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Hi. You're being contacted as you've previously used global message delivery (or its English Wikipedia counterpart). It doesn't feel so great to be spammed, does it? ;-)
For the past few months, Legoktm has built a replacement to the current message delivery system called MassMessage. MassMessage uses a proper user interface form (no more editing a /Spam subpage), works faster (it can complete a large delivery in minutes), and no longer requires being on an access list (any local administrator can use it). In addition, many tiny annoyances with the old system have been addressed. It's a real improvement! :-)
You can test out MassMessage here: testwiki:Special:MassMessage. The biggest difference you'll likely notice is that any input list must use a new {{#target:}}
parser function. For example, {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales}}
or {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales|test2.wikipedia.org}}
. For detailed instructions, check out mw:Help:Extension:MassMessage.
If you find any bugs, have suggestions for additional features, or have any other feedback, drop a note at m:Talk:MassMessage. Thanks for spamming! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Semi-active is not as active as this kitten, but it's better than semi-retired. See, I like to consider the glass half-full. Always nice to see you in action, Boing!.
Drmies (talk) 16:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Did you know ...
Both appeared, Encouragement (not my article, but my hook, inspired by the absurdity under "season", - I'm so proud of that!) and the unwanted witch ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:26, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Encouragement endorsed. Press ganging is obviously discouraged, and the small sack I have wouldn't fit over your head anyway. But, you know, if I have to travel 12,000 miles "back home" to buy you that beer, it would be awesome to discuss your success in some putative, theoretical, endeavour to make things better at the same time. (I'm talking here, obviously, only about your potential candidacy to replace Mr Capaldi as the 13th, 14th or 42nd Doctor...). If there's anything other than that going on, well, meh, can't be important and has less Daleks. Begoon talk 13:53, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Hey. Hope you're doing well, Boing. Drmies (talk) 18:59, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't want to carry on this tangential point further at Jimbo's page, I already wish I had posed my question to you privately, not because it isn't interesting, but because I think it is tangential to the main topic. I accept one of the points you made, in a multi-seat election, some voters who abstain on some candidates in a multi-seat election simply wouldn't turn up at their individual RFAs. And so the "abstain" count in a multi-seat election includes the equivalent of "neutral" voters at an individual RFA *and* some of those who simply didn't turn up. In a multi-seat election if you only want to vote for one candidate, you *have to* abstain on the others and add yourself to the count of voters who didn't support - with individual RFAs, you can simply ignore as many as you like and not register in any of the counts.. However, if I understand the support calculation, which is (S/S+O), I don't believe the "forced" abstains will affect the ratio.
As a thought experiment, imagine that the last three RFA are re-opened and I get a chance to contribute. I support candidate A, oppose candidate B and don't know enough about candidate C to opine. If opened individually, I add a support vote to A, and oppose to B and nothing to C. The percentages change in the obvious way. If I am told I have to weigh in on all three, (sort of like ArbCom voting, but let's ignore for the moment, the tactical issues ), I choose support, oppose and abstain. The third voting percentage support will be unchanged, so in this limited situation, I don't see an impact.
What has the potential for changing things is the tactical consideration. In RfA, all who pass the hurdle become admin. In Arbcom, only the top 9. Conceivably, if I strongly prefer candidate X to candidate Y, I might consider support for X and oppose for Y, to help make sure that X gets in. I guess I;m simply not that devious. I simply assessed each candidate, determined whether I would accept them as a member of ArbCom, and supported those where the answer was yes. Your point is that not everyone votes that way, and there are strategies in a multi-seat election that would cause one to oppose a candidate you would find acceptable. That could depress the support percentages, unless it is countered by a situation where someone might support a candidate they would not like elected. My initial thought was that there is no such situation, but there is. Suppose I am very opposed to candidate Z, and concerned that there is some community support for the candidate. Obviously, I oppose Z, but I might support Y, as the lessor of two evils, in the hope that my vote for Y will push Y ahead of Z. I'm not thrilled with Y, and would prefer that Y not be elected, but in a choice between Y and Z, and I prefer Y. So one strategy depresses the percentage support, the other increases it. I don't find it implausible that there is more of the first than the second, but I do not see the inevitability that you see.
The situation is different if there are 21 candidates and we are given 9 support votes. Then I would expect depressed support relatively to one-off RfA type votes, but that isn't the case.
Anyway, sorry to go on, I am fascinated and interested in voting theory, ever since Ken Arrow gave a lecture to a small group of us at a symposium and I became aware of Arrow's impossibility theorem.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:54, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Essentially there are two issues that come up every time. One is the complaint that the percentage quoted (ie S/(S+O)) does not show the actual percentage of support of all those who offer an opinion, because it ignores the abstain votes. And that's what my point about abstaining vs simply ignoring was aimed at - a multi-seat election forces abstain votes and therefore depresses the support in terms of S/(S+O+A).
In your second example, sure, there are individual scenarios where you might support someone you would otherwise oppose if you see them as a "less bad" option and thus boost their support. But the thing is, there are lots of tactical voting approaches and I think your suggested one is less common - I don't think it's common to vote for someone you don't like in order to more strongly oppose someone you like even less. I think by far the most common form of tactical voting (just judging from talking to people about the way they vote, and having talked to people who run elections - it would be good to find some hard stats somewhere) is to only cast the same number of votes as there are seats (or even fewer), choosing your favourite n candidates (and voting against the rest if there is an option to oppose, even if you would support them if there were more seats). I certainly did that in this election - I only supported nine candidates and I opposed others who I would have supported had there been more seats, and that does depress the support percentages.
I think if we imagine a more extreme example it makes it clearer. Suppose we had nine seats and only nine candidates turned up - I think we'd then have something very similar to nine separate RFAs, and with no benefit to tactical voting people would essentially vote on each individual candidate's merits. But now what if we add another thousand candidates to the mix, all vying for the nine seats. Votes will surely be spread more thinly, with a greater proportion of opposes - I find it inconceivable that we would get the same levels of support (vs oppose) for our original nine. You may think tactical voting is devious, but it's a well-known and common phenomenon. With our 1,009 candidate example, lots of people will support their top nine and oppose the rest (or at least oppose a lot of them - and a good few of those "not my favourite" opposes will surely go to our original nine).
The bottom line for me is that because they use two very different voting systems, it doesn't make sense to insist that multi-seat ArbCom elections should require the same support percentage as single-option RFAs - the only thing we can do is tailor the required percentages to what works based on experience, and experience does indeed tell us that ArbCom elections produce lower support percentages than RFA.
And yes, Arrow's impossibility theorem is fascinating - I find it fascinating that it is entirely possible for ranking systems to produce a result that was nobody's first preference. I bet hearing it from the man himself was a great experience! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your RfA Support! Things didn't work out, But I appreciate your support! be well. :) --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 20:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
File:Mundial SantosFC.JPG | User of the Week |
You have became user of the week Alexandharrison (talk) 22:13, 19 December 2013 (UTC) |
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Best wishes |
for the holidays and 2014 from a warmer place than where you probably are - unless... ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:21, 21 December 2013 (UTC) |
And same to you - and yep, still here in the cold UK -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:34, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 15 | ← | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | Archive 21 | → | Archive 25 |
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