Electowiki:The caucus

To start a new discussion, click the "Add topic" link at the top of this page.

Goals

In the spirit of beginning with the end in mind, it behooves us to have measureable goals.

Suggested by Wegerje 17:54, 25 Mar 2005 (PST)

• Become the first page to appear in various Google searches.
• Become the source for links in the blogosphere (Often replacing Election Methods.org, no offense Russ)
• Providing from page one a clear and inviting path for those seeking:
  • First time information about electoral methods and why and when some may be better than others
  • Experts looking for well crafted information and in depth information on electoral knowledge

Design

The design is a work-in-progress. I have added the logo and background images from the main Electorama page. I will continue to update the look-and-feel of the site's default skin to match Electorama, but I'm not a CSS or design wizard. DanKeshet 14:36, 26 Jan 2005 (PST)

Announcements

Once this has been announced on the election-methods mailing list and Electorama, I think we should give a chance for the Electorama community to shape it before opening it for wider discussion. We can open it for wider discussion by posting to the appropriate Wikimedia places (Sites that use Wikipedia content; sites that use MediaWiki, etc.), as well as the appropriate voting places. DanKeshet 14:36, 26 Jan 2005 (PST)

Logo and theme

FWIW & IMHO - (orginal comment concerning the logo and name deleted. Glad to see it's fluid and fun-loving!) See post in Project:logo Wegerje 11:12, 31 Jan 2005 (PST) and Wegerje 06:10, 17 Mar 2005 (PST)

Great to see you here, Jeff! The logo was copied from electorama.com. I don't really care much about logos one way or another, but if you can do better, why don't you upload it and post it at Project:logo and if people like it, I can upload it onto the server directly. DanKeshet 11:30, 31 Jan 2005 (PST)

Regarding the name: that's precisely the reason I use these "Project" namespace links. So that we can change the name of that namespace without too much trouble. With Rob's permission, we could change the title to simply: Electorama.

Feel free to call this the Electorama Wiki or any other name. I'd caution against getting too wrapped up in gravitas, though. We're going to be at this a very long time, so we might as well have some fun along the way. For what it's worth this isn't the first group with grave concerns about the gravitas of their logo.

The goal behind naming the main Electorama site was to avoid going down the same rathole that most electoral reform pages go down. They either use the old red, white, and blue cliche, or some other textbook metaphor for serious stuff. The problem is that these sites often pronounce how boring and ponderous they will be before someone ever gets a good read. I specifically wanted Electorama to be accessible, and chose the theme accordingly.

So, this Wiki doesn't necessarily have to use the same theme as the main Electorama site. What's more, if there's a better theme for the main Electorama site, I'm happy to adopt it there, too. -- RobLa 22:28, 1 Feb 2005 (PST)

Content contradictions

Research thrives in lots of content - the kitchen sink theory - whereas activist "propaganda" thrives in less content - the less is more theory. It will behoove us to craft short, concise, clear activist pages that may point to the dense research pages as needed, but only point and never get bogged down with. Wegerje 11:41, 31 Jan 2005 (PST)

I'm not very worried about this until or unless it becomes a problem, but a custom namespace could always distinguish fact from editorial. DanKeshet 14:57, 31 Jan 2005 (PST)

Our "Village Pump"?

We should probably have some sort of "Village Pump" type page here. Naming this is always traditionally different on a per Wiki basis, based on the flavor of the Wiki. My proposal would be for "Project:Smoke-filled room" or perhaps "Project:The caucus", but regardless, this page should probably be reserved for discussion of the Main Page. -- RobLa 16:02, 6 Feb 2005 (PST)

I've been bold and done it. DanKeshet 16:50, 9 Feb 2005 (PST)

Problems with software

I've run into two problems:

1. Math isn't working. This is pretty big. The math software requires ocaml v.3.0.6; our provider offers 3.0.4. We can either bug our provider or compile the new version ourselves. As it would be much easier to bug the provider, and take up considerably less space, I prefer that.
2. Search isn't working. I'm going to look into this. Search wasn't working because of a tiny bug in the rewrite rules. Fixed and it now seems to work. DanKeshet 17:20, 9 Feb 2005 (PST)

Categories

The first order of business I've been working on is eliminating all the excessive internal links that make sense in the Wikipedia context, but not here. After that, I'd like to make some more and better categories. Ideas: Category:Ballot type, Category:Single-winner voting systems, Category:Multi-winner voting systems, Category:Condorcet method. DanKeshet 14:55, 13 Feb 2005 (PST)

I have done some of this. What I now hope to do is copy over the remainder of the articles from Wikipedia that I didn't get in the first batch. Also, I'd like to present some new examples that involve important Condorcet cycles, and use them in the articles on Condorcet methods. All Condorcet methods work the same on the Tennesee example, so using it is boring. DanKeshet 15:04, 14 Feb 2005 (PST)

I agree that the Tennesee example is boring! Ideally, examples on each method page should be specifically designed to show particular features of that method. James Green-Armytage 00:11, 19 May 2005 (PDT)

Advocacy/Propaganda development?

What do people think of using this space to hone our propaganda? Here's examples of material I would like to put up:

• A Case For Condorcet's Method - this was a piece I wrote in 1996, which I still think holds up ok, but could probably use some work.
• Campaign Finance Reform: A Red Herring - a piece I wrote in 2002 when McCain-Feingold was about to pass.

This is the area that gets harder to manage in a wiki without clear ettiquette, which is why I hesitate to use a wiki for this type of material. Still, I think it would be cool to collaboratively edit advocacy pieces. Thoughts? -- RobLa 20:58, 11 Apr 2005 (PDT)

Personally, I'm all for it. The etiquette I'd advocate for would be:

• "Friendly" edits (ones which agree with the points being made) to the page, "unfriendly" ones to the talk page
• However, clear factual errors can be corrected or noted in-place, even if it weakens the argument. (Be charitable in your interpretations of terms before deciding something's a clear factual error.) Homunq 02:51, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

@User:Homunq @User:RobLa I think this makes sense. But are there then "neutral" articles and "advocacy" articles? And how are they distinguished? Category? Namespace?

I want to put a bunch of my arguments from reddit on here, so I can link to them instead of repeating myself. Maybe I'll put them in userspace for now. Psephomancy (talk) 01:35, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, reflecting on it now (13 years later), I think putting it in your userspace is the right thing to do to start off with. I worry about setting a precedent that would cause this wiki to get overwhelmed with opinion pieces, since it really would only take one prolific disruptor to make life miserable for the admins of the site. Moreover, we probably need a more robust code of conduct, lest we open ourselves up to some serious trolling and use of this site as a means of distributing horrific propoganda and offtopic gibberish. -- RobLa (talk) 05:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@User:RobLa: Actually, I've been thinking about this and I think it's a good idea to make a place for it in the main space, so that people with a similar POV can collaborate on articles together, rather than writing their own articles in their own userspace (or repeating the same arguments over and over in many different one-on-one discussions that only reach a few people).

I like Homunq's idea of Friendly/Unfriendly edits and separating POVs into different articles. I wonder if it's possible to make an Advocacy: namespace? So something like Advocacy: Problems with Instant-Runoff Voting

Or maybe it could just be done with templates, like Wikipedia's Essay template, so it would be Problems with Instant-Runoff Voting with a big box at the top that says "This is an essay written by opponents of IRV and doesn't represent everyone else etc etc". — Psephomancy (talk) 21:43, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Difference between this and wikipedia?

A question: How should the electowiki site differ from wikipedia's "voting theory" category? How do we prevent wasted effort in editing the two pages separately? In what circumstances is it okay to paste wikipedia text into electowiki and vice versa?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Voting_theory

James Green-Armytage 00:03, 19 May 2005 (PDT)

One difference is that electowiki has a point of view. see Policy.

Augustin 18 Aug 2005 (Alternative voting phpBB MOD)

We're also more specialized. However, I would say certain articles could be copied to wikipedia; for instance Robert's Rules of Order could appear on Wikipedia as Voting methods in Robert's Rules of Order or something similar. 69.171.107.31 19:13, 6 November 2006 (PST)

There's no sense in making edits here to major voting system articles here that came from Wikipedia. Lock pages like single transferable vote from editing after adding a template referring editors to the Wikipedia article if they want to make changes. Copy the Wikipedia STV page here every x days so our version of the article stays current. Redirect our STV talk page to the Wikipedia talk page. 24.154.8.81 06:47, 7 November 2006 (PST)

Obviously this is an old discussion, but my point of view is that purely encyclopedic content that can go on Wikipedia should go on Wikipedia, where it will be seen and edited by many more people. Maybe include a quick summary of it here, but otherwise don't duplicate effort in multiple places.

Content that isn't appropriate for Wikipedia belongs here, such as original research, advocacy, things that are not "notable" or cannot be reliably sourced, etc. So:

• Biographical information about Condorcet: Wikipedia
• Discussion about what the Condorcet criteria means: Wikipedia
• List of which systems meet which criteria: Both?
• Description of a new voting system that hasn't been used in the real world: ElectoWiki
• Explanation of why system X is better than system Y: ElectoWiki
• Analysis of real-world elections and who would have won under different voting systems: ElectoWiki
• Results of every real-world United States Senate election: Wikipedia
• Results of some minor party's experiments with IRNR: ElectoWiki
• Detailed analysis of Wikimedia's Board elections: ElectoWiki :D

Psephomancy (talk) 02:25, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Citing references

Is there a way to cite references analogously to how it's done on Wikipedia using <ref>, {{cite web}}, etc.? I am copying a page I created there over to here, because it is about to get deleted from Wikipedia. See delegable proxy. Much of that information may get refactored into other articles, as I see there may be some overlap. Justin Bailey 16:06, 25 February 2008 (PST)

There is now! (10 years later.) Psephomancy (talk) 01:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Major delegable proxy project

Hello, I am currently mulling over some ideas for coordinating and facilitating more effective delegable proxy activism. Many people have come up with this idea independently and started websites about it, but there doesn't seem to be an single unified integration of all the available information into one place on the web.

I want to start two parallel (but intertwining) projects. The first is basically evisaged as a book that would integrate some of the most important research, ideas, etc. on delegable proxy in order to comprise the definitive work on delegable proxy. Depending on how much is out there, it could be a short book, but we'll see when we get there.

The other project will probably take the form of a wiki, and its purpose would be to gather the activists together under one roof, where they could have freedom to do their own thing (e.g. start WikiProjects and sub-WikiProjects on specific subject areas and ideas within the field of DP) while also sharing resources and having mechanisms for coordinating activity.

I'm trying to figure out, should be this implemented as part of a larger project (e.g. Electorama) or as a separate project, on another site? Is it intertwined with other election methods-related subjects to the point where it would be better to keep it all together on one wiki? I'm only aware of a few overlaps, e.g. Green-Armytage mentioned the possibility of using STV to pare down proposals in a DP system to a manageable workload.

Anyway, rather than post something extensive here, I put some more detailed musings on this topic on my user page. Feel free to contact me if you're interested in collaborating on this. Thanks, Justin Bailey 16:06, 25 February 2008 (PST)

Site stuff

Hi everyone, I'm the sysadmin for this site. I recently have done some upgrading and spam fighting, which unfortunately didn't play out the way I was hoping. Mea culpa. Simple thinko in my configuration changes this weekend, combined with a lack of testing. Before that, it was a "routine" upgrade gone wrong. Next time, I'll post something here, so that you can at least see what's happening.

I'm still reworking the configuration to make things more sustainable, with most of the heavy work this weekend. More later. -- RobLa (talk) 20:26, 11 June 2013 (PDT)

More futzing today. I doing some things to make performance better, and I might reenable QuestyCaptcha (had it before the upgrade). -- RobLa (talk) 13:23, 16 June 2013 (PDT)

Cleaning up categories

There are many different variants of the same category names.

User:Jameson Quinn's definitions:

A note on terminology: “Electoral system” means all the election rules of a given country, including voter and candidate eligibility, elections for different offices, campaign rules, etc. “Voting method” is the formal mathematical part of that; the algorithm that determines what information must go on each ballot and how that information is aggregated to choose a winner. I’ve avoided the term “voting system” because it’s ambiguous; it could refer to either of the above, or to the specific machines used for casting ballots.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories/en#Redirecting_a_category says:

Like normal wiki pages, category pages can be redirected to other normal or category pages. However, this is not recommended, as pages categorized in redirected categories do not get categorized in the target category (bugzilla:3311). Some Wikimedia sites use a "category redirect" template to mark redirected categories, allowing manual or automated cleanup of pages categorized there.

Wikipedia style says

categories are almost always given plural titles and many templates are as well.

So I'll re-categorize each page under "voting methods" and delete "voting systems" categories. Psephomancy (talk) 03:39, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

StructuredDiscussions

Should we use the StructuredDiscussions extension for Talk pages? This wiki uses it, for reference: https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page

Psephomancy (talk) 02:45, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Redirector

You can install http://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ to automatically redirect your browser from wiki.electorama.com or electowiki.miraheze.org to the new domain electowiki.org.

Redirect:	*//wiki.electorama.com/*
to:	https://electowiki.org/$2

Redirect:	*//electowiki.miraheze.org/*
to:	https://electowiki.org/$2

— Psephomancy (talk) 21:58, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Search Engine Optimization

Is there anything we can do to raise this site in Google results? If I search for "Summability criterion", wiki.electorama.com is the first result, but electowiki.org isn't on the first 5 results pages at all. The first result actually points to Category:Voting system criteria, which is weird.

If I search for a specific phrase "rather than the highest total score", Google only returns wiki.electorama.com

• Could edit MediaWiki:Pagetitle to say "Electowiki, the election methods wiki" or something like that.
• Could add a MediaWiki:Tagline
• I enabled https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO, but not sure how to use it.
• This lists some things that can be done: https://seositecheckup.com/seo-audit/electowiki.org

— Psephomancy (talk) 22:42, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

I'll need to set up redirects as appropriate. The main trouble with doing this is migrating in a way that respects the Creative Commons attribution license, per my comments over on https://phabricator.miraheze.org/T3624 . We can do some soft redirects today, and in fact, I've done that with Summability criterion, and I've got some ideas for how I want to set up the Apache redirects. -- RobLa (talk) 01:14, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure redirects are the problem, though. The site appears invisible to Google for some configuration reason. I tried adding it to Google SearchConsole, and testing https://electowiki.org/wiki/Proportional_representation, and got:

URL is not on Google This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.

Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical Status: Excluded

Google-selected canonical: N/A

The site as a whole says "Processing data, please check again in a few days", so we'll see what it says later.

— Psephomancy (talk) 19:40, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I turned on mw:Extension:Description2 extension and mw:Extension:OpenGraphMeta extension (which uses the former), and they seem to be working, except there are two description tags on the main page, one from the manual WikiSEO, and the other auto-generated from the first paragraph by Description2.

Google SearchConsole for https://electowiki.org/wiki/Median_Ratings says the same thing:

User-declared canonical None

Google-selected canonical N/A

While inspecting https://electowiki.org/wiki/Proportional_representation says it is in Google, I guess because it's linked from the main page?

Referring page https://electowiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

Another exact phrase search finds the wiki.electorama.com site, and also the electowiki.org URL, but that is hidden under "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 3 already displayed."

Maybe turning on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgEnableCanonicalServerLink would help? It seems to be enabled on Wikipedia. — Psephomancy (talk) 20:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Reception123:

So I'm looking at Google SearchConsole now that it's finished the Coverage report.

There are a bunch of URLs in the category "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" of the same form:

   https://electowiki.org/w/index.php?title=Voting_system&veaction=edit&section=10&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile
   https://electowiki.org/w/index.php?title=Majority_Judgment&veaction=edit&section=2
   https://electowiki.org/w/index.php?title=Instant-runoff_voting&veaction=edit&section=11

Similar URLs also show up below the "omitted similar entries" fold at the bottom: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22districts+do+not+ensure+that+an+electoral+system+will+be+proportional%22&filter=0&biw=1440&bih=789

So I think it's deducing the wrong canonical URLs for certain pages, including the old domain, weird API URLs, etc. and so it hides the correct one. I think the only way to fix this is to add link rel="canonical" tags to each article, which I think you need to do using https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgEnableCanonicalServerLink Google doesn't seem to care about the og:url tag provided by WikiSEO extension.

That's the second method listed on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

It's not possible to do the first method since that requires me to own both miraheze.org and electowiki.org and it seems like an obsolete method anyway. I don't think I have the power to do any of the others, either. — Psephomancy (talk) 02:57, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Template for mailing list posts

It might be good to have a template to reference mailing list posts. Is there a unique ID for each post or something like that? — Psephomancy (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2019 (UTC)