Gov/en/Portal:Voting/Main

💡 In simple words: When a group has to choose something together, voting gives everyone a fair say. WikiDeal wants to use easy votes for simple yes-or-no questions, and smarter votes when there are many choices. This page is the door to everything about voting at WikiDeal.

🎯 In 20 seconds (expert summary): Entry page of the voting cluster in the Institutions portal. Initial hypothesis: the voting method should match the complexity of the decision. Simple majority for binary questions, Condorcet-style ranked voting (Schulze method) for complex multi-option choices, consensus for editorial work, and single transferable vote for multi-seat elections. The cluster covers the methods under study, the proposed rules (eligibility, secret ballot, quorum, election committee, challenges), and a research page grounded in 20+ years of Wikimedia and Debian practice plus peer-reviewed literature. Everything is a first hypothesis, to be validated by the steering committee and then by the community.

Voting at WikiDeal

Status: first hypothesis (draft). Nothing on this page has been adopted. The cluster 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. 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.

One principle: match the method to the decision

The initial hypothesis of this cluster is simple: the voting method should depend on the complexity of the decision. 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.

Pages in this cluster

• 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 20+ years of Wikimedia and Debian elections teach, and what peer-reviewed research says about online governance and multi-option decisions.

Related pages

• Governance: one user one vote, Exit to Community, deprivatisation.
• 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 cluster; they are kept as historical drafts and would be reconciled with these pages later.

See also: Institutions portal · Licensing and credits