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. 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. It is reserved for decisions that require a large consensus or a clear, settled adoption, and it complements lighter tools (direct action, revert, discussion) rather than replacing them. Initial hypothesis: the voting method should match the complexity of the decision, and the degree of participation should match the stakes. Simple majority for binary questions, Condorcet-style ranked voting (Schulze method) as the strongest instrument, reserved for complex and contested multi-option choices, consensus for editorial work, and single transferable vote for multi-seat elections. The portal covers the methods under study, the proposed rules (eligibility, secret ballot, quorum, election committee, challenges), and a research page grounded in the documented practice of the Wikimedia, Debian and Mozilla communities 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), 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 that is complex, contested and in need of a clear, settled adoption does a formal vote come into play, up to a Condorcet-style ballot for the hardest multi-option cases.

Condorcet voting is therefore intended as a complement to the simpler tools: clearly the strongest method for complex and contested questions, and clearly not the method for everything else.

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.

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.

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.

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