Gov/en/Portal:Voting/Rules

💡 In simple words: A vote is only fair if the rules are clear before it starts: who can vote, how long it lasts, who counts the votes, and what to do if someone thinks the count is wrong. This page lists the rules WikiDeal would like to use. Most small things never need a vote at all; these rules are for the rare times when a real vote is needed.

🎯 In 20 seconds (expert summary): These rules apply only when a decision actually reaches a formal vote. Most decisions are intended to be settled earlier by lighter tools (direct action, revert, discussion), with voting reserved for questions whose stakes call for it: the initial hypothesis is that consensus requirements follow the degree of stakes, and that the degree of stakes is expressed by the number of people who raise a question, in the spirit of the Swiss popular initiative and referendum. Proposed rules of procedure for WikiDeal votes, adapted from Wikimedia and Debian election practice: voter eligibility based on one user one vote with light anti-abuse requirements, secret ballot for elections of people and public votes for editorial decisions, advance announcement and a minimum voting period (durations expressed as X weeks, with example values borrowed from Wikimedia practice as working hypotheses), a quorum, an independent election committee, independent verification of results, challenges through mediation then arbitration, and durable public logs. Status: proposal, to be adopted; every rule is a first hypothesis to be validated by the steering committee and then by the community.

Proposed voting rules

Status: proposal, to be adopted. These rules are a first hypothesis, adapted from the documented experience of the Wikimedia and Debian communities (see the research page). They are intended to be validated by the founding steering committee and then by the community through a soft transmission.

When a formal vote is warranted

These rules describe how a vote would run, not when to vote. The initial hypothesis of this portal is that most decisions never reach a ballot: they are settled by direct action, by a simple revert when a contribution can be undone, or by discussion when a revert is contested. A formal vote is reserved for questions that discussion could not settle and whose stakes, expressed by the number of people who raise them, call for a broadly supported decision (see the ladder of decision tools and the Swiss-inspired expression of stakes on the portal main page).

Who can vote

The starting point is the principle of one user, one vote. To keep elections meaningful and resistant to fake accounts, the initial hypothesis adds light eligibility requirements, similar in spirit to those used by Wikimedia elections:

• holding at least one membership at the time the vote is announced;
• a minimum account age or a minimum record of activity on the platform, defined in advance for each vote;
• one ballot per person, whatever the number of memberships held.

Exact thresholds would be set by the election committee and published with each vote announcement.

Secret or public ballot

The initial hypothesis distinguishes two regimes:

• Elections of people (committees, arbitrators, future bodies) would use a secret ballot, so that nobody can be pressured or rewarded for their vote. Wikimedia runs its secret ballots with the SecurePoll extension; WikiDeal plans to evaluate the same family of tools, exclusively free software, in line with the project's free licensing rule (the WikiDeal software stack itself is published under the GNU Affero GPL).
• Editorial and procedural decisions on shared content would remain public, in the wiki tradition of open discussion and consensus, where positions are signed and arguments matter more than counts.

Announcement and duration

Every vote would be announced in advance on the platform, with the question, the options, the method used (see methods), the eligibility rules and the calendar. The initial hypothesis is a minimum announcement period of X weeks and a minimum voting period of X weeks, so that occasional users have a real chance to participate. The value of X is deliberately left open: two weeks for each period is a plausible figure, drawn from the practice of Wikimedia elections, and is given here only as a working hypothesis, not as a decision.

Quorum

A vote with very few participants should not bind the whole community. The initial hypothesis is a quorum defined relative to the number of eligible voters, with a higher bar for structural changes. Debian's constitution follows the same logic: its resolutions include a quorum and its structural amendments require a supermajority.

Independent election committee

Votes would be organised by a small election committee, independent from the candidates and from the bodies whose decisions are being voted on. Its intended tasks: publish the announcement, check eligibility, run the ballot, publish the results and archive the records. Members would be volunteers, named publicly, and excluded from running in the votes they administer. This mirrors the election committees used for Wikimedia Board elections.

Verification of results

Trust requires the possibility of checking. The initial hypotheses:

• results would be published with the full tally detail that the method allows (pairwise matrices for Condorcet votes, round-by-round transfers for single transferable vote counts);
• where secrecy permits, anonymised ballot data would be published so that anyone can recompute the result, as Debian does for its project votes;
• at least one scrutineer outside the election committee would verify the count before publication.

Challenges and disputes

Anyone eligible would be able to challenge a vote within a published deadline. Challenges would follow the general WikiDeal dispute path: mediation first, then arbitration through the proposed Arbitration Chambers (see the Justice portal). A successful challenge could lead to a corrected count or a re-run, never to a silent modification of results.

Transparency of logs

Announcements, eligibility rules, participation numbers, results and challenge decisions would be archived on public pages, permanently. Secret ballots would stay secret; everything else about a vote is intended to be public by design, consistent with the two data regimes described in the WikiDeal model (published by design versus private).

Adoption path

These rules would themselves be adopted by vote: first a validation by the founding steering committee, then a confirmation by the community once the soft transmission makes it possible. Until then, this page remains a documented proposal.

See also: Voting at WikiDeal · Voting methods · Voting research and experience · Condorcet history and results · Licensing and credits