Forum:2018 Weird Gloop board elections: results and post-mortem

Forums: Index > 2018 Weird Gloop board elections: results and post-mortem

This page or section is an archive. Please do not edit the contents of this page. This thread was archived on 10 March 2019 by Cqm.

Hi everyone! The results from the 2018 board of directors election have been posted at Weird Gloop director elections/2018/Results.

Thanks to everyone who got involved in this process. Thanks especially to the candidates -- whether or not you "won" this election, it means a lot to me personally that you came forward to help out with this crazy experiment. And to everyone: the board is meant to represent the community, and we need to do everything we can to keep Weird Gloop (and its governing structures) transparent and community-oriented. If you ever see us wavering from that commitment, speak up. Stay involved.

Gaz and I will be in contact with the successful candidates in the coming weeks to finalize the appointments.

This thread can also serve as a post-mortem for the elections -- what do you think went well? What can we improve for next time? I have my own thoughts that I'll share below later. ʞooɔ 08:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

Some areas of discussion:

• What did people think of the voting method? It looks to me like just about any sane preferential voting system would have given the same results (i.e., this result is not some quirk of the Schulze system).
• What do people think of the fact that the final board representatives are all administrators? Is this desirable, or undesirable to the point that we should try to avoid it next time?
• How can we advertise the elections better? Should we?
• How can we make this process more transparent? ʞooɔ 08:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment - some of my thoughts:

• I was disappointed to see that all those elected were admins of the respective wikis. I made a concious effort to vote at least one non-admin highly for both wikis, although it would appear the wider community did not share that view.
• It would have been nice to advertise the elections more prominently before we did via the sitenotices on each wiki. Not everyone visits meta and/or discord so they may not have been aware of it.
• I was surprised by the format of the results, although I'll freely admit I didn't dig into the method in any way. I left some candidates equally ranked when I didn;t have a real preference (usually lower ranked) so I'm wondering if doing that negatively impacted those who I gave a higher rank.
• Accessing the elections was initially difficult as we didn't have the sidebar links at the start. Having those ready earlier would be helpful.

cqm ^talk 15:40, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Also, I appreciate it would require modifications to the extension, but as the discussion was relatively thin perhaps adding a text box for anonymous candidate feedback at the point of voting would help candidates understand why they were or weren't chosen. I was surprised by the overall order of the results, and I'd guess some others are too. cqm ^talk 15:43, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment - My opinion:

• I strongly believe we have a good board, but I'm sad that the 4 non-admins ended up at the bottom after all the interest shown in having non-admins running. I don't think this shows a hopeful future for non-admins on any following elections as some people may or may not have voted by knowing names instead of reading thoroughly everyone's application.
• As far as the voting system goes, It was hard to understand at first but it seems to work fine.
• Regarding the number of voters, 80 was way below my expectations. I guess it could've been more strongly advertised... I know it can be annoying for some to keep getting tagged often about the same stuff but I think it'd be justifiable in this occasion. Also, the RSW sitenotice came up on the brink of the voting being finished. Meeeeerds ^msg 17:26, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment -

1. Gangsterls and Ty made fantastic points earlier today on discord that I'll parrot here, it may be wise to change voter requirements next year; in order to vote for a particular set of seats one should meet the criteria for that specific group (especially should weird gloop expand to host additional wikis and their communities), the main point brought up was that voters from the opposite wiki are less familiar with the candidates for those seats and are more likely to end up voting based on name recognisition rather than the those who would be the best representatives.
2. Whilst I'm not completely happy with the results, I don't see any issue with the line-up beyond the lack of a non-administrator perspective.
3. It would be nice to know the number of rs3 versus osrs editors that voted before commenting on how successful voter turnout was before deliberating on how we should advertise/get the word around about the voting. iN008^talk 17:44, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment -

• Voting Method: Not exactly the easiest, but honestly, I didn't have a problem. I had issues understanding the ranking. I did a 1-8 scale for the people I preferred. 1 being the person I wanted the most, and so one down. Was this incorrect? No idea.
• I don't particularly think having all admins on the board is a problem, especially with who the admins are. I just don't think that it's preferred, and possibly something that should be avoided in the future. I agree with points made by IN008, Ty, and Gangsterls that name recognition was a hurtle here when it comes to cross wiki voting. I agree that the requirements should be looked at at modified.
• The election voting advert should've went live as soon as the polls were open in my opinion. Via popup, site message, Twitter, Discord, Live Stream, any platform that people look to get Wiki news. Going forward, if we take on more non-RS wiki's. We'll have to reach a large audience. If we are really a wiki for the people, by the people, everyone needs know the where, when, why, and how.
• In reference to the voting process? The pages are now there. This was our first election. Besides some minor hiccups and misunderstandings, we can now execute order 66 these elections better. ^TylerJarret _(Talketh) 18:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment - The total number of candidates wasn't as good as it could have been. Eight potential candidates for the RuneScape Wiki was alright, but only four wasn't enough to make a solid choice for Old School. My inclination is for there to be at least double the amount of candidates as there are positions available for as to ensure no single individual, with or without name recognition, to have a higher chance of getting on the board than the other wiki's candidates.

My voting was strictly a 1 through 8 and a 1 through 4 based on the candidates answers to questions and their statements from applying themselves to be candidates. I wanted to see at least one non-administrator on the board but it isn't a poor decision by the community to who they elected. The next election should have a presence on all Wierd Gloop sites in the asking for candidates phase, utilizing the Site Notice and something on the mainpages of each site.

Overall in the process of obtaining candidates, they have to be willing to have their real name on Companies House and might not want, or might not be able, to provide proof of identity. Some individuals that might want to apply cannot for they must be 18 years of age or older and of legal age in their country to become a board member. It was actually difficult to locate the information to submit entry as a candidate if you aren't in the know. However, if you really want to be part of the board, you might have those that are already part of the Discord server or actively browsing the Yew Grove or Watercooler on the respective sites.

I think we've been as transparent as possible with the way elections work. Unless we want to have a direct link to the Companies House entry for Wierd Gloop we'll have been as good as I can possibly see for the point in submission of candidacy to elections. After a year of the current board I believe we'll see questions for the next round arise based on the performance of the incoming members. - Ryan PM 18:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment - I think that the process was long and dragging it out didn't seem to give much of a benefit. I think we could have had 2 weeks of discussions with candidates and voting happening at the same time (since you could change your vote at any point, anyone who changed their mind during the course of discussions could change their vote accordingly). It seemed like talk about the candidates had died down awhile before voting started, perhaps that had a knock on effect of people then not bothering/forgetting to vote. I would have liked the sitenotice to be used from the beginning of voting, per Tyler. I'm not sure how helpful advertising off the wiki would be; as not sure people outside of the wiki community would be eligible to vote anyway. The site notice did cause more people to vote (you can see who voted and when here Special:SecurePoll/list/49, and there was an increase after the notice went up), and those people were more of the less known/active editors. Sure quite a few were ineligible, but I think it's important to try and reach out to as many editors as possible to vote next time. I would like the sitenotice to be up for the duration in the next elections. However it is now a whole year until elections will happen again. I would like to revisit the idea of improving the process before the next elections take place, but for now I'm really excited for the board members to be able to begin their work :) IsobelJ (talk) 21:15, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Comment - Overall, the results were about what I'd expected, and I, for one, welcome our new gloopy overlords.

• I don't really have much of an opinion about the voting method; it makes sense as a concept, and, like Cook said, pretty much any other method would have given similar results.
• It definitely would've been preferable for some non-admins on the board, though there's no easy way to overcome name recognition and the assumption that admins are better-informed (because, unfortunately, they sometimes are). However, I do not think we should take any specific steps to mitigate this, other than making sure people are better informed (both voters being aware of the candidates, and candidates being given a briefing of the main responsibilities better).
• As some others have said, the site-notices should've come sooner. I would suggest the notice first appear at the time the questions phase opens, and then open voting a week later (with an appropriate change in the site-notice). However, I think the total voting period was fine, it just needed to open up closer to the start of talks.
• Checking eligibility to vote for each wiki individually should definitely be a thing in future elections, especially if we ever expand.
• I think transparency was fine overall for the election. The best improvement, I suppose, would be for the main points and explanations made in Forum:"The voting method is bad!!!" to be made into an official policy/essay page. -- F-Lambda (talk) 21:59, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Closed - Discussion has long since died down. cqm ^talk 23:32, 10 March 2019 (UTC)