Gov/en/Portal:Voting/Main

💡 In simple words: Most of the time, a group does not need to vote. Someone tries something, and if it does not work, others can undo it or talk about it. But when a large group has to settle a big question for good, voting gives everyone a fair say. How do we know a question is big? One idea: when many people say it matters, a bit like in Switzerland, where citizens collect signatures to ask for a national vote. WikiDeal wants easy votes for simple yes-or-no questions, smarter votes when there are many choices, and no vote at all when doing and talking are enough. This page is the door to everything about voting at WikiDeal.

🎯 In 20 seconds (expert summary): Entry page of the Voting portal. First point, stated upfront: formal voting is not intended for every decision. The initial hypothesis is that consensus requirements should follow the degree of stakes, and that the degree of stakes is expressed by the community itself: the more people raise a question, the higher the stakes. This idea is inspired by the Swiss popular initiative and referendum. Voting complements lighter tools (direct action, revert, discussion) rather than replacing them. The voting method should match the complexity of the decision: simple majority for binary questions, Condorcet-style ranked voting (Schulze method) where a case is complex and there is a clear, shared perception that it must be put to a vote, consensus for editorial work, and single transferable vote for multi-seat elections. The portal also explores a Slashdot-inspired karma mechanism for agenda setting (karmic democracy, one of four governance methods the project intends to test, with sortition, nomination by competence and mandate-based nomination), collegial decisions by small panels structured around User Groups, a staged democratic transition toward community ownership (Exit to Community), and a humble framing of wiki-style participatory governance (wikicracy). It covers the methods under study, the proposed rules (eligibility, secret ballot, quorum, election committee, challenges), a research page grounded in the documented practice of the Wikimedia, Debian and Mozilla communities plus peer-reviewed literature, and a page on the documented history and results of Condorcet voting. Everything is a first hypothesis, to be validated by the steering committee and then by the community.

Voting at WikiDeal

Status: first hypothesis (draft), to be reviewed and validated before adoption. Nothing on this page has been adopted. The portal is intended to be reviewed by the founding steering committee and then transmitted to the community through a soft transmission.

Why voting matters for WikiDeal

WikiDeal aims at community ownership, following the principle of one user, one vote described on the Governance page. That principle only becomes real through concrete voting procedures, used sparingly, for the decisions that actually need them (see the ladder of decision tools below). Several parts of the intended model would rely on them:

• Electing people. The founding steering committee, and later the bodies the community would choose for itself (a Board of Trustees, committees, arbitrators), are intended to emerge through elections, as part of the soft transmission of governance to the users.
• Arbitration. The top level of the proposed Arbitration Chambers is intended to use Condorcet voting for its decisions.
• Open calls. The evaluation of Open Call proposals is intended to combine a public vote with an expert panel review.
• Strategies and rules. Major orientations, policies and structural changes would be validated by votes of the community, with stronger requirements for structural changes.

Voting is not used everywhere: the ladder of decision tools

Formal voting is the heaviest decision tool WikiDeal is studying, and it is intended to stay rare. Most decisions in a wiki-style community are expected never to reach a ballot. The initial hypothesis is a graduated ladder, from the lightest tool to the heaviest:

1. Direct action. Most contributions simply happen: someone edits a page, publishes a template, fixes a mistake. No permission, no vote.
2. Revert. When a contribution is problematic and can be undone, undoing it is enough. A revocable action does not need a vote: the cost of a mistake is low because the mistake is reversible.
3. Discussion. When a revert is contested, for example when an editing conflict follows the revert, the people involved discuss and look for consensus, if needed with mediation (see the Justice portal).
4. Formal vote. Only when discussion cannot settle a question, and the question is widely perceived as needing a settled decision, does a formal vote come into play, up to a Condorcet-style ballot for the most complex multi-option cases.

Condorcet voting is therefore intended as a complement to the simpler tools, not as a supreme method. The initial hypothesis is that it becomes relevant when two conditions are met at the same time: the case is complex (several options, real trade-offs), and there is a clear, shared perception that the question needs to be submitted to a vote. Outside those two conditions, lighter tools remain the norm.

This gradation is not a WikiDeal invention; long-lived online communities document it explicitly:

• Wikipedia editors describe a bold, revert, discuss cycle: make the edit, accept the revert, then discuss with the person who reverted; and a widely cited community page insists that polling is not a substitute for discussion.
• The Apache Software Foundation works by lazy consensus (state an intent publicly, proceed if nobody objects) and treats voting as the way to check whether consensus has been reached when it is genuinely in question.
• The IETF develops Internet standards through rough consensus rather than majority voting, as explained in RFC 7282.

The documented evidence, including academic work on graduated governance mechanisms, is gathered on the research page.

How stakes would be expressed: the Swiss inspiration

If the weight of a decision procedure should follow the stakes, who measures the stakes? The working idea proposed here, as a basis for discussion: the community itself, through the number of people who raise a question. WikiDeal intends to draw also on the Swiss system of popular initiative and referendum to define which decisions are priorities. In Switzerland, citizens can put a constitutional change to a national vote by collecting 100,000 signatures within 18 months, and can challenge a law passed by parliament by collecting 50,000 signatures within 100 days; the procedures are run by the Federal Chancellery (pages in German, French and Italian).

What matters for WikiDeal is the mechanism, not the exact numbers: the agenda is not set only by the bodies in place. When many people signal that a question matters, that signal itself expresses the degree of stakes and can trigger a decision procedure, with the breadth of consensus sought growing accordingly. The thresholds and forms such a mechanism could take at WikiDeal are entirely open; documented results of the Swiss instrument are summarised on the history and results page.

Earning a voice in the agenda: the Slashdot karma inspiration

A second envisaged inspiration, also proposed as a basis for discussion, is the karma system of the technology news site Slashdot, documented in its official FAQ: points (karma) earned through the quality and the quantity of a person's contributions determine who is trusted with moderation rights, in rotating turns that the FAQ compares to jury duty.

Adapted to WikiDeal, the mechanism being explored looks like this. Contributors with high karma, that is, rights received through the quality and quantity of their contributions, could take part in choosing the subjects debated in the future, notably by accepting proposed posts for a news blog covering the life of WikiDeal: its policies, its markets, its governance, its funding. An accepted subject would first appear as a brief news item, then be opened to debate through comments. Depending on the case, the process could go further, up to a Condorcet-type vote: notably for elections, but also for decisions of the initiative or referendum type described above. In WikiDeal's internal planning documents this mechanism is called karmic democracy: positive feedback on qualitative contributions, inspired by Slashdot, and one of the four governance methods the project intends to test (see the progressive democratic transition below). None of this is decided; it is a first sketch of how agenda rights could be earned rather than granted.

Collegial decisions: small panels rather than lone deciders

Between individual action and community-wide votes, WikiDeal intends to encourage a dynamic of decisions taken collegially by small panels (areopagus-style colleges), not by isolated individuals. Such panels would work by building consensus and consent among their members, so that agreement is frequent and most questions are settled without ever burdening the whole community with a request. The intended backbone for these panels is the User Groups: small, thematic or local groups where collegial habits can form. Community-wide procedures would then be reserved for what small colleges cannot legitimately settle alone, consistent with the ladder above.

A progressive democratic transition

These mechanisms are not meant to arrive overnight. The position already stated in WikiDeal's internal planning documents describes a progressive transition in two phases, always as a working basis:

• Initial governance. Councils appointed by the founders, while the supporters holding rewards under the funding model elect delegates to the evaluation commissions and to the strategic management commissions.
• Permanent governance. Community governance built on the proven models of Wikipedia, Debian and the social and solidarity economy.

Along the way, four governance methods are intended to be tested:

1. Sortition: drawing lots among eligible contributors.
2. Nomination by competence: experts appointed for specific mandates.
3. Mandate-based nomination: representatives elected for defined missions.
4. The karma system (karmic democracy): positive feedback on qualitative contributions, inspired by Slashdot, as sketched above.

The direction of travel is the Exit to Community model described on the Governance page, a central differentiator of the project: ownership would pass progressively from the founders to the community, with foundation board seats progressively opened to elected representatives of the contributors, and the foundation evolving toward a quality assurance and oversight role. A founding reference for this approach to governing digital commons is Citoyen du Net, a synthesis built on hundreds of publications, maintained at netizen3.org and already discussed on the Is WikiDeal a DAO? page.

One principle: match the method to the decision

The initial hypothesis of this portal is simple: the voting method should depend on the complexity of the decision, and the degree of participation should depend on the stakes. Routine choices can stay light; decisions that affect everyone deserve wider and more careful votes. And before any method is chosen, the first question is whether a vote is needed at all (see the ladder above). No single electoral system fits every situation, and social choice theory shows that every method has known limits (see the research page).

Type of decision	Envisaged method (first hypothesis)
Binary question (yes or no, adopt or reject)	Simple majority
Complex choice between several options	Condorcet-style ranked vote, Schulze method
Electing several seats at once	Single transferable vote
Everyday editorial work on shared content	Consensus, with votes as a last resort
Structural or statutory changes	Vote with supermajority requirement

This mapping is a starting point, not a decision. It is adapted from the practice of the Wikimedia and Debian communities, documented on the research page.

A humble note: wikicracy

Speaking in the House of Commons on 11 November 1947, Winston Churchill said: "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" (Wikiquote, with the Hansard reference; Churchill himself presented the idea as already proverbial, "it has been said").

Wiki-style online participatory democracy, sometimes called wikicracy, with its different levels of participation, can be looked at the same way. It may be the most refined mode available today for managing complex and limited resources together, and it remains imperfect: slow at times, demanding, exposed to its own failure modes. There can always be something better. This portal is written with that awareness. WikiDeal does not claim to do participatory governance perfectly; it tries to make a proposal, one among others, and to keep it open to revision.

Pages in this portal

• Voting methods: the methods under study (simple majority, approval, ranked votes, Condorcet and Schulze with a worked example, single transferable vote), with the strengths and limits of each.
• Voting rules: the proposed rules of procedure (who votes, secret ballot, quorum, duration, election committee, verification, challenges, transparency).
• Voting research and experience: what the documented elections of the Wikimedia, Debian and Mozilla communities teach, and what peer-reviewed research says about online governance, multi-option decisions and the evaluation of these processes.
• Condorcet voting in practice: history and results: the documented record, with sourced numbers: who voted with Condorcet methods in the Wikimedia galaxy and in Debian, for what, with what participation, and how the Swiss popular initiative compares.

Related pages

• Governance: one user one vote, Exit to Community, deprivatisation.
• Is WikiDeal a DAO?: what a decentralized autonomous organization is, and where WikiDeal stands with respect to that model (now in the Institutions portal).
• Fair criteria: the socio-economic innovations, several of which involve voting.
• Arbitration Chambers and the Justice portal: dispute resolution.
• Open Calls: public vote plus expert panel.
• Portal:Validation/Voting Procedures and Portal:Validation: earlier draft pages on validation and voting, written before this portal; they are kept as historical drafts and would be reconciled with these pages later.

See also: Institutions portal · Licensing and credits