[Foundation-l] Elections email

Sat Jun 11 19:49:44 UTC 2011

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 21:03, Marc A. Pelletier <marc at uberbox.org> wrote:
> On 10/06/2011 5:55 PM, Sarah wrote:
>> [...] that the software is actively inviting all accounts that meet
>> those requirements, it means we're alerting all the socks that they're
>> able to vote. They might otherwise not even have remembered some of
>> the accounts the software is reminding them of.
>>
>> This is just not a good idea.
>
>
> You are begging a number of questions:
> - that the proportion of socks accounts is significant to begin with
> - that many of those sock accounts will vote because of the reminder that
>   otherwise would not have
> - that the number of resulting fraudulent votes will be more significant
>   than the number of *valid* votes the email will have generated; and
> - that even a statistically significant number of sock votes would
>   overweight the benefits of the increased voter turnout.
>
> I don't believe any of those presumptions are valid.
>
> -- Coren / Marc

Marc, what I'm saying is that these are all unknowables.

We don't know how many editors we have, as opposed to accounts, not
even roughly. If we want to move toward good governance, we ought to
try to determine how many individual editors there are; how to make
sure people are members of the community in a substantive sense before
asking for their votes; then how to make reasonably sure that each
person votes once.

There seems to be a sense that quantity of votes is what matters,
regardless of where they come from. I'm unclear why numbers alone
would matter so much.

Sarah