[Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result

Thu May 21 21:33:30 UTC 2009

2009/5/20 Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com>:
> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>
> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)

I do want to state for the record that the only reason a "no opinion"
option was included in the vote was to give users an option to "not
vote" explicitly if they didn't feel they could have an informed
opinion on such a complex issue, so that they wouldn't feel compelled
to make one up. In other words, it was a measure intended to increase
the quality of the yes/no votes. But I don't think these neutral votes
should be given greater weight than the people who expressed no
opinion by not voting.

In other words, I consider this for all intents and purposes an
88%/12% result (it was also stated in the proposal that "votes that
express a preference" would be the basis of any decision). I say this
because that is important if people want to view it through the lens
of our traditional standards of "rough consensus". :-)
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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