[Wikipedia-l] Why voting is good

Thu Nov 7 10:59:09 UTC 2002

Because I got sick of the constant references to "VotingIsEvil" on
MeatballWiki (a pretty good wiki about many aspects of communities, even though it
uses the despicable CamelCase syntax), and because I believe we *really* need
voting functionality in Wikipedia, quite possibly before we get certification
functionality (in order to approve user groups by voting), I have summarized
my thoughts on voting here:

  http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?VotingIsGood

I also believe that the S/N ratio on this mailing list is declining for the
very specific reason I point out in the above article, mainly that the
potential for conflict between two or more individuals grows exponentially as the
list grows. Voting, if accepted as a conflict resolution mechanism, could help
us here as well as on the wiki itself. I have seen many mailing lists become
either unusable or strictly moderated as they grew larger -- we should try
to avoid both.

Ironically, ultimately we will have to make a decision on whether we want to
use voting at all, and if so, another decision about the cases in which we
want to use it. The first decision can not be obtained by consensus because
there is no consensus -- it has to be made and enforced by the benevolent
dictator because those who disagree will not accept a vote. The second decision,
however, could very well be our first poll. I believe that once we have made a
decision on whether we want to use voting at all, there is probably a
consensus that it should be minimized to cases where no consensus can be obtained.

Any and all feedback is appreciated, here or on the above wiki. Please,
let's not get lost in semantics. I don't care if you call it voting or polling or
surveying, what I mean when I say voting is a list of options of which one
is chosen through a to be chosen mechanism (technically, if I implement this,
I plan to support both preferential voting and first past the post, i.e.
most-votes, voting).

Thanks for your time,

Erik

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