Forum:New Editing Policies

Inactive User and Poll Clarification
Alright, so this recently popped up in Meganoide's forum. Currently, the rule is as follows:

"Users who have had less than 10 edits in the 30 days before the poll opens are not allowed to vote on ban forums. Blog and blog comment edits do not count towards the 10 edits. However, if they participate in the discussion before the poll opens they may vote without any restrictions."

Now here is my question: Is it 30 days before the entire poll starts, or 30 days before each section of the poll starts? Since ban polls are divided into two phases 1) If we ban and 2) Ban Length, do we count the whole poll or each part?

As far as Mega's forum, the rules aren't clear, so I went with whole thing, since that's the closest to the way the rules are written now. It only led to the removal of one vote, and had we done it the other way, it would have only removed one different person's vote.

We should definitely resolve this for the future. 16:29, September 4, 2015 (UTC)

30 days before each section of the poll starts. 10 edits in 30 days isn't that bad. People can also simply participate in the forum discussion if they care enough. 23:24, September 4, 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, people should make their opinions heard if they want to have the right to vote. 19:50, September 9, 2015 (UTC)

So if we do it with each section of the poll, what are we doing about participation over edits? Say you didn't participate in the discussion or have enough edits when the first section started, but you do participate before the second half starts: That makes your vote in the second half valid, correct? 21:20, September 9, 2015 (UTC)

I think you should participate in the first poll to be eligible for the second poll. Since we need to know if you even want the person banned in the first place. These polls are interconnected, after all. 21:46, September 9, 2015 (UTC)

That seems fair. Most people who would participate in the second would have already voted in the first anyway. 06:37, September 10, 2015 (UTC)

It seems silly to me to restrict an eligible voter just because "they probably would have voted in the first part anyway". So what if they didn't? Does their opinion not matter? They're just as eligible as anyone else. 07:29, September 10, 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree with Yata, if you want to vote on a second part of the poll, you should vote in the first part of the poll to be eligible. 12:49, September 10, 2015 (UTC)

For whatever reason 18 people voted in the first part of Meganoide's forum, but 22 (plus one invalid vote) people voted on the second. That's something to think about. 01:11, September 11, 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes I don't vote because there's no sense in voting on a 20-0 poll. Should that mean I'm not allowed to vote in the second half? Why?

Sometimes I don't vote in the first part because I'm undecided or indifferent to whether or not they should be banned. But I still do have an opinion on how long to ban them once the community has decided the first part. Should that be forbidden? Why? 04:56, September 11, 2015 (UTC)

Can't we just make it that people who've participated in the discussion are eligible to vote no matter what? 05:06, September 11, 2015 (UTC)

Prohibiting users from voting in the second poll because they didn't vote in the first almost guarantees certain results. Not a lot of people voting in the first poll are going to want a minimum ban, so they usually opt for the maximum or at least second-to-maximum on the length. Obviously the people who voted "no" are probably going to vote for the minimum, and since they lost the first poll anyways, then the "minimum" vote is completely useless. Not everyone who's voting on the second part would vote on the first part, for a number of reasons. If we prohibit second-voters who didn't first-vote, our poll becomes a bit of a paradox. A polladox, if you will; the second vote will have options, but the options ultimately become meaningless due to the nature of the voters. With this rule, the "minimum" options will never, ever win. 05:47, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. 17:11, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

Split Partial Ban Vote
More than the issue above, what's been bothering me is the fact that after we decide to ban certain users, the options for the next poll look something like: 6 months, 1 year, permanant. My point being, we have one option for a perma-ban, and numerous options for a partial ban. How is this even fair? What if we have 11 users who want a partial ban and 10 who want a perma-ban, but 3 of the 11 users who want the partial ban wants the user to be banned for 6 months and the rest are for 1 year? The results would be 3-8-10 in favor of permanant, even though more people preferred the partial ban. I believe that after the first poll decides a user should be banned, there needs to be a poll that decides wether the ban should be partial or permanant, and then a final poll to decide on the partial ban length if necessary. 17:11, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

The thing is that most of the time the opposite happens. The people who vote for no ban always vote for the shortest length, which is often very effective since usually the people who voted ban are prone to be split on the length. Look at Klobis' and Gal's forums. Mega's was the rare exception where nearly everyone was in support of a ban, and even rarer still where many people were in support of a permanent ban. I've never seen anyone vote for a permanent ban for a non-vandal forum, and most of those don't even have that option. Even if you lumped all the partial votes together, the result would have been 6-16 in favor of permanent.

However, I agree with Jopie that the format is not very great; whether it favors the shortest ban or the permanent ban it should probably change. I'd be OK with having a poll deciding between partial and permanent before going into details, although it's becoming clear ban forums are becoming a thing of the past. 18:45, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

So we should have an extra stage in the ban polls? After deciding whether or not to ban the editor, we decide whether permanent or temporary, and if temporary, we go to how long? Sounds better than the "unfair" method. 19:02, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

Yes. 19:26, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. 19:57, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

Everything already takes forever as is, there's no need to overcomplicate things. Plurality is the best way to get things done here. As Kaido said, the situation JOP described doesn't even happen. Usually it's the "No-Ban" voters picking the minimum length and then the rest are spread out. E.g. 11-6-8 for shortest to longest length. More people preferred a longer ban, but the results are in favor of the minimum since the other people couldn't come to an agreement on the length. If we start trying to get everything as "fair" as possible then nothing will ever get done. 22:29, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

I see your point, Jopie, but I doubt the situation you described is likely to occur. You can count the pro-permanent votes and pro-partial votes and look at which party is bigger. If the pro-permanent party is bigger, no problem just ban the guy. If the pro-partial party turns out to be bigger, you can just refresh the poll and leave the permanent option out. It's another possibility of handling this and spares us the extra poll as well (most of the time). Thoughts? 22:39, September 12, 2015 (UTC)

That is completely fair. You can only blame the people voting for 6 months and not changing their vote to 1 year. SeaTerror (talk) 02:29, September 13, 2015 (UTC)

That still makes an "unfair" situation, where the "no-bans" and "low-bans" vote for the lowest 6 months together; they team up together, going against the "perma-bans" and just winning by a little over the balance. 07:34, September 13, 2015 (UTC)

It may or may not be written down, but here's what I know about perma-bans: 1) Permanent is never an option in someone's first ban. 2) Permanent is only an option if people agree to it in the discussion/poll discussion.

To me, I would never perma-ban someone via forum vote if they haven't already been banned for 6 months or more. Bans are a disciplinary tool, not an exclusionary option to kick people off the wiki. A permanent ban is not something I take lightly, and I don't think the wiki should either.

If we have any kind of rule about combining votes in the shorter bans, you force people's votes to go for something they did not intend. If I truly believe "User X" should be banned for three months, I would not want my vote to suddenly count for 3 weeks or 6 months. My vote is my vote, and I would not want the system changing it or making it mean something else without my approval. I would much rather change it myself if I was unhappy with the way the voting was going. 14:30, September 13, 2015 (UTC)

"I see your point, Jopie, but I doubt the situation you described is likely to occur."

It does happen. During the Meganoide ban forum, although there wasn't much chance of the shorter ban winning, I had vote for 1 year instead of 6 months. Because I didn't want to split the vote, as I said next to my signature, and 1 year had more votes than 6 months. So I had to compromise my actual vote for the oppertunity to get the 'lesser of two evils' vote.

Although, and maybe I'm going off topic, I'm really starting to see multiple polls as unnecessary. Given what Nada said about redundant results in the upper discussion, and now the problem we're facing here, I don't think democracy is needed in decided how long to ban a user. A simple "Should they be banned? Yes/No" is fine, and then our admins can use their discretion (they're admins for a reason, guys) to decide a fair length. Is everyone going to agree with the results? No, but they weren't going to agree anyway. It just makes so much more sense to me to cut out that second poll that is a) likely to reflect the first poll, as Nada said. And b) never going to get fair results, as JOP pointed out. 16:56, September 13, 2015 (UTC)


 * I mean the situation where the opinions of people are so split that the permanent option wins, with the sum of the non-permanent votes being higher than the votes on the permanent option. The chance of this happening is really small. The sum of non-permanent votes in Mega's forum were faaaaaaaaar too low to have a chance against the permanent option. 17:04, September 13, 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of ban polls so far have the "permanent" option right from the start, but I suppose permanent not being an option for someone's first ban is a new rule. But that's aside from the point. I still think Partial vs Permanent is a bigger deal than Ban vs No ban or the decision on ban length. It's the deciding factor that settles wether a user gets to return with their main account or never return, ever again. 20:23, September 13, 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can remember, all modern polls (from Klobis' forum on) have not had the permanent option if it was the user's first ban. I could be wrong, and it may very well be a rule worth writing down because of that. Though if it's not even a rule, we need more opinion on it.

Anyone else have an opinion on the 2-phase poll structure? For or against it? 05:54, September 22, 2015 (UTC)