Forum:Weighted voting as an alternative to single-point voting for some votes

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There are some occasions on Uncyclopedia where weighted voting may be beneficial, when compared to standard voting. This may be especially of interest for forums such as the current vote on admin inactivity de-opping, where there may be a conflict of interest if some returning but long-inactive admins choose to vote in order to preserve their own status instead of according to the true interests of Uncyclopedians.

I'd like to hear your opinions on this. Is weighted voting, notably one based on editcount within a timeframe (e.g. number of edits in the calendar year 2020) an acceptable alternative to single-point voting (like Uncyclopedia usually does)? Weighted voting can be adjusted so that people with higher edit counts have a much smaller advantage than people with lower edit counts, but even then, it may be controversial for some, owing to it possibly not being democratic.

Please leave your replies below.  Cassandra  (talk) 11:27pm  February 3, 2021

This isn't a good idea. We've always done one vote one person, .5 votes for an IP. I suggest, that if we must have something (which I don't think is necesary then we should do:

“In order to vote on policy decisions you need to have had an account for at least 1 month and have made at least 25 edits before the forum for the vote was started.”

~ Captain Obvious

That's all we need. If the point is to avoid users who have just created an account to vote, then it is avoided. But we don't need classes of users. ShabiDOO 08:57, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

 For. Absolutely necessary in special cases like this. Active users should get more of a say in site matters than admins that have been inactive for years. ~ Hipponias^CUN - Talk - Contribs - Articles  09:05, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Cassie could you please give a specific criteria so that the community can discuss and vote for it? ShabiDOO 11:29, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I guess this isn't necessarily a vote, but  strong against anyway. At the beginning of 2020, I noted on our Discord that I would be absent from the wiki throughout the year because I was caring for a terminally ill loved one at the time. As the pandemic picked up, I saw a number of dedicated and trusted members of our community losing their jobs (sometimes multiple times), homes, and family members. Consequently, I was disappointed to see votes popping up in the first month of 2021 which would essentially penalize long-standing administrators for their inability to volunteer their time and creative energy to a comedy wiki in what was undoubtedly the most chaotic year of this website's existence. Sure, 2020 itself wasn't the focal point of these proposals, but it isn't like 2019 was free of hardships for many of our users. People contribute when they can.

And now the prospect of users being assigned an importance value based on their yearly activity is beyond disappointing to me. It's appalling, and disheartening to anyone returning from absence. And very ironic, given how this idea is meant to protect the integrity of a vote for supposedly more democratic administration systems. I understand why it might feel necessary to police votes if you suspect COIs are at play; in this case, inactive administrators suddenly reappearing to keep their beloved admin "status" (ugh). But beyond this being an absolutely bad-faith assumption, any vote that uses this weighted voting system would automatically devolve into a pissing contest, and the quality of edits would likely suffer if all it takes is a handful of easy edits to dominate the outcome. Two years ago, a former admin used bot scripts to inflate his edit count in the thousands by making completely useless automated edits, like replacing [[Image:]] links with [[File:]]. Thank Christ this person wasn't given a higher say on the wiki just because he cared more about quantity over quality.

I'm not the most active administrator on-wiki to say the very least, but I've always tried helping the site to the best of my abilities. Most of my efforts as an admin have been off-site, such as the Discord server and social media. I care a lot about this wiki and seeing it succeed, and I'm sure everyone else who voted against the term length proposal cares just as much as I do, or even those who voted in favor of it. It could be argued that this "weighted voting" idea is Cassie's self-serving attempt at giving her term length proposal a better chance at succeeding, but this argument would be soaked in even more bad-faith assumptions. The same as speculating that anyone who votes against the term length is only trying to preserve some perceived "status" indicator on the site, which is an absolutely horrible interpretation of what the administrator user group actually is: an extra set of tools given to trusted users and literally nothing else. Not server administrators or staff members (some of whom are now at risk of losing their admin rights because of that proposal, funny enough). Not even a cool kid card, or an indication of importance like this weighted voting idea would provide.

In cases other than the aforementioned vote, I see no reason why you couldn't just set a minimum edit count, but only if absolutely necessary to prevent conflicts of interest. Say... only allowing voters with 100 edits in the past year. I believe this has been done in the past during important votes, but I don't agree with the term length proposal being counted as one. — SG1|Hereish ^{[citation needed]} 11:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I concur, this is a horrible, horrible idea. Probably the worst idea since the last horrible idea. PF4Eva, the President of Imagination Vote for me My tax returns 13:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Against slightly.. I don't even know how to calculate my score for weighted voting, and if it's based on edits, then that voting score can be artificially bumped up by making very tiny votes of every article you see, and artificially bump up your score. -WohMi, the best damn duelist on this website (talk) 13:29, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

 Against. Omg, that is not a good idea. I have pretty good math skills and I can't do all that without several calculators. Glad to see a comrpimise was below. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 20:31, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Voting rights on Policy votes and admins

This is a sort of compromise.

For votes on site wide policy: All users must have created their account and have 5 edits before the forum/vote is started. IP accounts must have made at least 25 edits before hand (and only get .5 votes).

For

Score: 5.75

1. I'm not sure this is necessary but it doesn't hurt to have this policy in place in case there is future abuse. ShabiDOO 14:17, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
2. Sounds good.  For. -WohMi, the best damn duelist on this website (talk) 14:19, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
3. Indeed. MrX blow me 17:14, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
4. Makes sense. Have a good day, and may Sophia bless you, JJP...MASTER!_{[talk to] JJP... master?} 19:03, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
5. Fair enough, although VFS already has higher standards (75 edits + 2 weeks).  Cassandra  (talk) 07:11pm  February 4, 2021
6.  3/4 of a for It's not perfect, but reasonable. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 01:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Against

Score: 0

1.  Against. As I said at Central Perk, I would looooove to throw down a fat vote right now (5,000+ edits in 2020, hey-oh!), but this is not the best idea for the Uncyc community. We should highly value the opinions of "older" editors who pop back up from time to time. It should be like that South Park 3-parter in the future when "the wise one" speaks (except we shouldn't kill the wise one, unless there's blasphemy against Sophia). And we should also highly value the opinions of our fresh, new editors. If, "and believe me this is a hypothetical", but if we have any sort of problem with questionable accounts voting, we can deal with it then. For now, I think all is well. May Sophia bless you all. MrX blow me 15:38, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   Did you read the text for this particular vote MrX? This only requires you created an account before the vote began and has 5 edits (peanuts). ShabiDOO 15:47, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   My bad, I did read everything, but still somehow didn't connect the dots that this vote is slightly different from the forum proposal. Moving to for. MrX blow me 17:14, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   Derp! :) ShabiDOO 17:21, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

2.  0.5 Against I understand that this is a comprimise, but its not effective. People can still "game the system", and I would prefer a timestamp(like have created there account 5 days beforehand or something like that, and for IPs, the first contribution from that IP having a timestamp older then 5 days). While we should have a minimum threshold, I would prefer not to have something as wp: wp: GAMEable. I am not giving a full oppose, as there is a chance it is not gamed. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 20:29, 4 February 2021 (UTC) See below. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 01:14, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Less gameable option

I have a less gamable option; instead of 5 edits its 5 days of accounts and for IPs it is 5 days since there 1st edit. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 20:33, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Score: 0

Support

Oppose

• Bulleted list item

Neutral

1. Gale5050 can we please keep this simple? Instead of having multiple proposals with small differences can we just have one and see if it is accepted or not? It isn't a super big deal how many days are included or even the number of edits. In any case...it's not as though users can predict when another user is going to make a site wide proposal right? How can they game the system? Having a minimum number of edits and having to have had an account before the idea was even proposed is enough to avoid the most stupid sock-puppetry. Obvious sock-puppetry can be stopped anyways. ShabiDOO 20:45, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   Yes, but there are clever sockpuppets. On enwiki, my sock HurricaneTracker495 lasted for nearly 2 months and 2400 edits before being detected, and some go on for even longer. It was only detected via likely LTA activity. I am not Humiebees and that can be carried over to enwiki. I think that having an account for a minimum amount of days is less gamable, as an account can quickly generate 5 edits. As I will demonstrate at UN:SPAM. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 20:49, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   44 seconds! Wow! Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 20:51, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   Could you explain how, after a forum is created and site-wide policy is proposed...you could make a backdated account that appears as though you created a sock-puppet account BEFORE the forum was created? ShabiDOO 20:53, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   But for IPs....IPs.....they could still game by making 25 edits, and it would take only ~5 minutes. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 21:16, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

   Those edits are before the forum is created. ShabiDOO 23:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

See above. Gale5050 complain about me! And see my Wikipedia contributions! 01:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)