Community de-adminship RfC enters voting, Canvassed with a Wikipedia banner Options

[Abd]

In all its glory.

This is a fairly mild proposal, not a whole lot less cumbersome than taking an admin to RfAr, and the biggest argument against it, in my opinion, is that it might be almost useless, but it is not worse than the status quo, and might be better, and might be improved on review, which is built into the proposal, so I supported it after some thought, even though there are aspects that are inadequate.

The arguments against are featured prominently at the top of the RfC, authored by TenOfAllTrades, who has provided plenty of reason, in the past, that someone might want him removed. Right now, Oppose votes are leading, with many of them based on an impression that There Is Nothing Wrong, Everything Is Peachy Keen, I've Not Encountered Any Rogue Administrators, So If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It.

Which is probably true for most Wikipedia editors. Until they do encounter one or a few.

I just thought it was odd that this wasn't being discussed here, given, etc., etc.

[powercorrupts]

Nakon has created this script on the CDA results that auto-updates - http://toolserver.org/~nakon/cda.php The stats are at the top.

The amount of opposing admin (v supporting editors) is striking when you see it in list form I must admit, but if you give them reasons to oppose (as this CDA proposal does) then of course a load of them are going to do just that.

The poll is intended to run for 28 days - I cant image CDA winning, but there could be more drama yet, though no one on the CDA side seems to be great at leading the show. They've allowed the truly cranky TenofAllTrades to place reams of 'The flaws of CDA' at the top of the proposal! Cue numerous "per TenofAll" opposes.

[Abd]

The poll is intended to run for 28 days - I cant image CDA winning, but there could be more drama yet, though no one on the CDA side seems to be great at leading the show. They've allowed the truly cranky TenofAllTrades to place reams of 'The flaws of CDA' at the top of the proposal! Cue numerous "per TenofAll" opposes.

That was truly outrageous.

TenOfAllTrades was the admin I chose to try to find someone who would talk some sense in to William M. Connolley. So when I emailed him with a civil suggestion that he look at the situation and give some good advice to his friend, he flipped out. The result: WMC wasn't restrained by his "friends," he was encouraged. And he still thinks he got a raw deal. I've concluded that they aren't actually friends. They were simply using him.

The real problem is that the community has no idea how to run actual consensus process, which begins with standard deliberative process. I.e., democracy as practiced in peer organizations for centuries. Unless you just want to put on a show, you never, never debate a difficult issue in a full assembly, it's referred to a committee, which hammers out a report, which report can include minority reports. That's then presented to the whole assembly for approval as adequate. Adequate as a report. That approval itself does nothing, but then it can be moved to take action on the report. By this time, if the report has been well done, and if this isn't a political organization where everyone wants to grandstand for the cameras, the process is swift and efficient. Debate opens and there is a motion for Previous Question, which requires a 2/3 vote; it simply means that debate is over, time to vote on the action question. If Previous Question passes, there is then a vote. In the vast majority of organizations, and except for certain special kinds of questions, the majority of those voting carry the day.

(There are also ways for a good facilitator to speed all this up. And the process can iterate. Report comes back, enough people think it isn't adequate, it goes back to committee for review.)

Wikipedia tried to reinvent the wheel, but too much of the community and the founders didn't understand wheels, so they ended up with a square ones. Bumpy ride, eh?

A community the size of Wikipedia must have some kind of representative body, or else decisions will be chaotic and highly inefficient and too often ill-considered. The adhocracy works well for small-scale decisions, usually, more or less, that's why it became so popular. But when it fails, it fails spectacularly.

[Jon Awbrey]

The real problem is that the community has no idea how to run actual consensus process, which begins with standard deliberative process.

Why don't you consult your Robot's Rules Of Order, and tell us what constitutes a quorum of 12 million members.

Jon

[Abd]

The real problem is that the community has no idea how to run actual consensus process, which begins with standard deliberative process.

Why don't you consult your Robot's Rules Of Order, and tell us what constitutes a quorum of 12 million members.Jon

Organizations of that size don't have meetings of the entire membership, stoopy-head. So there is no quorum of the "12 million members."

But it's actually possible to define one that would make sense, but it would be defined as "present and voting directly or by proxy," and for some structural changes, there might be an absolute majority requirement, which makes quorum moot. And I won't go there yet.

More normally, large organizations set up representative structures, and "quorum" then refers to the number of representatives "present and voting." And they may also set up an executive committee, which is a much smaller body that has executive power ad-interim, i.e., it can make decisions quickly when needed, but it remains responsible to the larger representative body, which is, in turn, responsible to the membership that elects it.

I said "elect," but elections are not the best way to select a representative body, unless advanced voting systems are used. There is, however, a very simple system that would work with ease with Wikipedia; the article on it was unfortunately deleted by AfD filed by a sock of an editor (since ID's and blocked) who AfD'd everything in sight that might be considered critical of or a replacement for Instant runoff voting. Happened while I was site-banned, and nobody else noticed. I could probably get it back, but -- why bother?

The system is Asset Voting. It's a variation on Delegable proxy, which was also targeted by the same people. But Asset Voting -- not under that name but following the same analogy -- was invented in about 1884 by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) as a tweak on Single Transferable Vote. In theory, with little fuss and high accuracy, it could elect a fully representative body, limited only by the fact that truly minor groupings of editors would have to compromise with each other in order to gain a seat in the Assembly.

But with present technology, voting could still be universal. It's just representation in deliberation, the ability to "speak to the assembly" and to enter motions, that requires restriction due to scale.

So the quorum would probably be a set number of representatives who must be "present" -- which could mean voting or explicitly abstaining. The number, of course, depends on the size of the assembly chosen.

Who or what determines the size? My suggestion woudl be the Assembly itself: it will determine a size that balances efficiency and representativeness. My guess is that thirty is pushing it.

With pure delegable proxy and a seat in the assembly determined by "proxy rank," thirty could represent more people, but this, then, has variable voting in the assembly.

(With the direct voting I mentioned, each seat in the assembly would represent Q editors, the quota. And if one editor who was among those who assigned their votes in the Asset election -- these are public electors, the election itself can be secret ballot -- had assigned 1 vote to put together the quota for the seat -- decided to cast that vote directly, the vote of the seat would be devalued by 1 vote, i.e., would become (Q-1)/Q vote. But, I'd bet, in practice, those fractional votes would not normally make a difference in decisions, and electors wouldn't cast them usually. Just when they think they know better than the seat they elected, and couldn't convince him or her of it.)

("Elector" means someone who gets votes in the Asset election. In Asset, the electors -- who can also be thought of as "candidates" -- can recast their votes to create a seat. The electors are public voters. The original Asset election is secret ballot. Any candidate who gets Q votes or more is elected, if the candidate chooses to serve. The candidate then may have excess votes to distribute. It's a trick that gets around various impossibility theorems afflicting voting systems, by being not a "voting system" as they are usually defined. It's actually a deliberative process, not pure aggregation.)

Probably more than Jon wanted to see, but, hey, he asked.

An enterprise whose promoters derive benefits from misrepresentation is called a fraud.

Yes. Now what?

[Jon Awbrey]

The real problem is that the community has no idea how to run actual consensus process, which begins with standard deliberative process.

Why don't you consult your Robot's Rules Of Order, and tell us what constitutes a quorum of 12 million members.

Jon

Organizations of that size don't have meetings of the entire membership, stoopy-head. So there is no quorum of the "12 million members."

Which is precisely why organizations like that do not insult the intelligence of the public by using the word "consensus" to describes the results.

Jon