allow for individuals to make a lot of accounts to sandbag a vote. Something like that could be prevented by specifying that an individual's account must have existed on Fandom prior to the vote starting (as in, the Fandom account was not registered/created solely for the vote itself) If someone came back from a break, they could do the edits and vote, but meatpuppetry becomes less likely because accounts created the same day as a vote went up wouldn't be able to sway it or sockpuppet.—spookywillowwtalk 16:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- Good idea. Imperators II(Talk) 17:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think meatpuppetry is as big an issue though, in that a person would need to creat an account, then make 50 mainspace edits before they could even vote, a lot of hoops for someone who has no skin in the game so to speak. Additionally anyone who makes this effort just to vote has an interest in the vote for some reason, so chances are high they're either an anon editor or a reader. After all that (creating an account, making 50 edits and voting), there is also a higher chance they come back and edit in future, so I see no actual downside. While there is potential risk, but it's not a large risk, and has little chance of occurring, so is writing a policy without evidence of this being detrimental, only the fear that it is detrimental, the correct course of action? Personally I prefer data-driven decision making, and I don't think there's any data recently that would support this. Even the vote regarding deadnames didn't see this activity, with majority of those struck votes eligible under the above changes. ℳÅℕ☉❂Ⅎ he/him/his 22:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- Have to agree with Imp. In the past as well, we've never seen that sort of concentrated effort to sandbag a vote, and if that did happen? It would be pretty easy to see if a number of new accounts were making the same edits/voting on the same things and request a checkuser. 50 edits is 50 edits, and if wanting to participate in a vote encourages someone to contribute? Good on them. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 00:10, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Per above, especially the comment about data. If there are people going to abuse this, I'd like to see if there's anything actually supporting that claim. Having a requirement of having existed on Fandom for a certain period of time would also suffice. —SnowedLightning (they/them) 00:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Have to agree with Imp. In the past as well, we've never seen that sort of concentrated effort to sandbag a vote, and if that did happen? It would be pretty easy to see if a number of new accounts were making the same edits/voting on the same things and request a checkuser. 50 edits is 50 edits, and if wanting to participate in a vote encourages someone to contribute? Good on them. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 00:10, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think meatpuppetry is as big an issue though, in that a person would need to creat an account, then make 50 mainspace edits before they could even vote, a lot of hoops for someone who has no skin in the game so to speak. Additionally anyone who makes this effort just to vote has an interest in the vote for some reason, so chances are high they're either an anon editor or a reader. After all that (creating an account, making 50 edits and voting), there is also a higher chance they come back and edit in future, so I see no actual downside. While there is potential risk, but it's not a large risk, and has little chance of occurring, so is writing a policy without evidence of this being detrimental, only the fear that it is detrimental, the correct course of action? Personally I prefer data-driven decision making, and I don't think there's any data recently that would support this. Even the vote regarding deadnames didn't see this activity, with majority of those struck votes eligible under the above changes. ℳÅℕ☉❂Ⅎ he/him/his 22:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- Good idea. Imperators II(Talk) 17:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- I'll certainly include a sub-CT point for this specific point, perhaps with one variation to pick between. Mainly, I definitely see that we could open it as you suggested. On the other hand, it does allow for individuals to make a lot of accounts to sandbag a vote. Something like that could be prevented by specifying that an individual's account must have existed on Fandom prior to the vote starting (as in, the Fandom account was not registered/created solely for the vote itself) If someone came back from a break, they could do the edits and vote, but meatpuppetry becomes less likely because accounts created the same day as a vote went up wouldn't be able to sway it or sockpuppet.—spookywillowwtalk 16:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- My point is this, though: how is it not contributing to Wookieepedia if a) you do contribute the required 50 edits on Wookieepedia anyway, and b) you're voting on a vote that affects Wookieepedia? Imperators II(Talk) 15:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- As the administration already know through consultation with me from last year, some individuals from a specific community where planning on trying to overrule a specific CT (I don't intend to go into details, because there's absolutely no point to reveal the specifics of this in this debate). However, as the situation was monitored, it became pretty clear that the people involved were far from able to raise the manpower necessary to really weight on anything, and even ended up contributing to Wookieepedia. While this example didn't result in anything drastic, there is more badly intended people creeping up in the dark corner of the web and who would love nothing more than to derail us, so I'd still prefer for us to keep this guardrail, as I don't really think it hurts the community consensus if kept. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 07:34, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah I didn't want to mention it since it wasn't my place but that was essentially what came to mind. It was, though it didn't happen in the end, planned to be a coordinated account creation meatpuppetry scheme of bad faith. Certainly worth providing options in the upcoming CT because there'll be some variance on how folk prefer to handle it.—spookywillowwtalk 23:56, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- IIRC it's to stop people from just hopping on to the wiki and making 50 edits just for the sake of participating in the vote, the hope being that 50 edits would have already been made without the express intention of participating in said vote, demonstrating a sincere desire to contribute to Wookieepedia rather than just sign their username next to a bullet point. SorcererSupreme21 (talk) 15:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- Looks good, great work Spooky. Wok142 (talk) 18:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- These changes all make sense to me. I'm also inclined to agree with Imp's point about the prior-to-the-vote thing, provided we ensure there's no room for misuse. When I returned, I had to be very arbitrarily selective about which votes I could participate in :P Zed42 (talk) 21:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- Removing draconic policy is always a good thing, would support all removals. ℳÅℕ☉❂Ⅎ he/him/his 22:09, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- Looks good to me. Point 5 especially can go, that was very much a Tope era relic designed to stop certain users from participating. Good show! Supreme Emperor Holocomm 00:10, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Absolute full support on anything that is a relic of the past. Get rid of it, we need less gatekeeping, not more of it. —SnowedLightning (they/them)
- I would tend to agree with the proposed changes. However, per Nano, I'm not sure we should do away with the "prior to the vote". I personally would be in favor of having both at least 1 edit anytime prior to the vote, and also 50 edits in the past six months, but the 50 don't all need to be prior to the vote. I know it doesn't come up often, but it is good to have safeguards regardless. ThrawnChiss7
Assembly Cupola 14:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
