Electowiki talk:Policy

Relevance to election methods

I just notice, the list of all articles seems to be almost entirely comprised of articles related to the science of election methods. I suppose, then, that articles like Robert's Rules of Order,VIRV, and Virginia would be out of place here? What do you think?

Is there another wiki that would be better suited to organizing for electoral reform? 24.154.8.81 08:31, 9 November 2006 (PST)

Electowiki is a great place to talk about electoral reform. Please continue. -- RobLa 21:45, 12 November 2006 (PST)

Articles about living people (BLP policy)

Electowiki hasn't had a policy for articles about living people. Wikipedia has a very complicated Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP) policy, which has evolved over the past several years to avoid problems like the Seigenthaler incident and also frivilous SLAPP lawsuits from people who fail to understand the Streisand effect. It seems that pages about living persons on Electowiki should either be user pages (e.g. Rob Lanphier) or short summary articles in the main namespace that point to the Wikipedia articles. I believe the article about Steven Brams sets a very good example (it's short, and points to a much more detailed article about its subject).

The policy I would like to enact:

Pages about living persons on Electowiki in the main namespace need to be pointers to Wikipedia articles, unless otherwise approved by the Electowiki site administrators.

Psephomancy, do you agree with this policy? If so, then let's make this the policy as soon as possible (and let's figure out if/when/how we allow exceptions). -- RobLa (talk) 06:30, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

In general, I think that anything that can be covered on Wikipedia should just be covered there, since it will be read by more people, maintained by more people, and won't duplicate effort.

Warren Smith doesn't have an article there, for instance, and if one was created, it might be deleted for being "non-notable" (maybe, maybe not, depends what publications he's been mentioned in).

So should we cover it here instead? I don't know.

I certainly don't think we need any general biographical information, like about their family or sports accomplishments, etc. If anything exists here, it should be limited to only neutral and verifiable points that are related to election methods (or related academic credentials). (But even then, there could be neutral and verifiable facts about election reform organization drama that it's better not to mention.) — Psephomancy (talk) 15:19, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

There are many very problematic issues with Electowiki articles about living people, not the least of which being that we allow pseudo-anonymous editing. So, for instance, I have no idea who Dr. Edmonds is, or how this person knows what they claim to know about Warren Smith. Because of that, I've become convinced that it is a candidate for speedy deletion, so I'm deleting it now. As the current policy states "Unless we specifically say so, many of the English Wikipedia's policies apply to us", and as of this writing, we haven't published a BLP policy that is different than English Wikipedia's policy.

When it comes to someone's User: page on this wiki, there is much more latitude (e.g. the user can choose to divulge as much or as little as they want). There's still a problem with obviously incorrect information, but we can at least make it clear to readers that we give users in the User: namespace more editorial control over the content there. For main namespace content, it doesn't seem smart to deviate very far from English Wikipedia's policies. -- RobLa (talk) 18:11, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

This is the first page I made and really the one I care least about. I am fine with deletion. The info I put there was from him and his webpage. Maybe we can just link to his own biography here http://scorevoting.net/WarrenSmithPages/homepage/myresume.html This would be a good policy in general. Most people have a page of their own with a biography --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 19:39, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Dr. Edmonds, thank you for both telling me the source of Warren Smith's birthday (that's the sort of PII that can get webmasters busted) and starting to establish the norm for redirects for users here who are notable electoral reformers in real life (i.e. your redirect from Keith Edmonds to your user page). Of course, if you're not actually Keith Edmonds but merely impersonating him/them, you are in so much trouble! ;-)

With that, I feel comfortable restoring the Warren Smith page, and creating Category:Living people to add him to. I may take it on faith that Keith Edmonds also belongs in that category. I may also create a Rob Lanphier redirect, and add my page to that category. Where I think we can draw the line is users that want to remain anonymous. Adding your user page to that category implies that you no longer wish to remain anonymous, that you're putting your real name in the main namespace (not a pseudonym), and you're willing to prove to the site admins what your identity should someone ask you. Creating one of those redirects for a different editor who hasn't already identified themselves publicly should be considered a violation of policy.

I think I might draft up some policy around this, and do some other editing. -- RobLa (talk) 00:51, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Living people

I added a "Living people" section on the Policy page yesterday, based on the norms that User:Dr. Edmonds and I have started to establish. None of this is written in stone; I'm planning to use Wikipedia's BOLD, revert, discuss process for editing, and I invite other site admins (e.g. User:Psephomancy to do the same. Other active editors on this site should be more cautious about making similar policy changes, but please don't be bashful about at least suggesting changes on this talk page. -- RobLa (talk) 00:54, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

EPOV

This funny little disclaimer adorned Electowiki:Policy earlier today:

Note: this policy is new, and subject to revision. -- RobLa 22:38, 15 Mar 2005 (PST)

Well, it's 14 years old now. I think it has held up alright. Some considerations:

• Editorial board - that used to be DanKeshet and I. The idea was to have a small group of people deciding what the voice of Electowiki was going to be. I haven't (yet) tried to track down Dan and recruit him back, but other folks have helped a lot over the years (e.g. User:Araucaria, User: homunq, User:Psephomancy). As the policy says, we point people to Wikipedia for content that aspires to NPOV, and are trying to develop a voice for reform.
• Err on the side of neutrality - as we said in 2005, while the EPOV will come out from time-to-time, it should be hard to distinguish it from Wikipedia-style NPOV in the vast majority of cases.
• Fairness to other points of view - this point seems pretty sound. I've come back to this one over the years in my edits.
• Latitude to editorialize on other positions - I put this point in there because I was expecting to do more editorializing myself on the site, and wanted the latitude to collaborate on editorial pieces. My inclination these days is to use my User: namespace as my editorial page (and moving editorial content written by others to their user space).
• Controversial points of view should be vetted on election-methods list - editorial disputes still should go to election-methods mailing list by default. In many ways, EPOV is the voice of rough consensus on election-methods list.
• Meta-View - User:Wegerje added this one late in 2005, and it's good point. It says "currently practiced electoral systems in many countries are woefully inadequate expressions of democracy.". Perhaps this bullet point should be retitled to Most jurisdictions need much better election systems This isn't a site that celebrates the status quo.

Anyone want to discuss these points before I embark on some bold edits to Electowiki:Policy? -- RobLa (talk) 02:18, 28 November 2019‎ (UTC)

I support all of that. I think collaborative advocacy could also be supported (outside of one particular user's page) either by creating a template or category or namespace etc to isolate it from the more encyclopedic content, as was discussed in the Caucus at some point. — Psephomancy (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

I have made a lot of edits lately but I am sure they fit this. My thoughts were that this should contain the election science view more than the lobby view. The lobbies tend to exaggerate or misrepresent. This is particularly a problem with contentious issues like Proportional Representation. Also, I have tried to push systems into a better taxonomy. Of course this is not possible to do perfectly but I have spent a lot of time prior trying to decide what way was best. I have used the one which is consistent with what the CES uses. With regards to bold edits. I think it would be better to keep conflicting perspectives rather than overwrite with your own. For example I have given all the perspectives on Proportional Representation instead of just the Lobby view which was there prior. Also, like with the recent nuking of the first past the post page. It might be best to have the main page be a redirect to wikipedia and have an additional page for specific technical considerations which are too deep for wikipedia. --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 17:56, 28 November 2019 (UTC)