Re: [Wikitech-l] The Second round of voting for mediawiki logo just started!

[Amir Sarabadani]

(Sorry for late response, this email fell into cracks of my messy inbox)

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 1:53 PM bawolff  wrote:

> TBH, I was under the impression that the second round was going to be
> narrowing down to top contenders (maybe the 3 or so top designs), not
> choosing the top contender (I guess that's my fault though, it wasn't
> stated anywhere that that was going to be the case or anything).
>

Actually the plan originally was to put anything that passed the basic wiki
thresholds (70%) but nothing beside the first proposal did. I could add the
proposal one and the other ones as runner ups but honestly it feels weird
advancing a logo design that had an opposition for each support.


> It was kind of hard to follow the first round with 20 something proposals
>

It was only 17, didn't even reach 20.

with some of them benefiting from showing up earlier than others, and most
> of the votes taking place during the time period where votes were allegedly
> not going to count yet.
>

That's true, I accept the mess up on my side (I have been planning this and
asking around for more than a year now but it's not like you coordinate
such changes on a monthly basis, I'm definitely learning), I tried to
compensate by giving a full month for the voting period which is pretty
long plus giving periodic reminders.


> I did notice that some of the people voting had never previously edited
> mediawiki.org (Or made very few previous edits). It kind of feels a
> little weird to treat this as a "vote" (and not a "consensus" building
> exercise) if we don't have eligibility criteria.
>

This is the part that changing the mediawiki logo is different from the
usual wikimedia decision making process. The reason is that in for example
English Wikipedia, the biggest venue of contribution is en.wikipedia.org
but the biggest venue for contributing to mediawiki is not mediawiki.org,
you make patches, you report bugs, you help people in IRC, and so on. If
you counted that, I assume a huge portion of the voters would be considered
eligible if we count venues like phabricator and gerrit. Also for example
for "picture of the year competition" in Commons, the eligibility is not
the number of edits in commons. It's the number of edits in any wiki and if
we want to count the number of edits in any wiki too, then I'm pretty sure
virtually every voter would be considered eligible.

>
> I do kind of wish there was a none of the above option.
>

Proposal four was the status quo, it clearly didn't pass (with 39%)


> Looking through the votes, I definitely see some people saying things like
> "Least bad option", which is not exactly an inspiring show of support.
>

Well, for each neutral or weak support in the proposal six, there was one
person who showed "strong support".  And this is the thing with logos, it's
not like a voting on a policy change, supporting or not supporting a logo
is a very subjective matter, for a similar situation look at elections,
there are people who go crazy about a candidate and people who are just
like "less horrible than the other candidate" and this is normal, people
are different with different perspective, If I wanted to force my
perspective, I would have advanced the first proposal too and even in the
variants for the current proposal, my favorites are not getting anywhere
but that's okay. Logos have lots of oobjective factors (like accessibility,
proper abstraction, color consistency, simplicity, brand awareness, etc.)
but the biggest one is the general look and feel and it differs from person
to person. That's why companies do extensive A/B testing on design, it
caused backlash too, for example a lead designer who left Google in protest
that they were doing A/B testing on forty different shades of blue which
basically destroyed the artistic freedom of designers (we are not going in
that direction but we need to acknowledge the subjectivity of designs)


HTH

>
> --
> Brian
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 8:50 AM Amir Sarabadani 
> wrote:
>
>> Hey,
>> The first round was using the standard voting process in wikis (using
>> support/oppose and the thresholds like 70%) and this is the way we elect
>> admins, checkusers or other user rights, or change policies in Wikis. I
>> don't recall that there has ever been anyone elected as admin with below
>> 70% or we have ever changed any policies with below 70% (not to mention the
>> runner up logos are 56% and 61%, basically for any support, they had an
>> opposition). Our logo is similar, no logo except proposal six could reach
>> seventy percent and while there were good designs that almost made it but
>> clearly none of them has enough support (and percentage of support) to
>> reach the next round. That's a pity (one of the runner ups was actually by
>> me) but if that's what the community wants, I happily accept it.
>>
>> The second round has always been
>> 

Re: [Wikitech-l] The Second round of voting for mediawiki logo just started!

[bawolff]

TBH, I was under the impression that the second round was going to be
narrowing down to top contenders (maybe the 3 or so top designs), not
choosing the top contender (I guess that's my fault though, it wasn't
stated anywhere that that was going to be the case or anything). It was
kind of hard to follow the first round with 20 something proposals, with
some of them benefiting from showing up earlier than others, and most of
the votes taking place during the time period where votes were allegedly
not going to count yet. I did notice that some of the people voting had
never previously edited mediawiki.org (Or made very few previous edits). It
kind of feels a little weird to treat this as a "vote" (and not a
"consensus" building exercise) if we don't have eligibility criteria.

I do kind of wish there was a none of the above option. Looking through the
votes, I definitely see some people saying things like "Least bad option",
which is not exactly an inspiring show of support.

--
Brian

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 8:50 AM Amir Sarabadani  wrote:

> Hey,
> The first round was using the standard voting process in wikis (using
> support/oppose and the thresholds like 70%) and this is the way we elect
> admins, checkusers or other user rights, or change policies in Wikis. I
> don't recall that there has ever been anyone elected as admin with below
> 70% or we have ever changed any policies with below 70% (not to mention the
> runner up logos are 56% and 61%, basically for any support, they had an
> opposition). Our logo is similar, no logo except proposal six could reach
> seventy percent and while there were good designs that almost made it but
> clearly none of them has enough support (and percentage of support) to
> reach the next round. That's a pity (one of the runner ups was actually by
> me) but if that's what the community wants, I happily accept it.
>
> The second round has always been
> 
> about different variants of the logos that pass the first round.
>
> HTH
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 9:30 AM Adam Wight 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, thanks for helping coordinate this process!
>>
>> I have concerns about what happened between round 1 and round 2, it seems
>> that we're no longer left with a real choice.  It's unclear what method was
>> used to tally the round 1
>> 
>> votes, was this a "support percentage"?  Whenever a vote is taken, it's
>> important to stick to democratic norms, basically "one person, one vote".
>> Round 2 is entirely variations on a single proposal, which disenfranchises
>> everyone who didn't prefer that design.  Is it too late to discuss?
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Adam
>> On 9/25/20 11:42 PM, Amir Sarabadani wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>> The subject line is self-explanatory, you can go to the voting page
>> 
>> and cast your vote.
>>
>> This is going to continue for a month and it's about different variants
>> of the top contender (different colors, different wordmarks, etc.). You
>> need to order logos based on your preference (the most preferred one first,
>> the least preferred one the last) and then cast your vote. The final winner
>> will be chosen using Schulze method
>> .
>>
>> If you have mistakenly voted in the test phase, you can just copy your
>> vote from the test page
>>  to the
>> actual voting page
>> 
>> (the numbers of logos haven't changed).
>>
>> Special thank you to Chuck Roslof from WMF legal for doing the
>> preliminary clearance of the proposal.
>>
>> Have a nice weekend!
>> --
>> Amir (he/him)
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Amir (he/him)
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] The Second round of voting for mediawiki logo just started!

[Adam Wight]

Hi Amir, thank you for the patient explanation!

Yes, it makes sense now.  I've been thrown off by wiki election math 
(again [1]).


I also happily accept the community consensus even if it endorses a 
circle logo.  But I gently suggest that our vote tally is an 
unconvincing reflection of any consensus.  This isn't a new problem, so 
I don't want to suggest we drag out the logo nomination, but I think it 
gives a good example of why on-wiki democratic machinery is in need of 
reform.


There's a lot to say on the topic, but for now I can give an example of 
a single statistic, that the winning logo has 63 support votes out of 
216 total support votes, or 29% of the total.  That means there are 153 
potentially disenfranchised voters, which is an analysis we should be 
obligated to run.  Were 63 of these 153 also people who voted for the 
winning proposal as well?  (We know that at least 90 did not vote for 
the winner.) Potentially these voters had another much preferred 
favorite? Should we hold a run-off between the winners?  Would a 
ranked-choice tally like Round 1 have given different results? These are 
questions we can't answer without using a better electoral system.


Kind regards,
Adam

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Adamw/Draft/Board_Election_analysis

[2] 216 = 63 + 29+8+13+18+13+4+9+2+6+9+2+25+6+3+6

On 9/28/20 10:25 AM, Amir Sarabadani wrote:

Hey,
The first round was using the standard voting process in wikis (using 
support/oppose and the thresholds like 70%) and this is the way we 
elect admins, checkusers or other user rights, or change policies in 
Wikis. I don't recall that there has ever been anyone elected as admin 
with below 70% or we have ever changed any policies with below 70% 
(not to mention the runner up logos are 56% and 61%, basically for any 
support, they had an opposition). Our logo is similar, no logo except 
proposal six could reach seventy percent and while there were good 
designs that almost made it but clearly none of them has enough 
support (and percentage of support) to reach the next round. That's a 
pity (one of the runner ups was actually by me) but if that's what the 
community wants, I happily accept it.


The second round has always been 
 
about different variants of the logos that pass the first round.


HTH

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 9:30 AM Adam Wight > wrote:


Hi, thanks for helping coordinate this process!

I have concerns about what happened between round 1 and round 2,
it seems that we're no longer left with a real choice.  It's
unclear what method was used to tally the round 1


votes, was this a "support percentage"?  Whenever a vote is taken,
it's important to stick to democratic norms, basically "one
person, one vote".  Round 2 is entirely variations on a single
proposal, which disenfranchises everyone who didn't prefer that
design.  Is it too late to discuss?

Kind regards,
Adam

On 9/25/20 11:42 PM, Amir Sarabadani wrote:

Hello,
The subject line is self-explanatory, you can go to the voting
page


and cast your vote.

This is going to continue for a month and it's about different
variants of the top contender (different colors, different
wordmarks, etc.). You need to order logos based on your
preference (the most preferred one first, the least preferred one
the last) and then cast your vote. The final winner will be
chosen using Schulze method
.

If you have mistakenly voted in the test phase, you can just copy
your vote from the test page
 to
the actual voting page


(the numbers of logos haven't changed).

Special thank you to Chuck Roslof from WMF legal for doing the
preliminary clearance of the proposal.

Have a nice weekend!
-- 
Amir (he/him)



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Amir (he/him)


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Re: [Wikitech-l] The Second round of voting for mediawiki logo just started!

[Amir Sarabadani]

Hey,
The first round was using the standard voting process in wikis (using
support/oppose and the thresholds like 70%) and this is the way we elect
admins, checkusers or other user rights, or change policies in Wikis. I
don't recall that there has ever been anyone elected as admin with below
70% or we have ever changed any policies with below 70% (not to mention the
runner up logos are 56% and 61%, basically for any support, they had an
opposition). Our logo is similar, no logo except proposal six could reach
seventy percent and while there were good designs that almost made it but
clearly none of them has enough support (and percentage of support) to
reach the next round. That's a pity (one of the runner ups was actually by
me) but if that's what the community wants, I happily accept it.

The second round has always been

about different variants of the logos that pass the first round.

HTH

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 9:30 AM Adam Wight  wrote:

> Hi, thanks for helping coordinate this process!
>
> I have concerns about what happened between round 1 and round 2, it seems
> that we're no longer left with a real choice.  It's unclear what method was
> used to tally the round 1
> 
> votes, was this a "support percentage"?  Whenever a vote is taken, it's
> important to stick to democratic norms, basically "one person, one vote".
> Round 2 is entirely variations on a single proposal, which disenfranchises
> everyone who didn't prefer that design.  Is it too late to discuss?
>
> Kind regards,
> Adam
> On 9/25/20 11:42 PM, Amir Sarabadani wrote:
>
> Hello,
> The subject line is self-explanatory, you can go to the voting page
> 
> and cast your vote.
>
> This is going to continue for a month and it's about different variants of
> the top contender (different colors, different wordmarks, etc.). You need
> to order logos based on your preference (the most preferred one first, the
> least preferred one the last) and then cast your vote. The final winner
> will be chosen using Schulze method
> .
>
> If you have mistakenly voted in the test phase, you can just copy your
> vote from the test page
>  to the
> actual voting page
> 
> (the numbers of logos haven't changed).
>
> Special thank you to Chuck Roslof from WMF legal for doing the preliminary
> clearance of the proposal.
>
> Have a nice weekend!
> --
> Amir (he/him)
>
>
> ___
> Wikitech-l mailing 
> listWikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> ___
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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-- 
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Re: [Wikitech-l] The Second round of voting for mediawiki logo just started!

[Adam Wight]

Hi, thanks for helping coordinate this process!

I have concerns about what happened between round 1 and round 2, it 
seems that we're no longer left with a real choice.  It's unclear what 
method was used to tally the round 1 
 
votes, was this a "support percentage"?  Whenever a vote is taken, it's 
important to stick to democratic norms, basically "one person, one 
vote".  Round 2 is entirely variations on a single proposal, which 
disenfranchises everyone who didn't prefer that design.  Is it too late 
to discuss?


Kind regards,
Adam

On 9/25/20 11:42 PM, Amir Sarabadani wrote:

Hello,
The subject line is self-explanatory, you can go to the voting page 
 
and cast your vote.


This is going to continue for a month and it's about different 
variants of the top contender (different colors, different wordmarks, 
etc.). You need to order logos based on your preference (the most 
preferred one first, the least preferred one the last) and then cast 
your vote. The final winner will be chosen using Schulze method 
.


If you have mistakenly voted in the test phase, you can just copy your 
vote from the test page 
 to the 
actual voting page 
 
(the numbers of logos haven't changed).


Special thank you to Chuck Roslof from WMF legal for doing the 
preliminary clearance of the proposal.


Have a nice weekend!
--
Amir (he/him)


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[Wikitech-l] The Second round of voting for mediawiki logo just started!

[Amir Sarabadani]

Hello,
The subject line is self-explanatory, you can go to the voting page

and cast your vote.

This is going to continue for a month and it's about different variants of
the top contender (different colors, different wordmarks, etc.). You need
to order logos based on your preference (the most preferred one first, the
least preferred one the last) and then cast your vote. The final winner
will be chosen using Schulze method
.

If you have mistakenly voted in the test phase, you can just copy your vote
from the test page
 to the actual
voting page

(the numbers of logos haven't changed).

Special thank you to Chuck Roslof from WMF legal for doing the preliminary
clearance of the proposal.

Have a nice weekend!
-- 
Amir (he/him)
___
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