Talk:Slogan 'AIDS Kills Fags Dead'/Voting rules

see also wikipedia:vote, wikipedia:Decision Making Process

Here's what happened.

1. I started the vote, and said at the same time "I'm not sure how to declare the winner: perhaps a 2/3 majority required for deletion?"
2. The Anome and a number of other people added their vote
3. Eloquence said "More importantly, set a majority threshold for determining the outcome of the vote."
4. I realised that any argument over the majority required would necessarily be agenda driven. People voting for deletion would argue for a simple majority, people arguing against would want 2/3. This, I knew, was a recipe for disaster. Since I had not voted, and have in fact never expressed an opinion on this matter, I desperately hoped that people would understand the impossibility of discussion at this stage, trust me to be impartial, and accept an assertion from me of a set of rules.
5. To this end, I replied to Eloquence: "It's probably not appropriate to discuss the threshold now, since the vote is already in progress and we already have a good idea what the final ratios will be. How about we leave it at 2/3 for this vote, and discuss now what it should be for the next vote."
6. Then blowing a bit more hot air, I declared it a "rule" and added it to the top of the voting section.
7. The Anome, a user who voted in favour of the deletion of every redirect, changed my "rule" to a simple majority only. Thus my disaster came to be.

Unless The Anome is shouted down by people on both sides of this debate, or he withdraws his objection, this vote cannot be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Unless something very strange happens, the vote will nothing more than a poll. -- Tim Starling 10:41 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Tim, you set the rule after voting started. Everyone appears to agree about every part of this exercise, except the threshold. As it is now clear that there was confusion on this, I suggest that we set the threshold by an approval vote between alternatives.

So far, we have the following options:

In favour of 2/3 majority:

• Tim Starling

• Eloquence, The Anome

-- The Anome 10:48 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You still don't understand. A vote on a voting method is just the same vote all over again. It only serves to amplify the pre-existing majority. A voting method should be set beforehand, and should be reused every time there is a similar vote. A voting method set now cannot be used as a precedent, because discussion on the method is driven by opinions on the issue. -- Tim Starling 10:56 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think this is generally good advice - avoid starting a vote (or a poll) until the options have been agreed on, any voting rules, and so forth. I made exactly that mistake on the date formats vote - which I bitterly regret. :-( By contrast, on the years in titles vote we had a couple weeks between proposing the vote and actually starting it, and that worked well.

However, I think you underestimate the helpfulness of a simple poll. At a bare minimum, it eliminates the options with little or no real support, and in a transparent fashion too. It's more flexible too - a tolerances versus preferences dilemma, perhaps. Martin 11:53 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for those words of wisdom, Martin. I have now updated the page to indicate that it is just a poll. -- Tim Starling 12:13 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)