Bitcoin Forum

This thread is for the discussion of ongoing election for a new Global Moderator.

To find out more information about this election and to see and cast votes, please see the following thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.0

Do not cast votes here.

Happy to see some movement with the current global situation. It's much needed.

While I respect the idea behind it

Theymos pays no attention to mob request.


~BCX~

He has paid attention to current mods suggesting someone else for a position. That's how I became a mod; a current moderator suggested me to Theymos. Also, I think this is different from previous attempts at voting in a mod since a) this is being run by staff members, b) the people that could be recommended are active, c) this election is designed such that it is difficult to fake the results as happens with polls.

Wouldn't the best suited candidate for the job be the least popular among the masses?  ;D
The perils of a democracy...

Voted, can't see theymos promoting a staff member to Glob mod based on public votes though.

Would these posts be considered against the rules? They are providing the rationale for their votes, and not electioneering as such.
Posting them here since the other thread is to be exclusively used for voting....

No, those are fine. I consider electioneering along the lines of "vote for X". Giving rationale for their vote should not count.

Not just based on public votes though; the candidates were chosen because of activity.

Also, I'm newer than Dabs  ;D

To be honest, neither do I. However, I think this is quite an interesting social experiment for our little community here. Can do community make such important decisions as a whole? (no drama and other nonsense) How resistant is this to *corruption*? et al.

From other thread:
AFAIK the new forum has those features built in, ergo the bot will likely be obsolete. However, yes, the bot was a tremendous help against the KNCMiner and Speculation section spam.

Frankly, whats the point?

As long as forum rules allow monetization of signature space, 'pay per post' schemes, selling of accounts etc, no amount of moderation is going to make this forum worth reading again. I used to read most new threads, back in the day, before people created accounts to earn a few satoshi from their signature space, faucets, or to sell their high activity accounts later; these days I occasionally log in and click the unread thread link, only to find nothing but useless threads about gambling, pointless post bump newbie threads and similar. If there are still threads worth reading, I cant find them, and I cant be bothered to dig for them.

BTW, when I see staff selling their own signature space to gambling sites, what hope could there be?

This discussion was beaten to death in several topics already. Tl;dr: Signature campaigns can be considered fine, and there is nothing wrong with genuine people, that are trying to contribute, earning some bonuses along the way. The problematic lies in people that are heavily farming accounts, shitposting and whatnot which is killing the forum from inside out. That said, this discussion would be kind-of off-topic so let's not derail this. If you want to continue discussing this, then bump up one of the older threads.  

Its not off topic. If you are going to elect a "Global Moderator", voters may want to know where they stand on the issue, and I might add its arguably the single most important issue facing this forum. As for the crux of the matter; I argued it 5 years ago, that if you allow financial incentive for people to post for post count sake, this is precisely what you will get; moderation cant stop it, at most slow it down a bit, but people will push the boundary of what moderators allow, diluting content for post count sake. Signal/noise will drop, causing knowledgeable and interesting posters to leave, further lowering S/N until it snowballs out of control. Q.E.D.

Gavin anderson:
Last Active:   April 21, 2016, 12:36:37 PM

DeathAndTaxes:
Last Active:   April 22, 2015, 11:53:28 AM

JoelKatz
Still seems to lurk, but hasnt posted in over a year.

etc, etc


These days, this forum is all noise, virtually no signal. Have fun moderating it.

I know know that the forum ticker talks about "the next phase of the beta forum software", but I will believe that there is a new forum software when I actually see it rolled out. ;)

I am a bit confused about the difference of moderator and staff. Well a moderator is obviously moderates that certain category but are  they not staff as well? Anyways back to the topic i  think as well that this is a good  way to at least find a remedy what is currently happening.

Well, if you are going to discuss the stances of individual moderators regarding it, then you are right. If you're going to discuss whether spam needs to be tackled and how, then it may very well be off-topic. Being a global moderator is not limited to this specific problem.

FYI those features are implemented. Also you may not have noticed the new 'News' above regarding the new forum.

The staff ranks: patroller, section moderator, global moderator, admin. The first two are going to be marked as 'Staff' in all sections excluding the ones that they are assigned to (does not include patroller). Example: If you go to the Speculation section, you will see 'Moderator' under my name.

Vote Laura & Michelle for Miss Bitcointalk 2016!

That's the idea. Try to bring the noise back down to normal. I'm sure it's affecting business but something can really only be done once it's proved to Theymos, right?

Hell I'd take over if they'd take me. The worst boards IMO are the bitcoin discussion board, anything in economics and even the marketplace a lot of the times needs heavy moderation just to keep the signature spammers at bay.

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I must admit I voted based on who's presence I see the most on bitcointalk. Lauda and Achow101 are very active and Mitchell is active too so that's what I based my votes on. Is there somewhere where we can see the differences between the ranks (because I really don't know what they are other than moderating the whole forum rather than just one section)?

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Well it's true you learn something every day. I didn't even know there were such thing as patrollers. I guess that's why the 'patrol' option exists haha. I have a look through there every so often and report all of the spamming newbies.


Perfect! Thank you very much!

I think's he's completely aware of the issue - you can't really miss it if you spend any time on the forum.

Report a lot of posts (somewhat accurately at least) and theymos might, when we need more patrollers (or maybe even board mods).

Bitcoin discussion is generally broad enough for sig spammers to pass a lot of low quality question threads as normal. The staff team has been cracking down on such threads recently though so report it if you see something veering towards spam rather than a constructive discussion.

From https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0#post_faq (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0#post_faq):

Some mods are more active or exactly are less silent in their actions than others. I feel that the vote is a little bit biased by this fact but it remains valid imo.
Will vote later tho, prefer that the new global mod (if approved by Theymos) think twice before taking decisions that could be controversial...
Good luck for everyone.

That is correct, however that raises more questions. For example, does being the most active moderator make you the most *qualified* one? Does being a moderator for the most amount of time (regardless of activity) make you the most *qualified* one? If yes, why? If no, why not? et. al. You could gain *some* insight in regards to mod activity if you analyze mod payments but that's about it. In most cases you will just end up attempting to guess which address belongs to whom.

Well, I can only say that this should have been expected

Regarding who is going to join the ranks of global moderators, I don't particularly care as long as persecutions and subsequent bans are not going to be made in public. On the other hand, if banned users should be tagged appropriately (Banned rank or something to that tune) without disclosing full details about who banned whom and for what exactly, the whole process of publicly electing new global moderators doesn't make much sense, and to me, it looks more like farce and mockery

I don't think they ever will.

Read the fine print:

This doesn't seem right at all. Public voting to establish moderation, public voting where everyone's votes are considered equal on a site with an alt to person ratio of probably 3x, AND without the authorisation or blessing of the decision maker.

I don't particularly see what's wrong with not having theymos' consent with this. The vote is essentially the same as me making a thread titled 'Who do you think the best moderator is?', only with an actual reason behind it and made by some people of a higher rank than me.
If theymos doesn't approve, he could simply not acknowledge the vote whatsoever and pick (or not pick) based on his own accord. It would be a let down, of course, but the vote will just be used to perhaps help in the decision.

From what I can see theymos is too busy currently to put all of his attention towards the forum and see who is helping the most and would be a best fit for the moderation team. This vote is simply to try and help him out. I don't mean this in a snarky or rude way, but if you have a better idea I'm sure the staff would like to hear it.

This is the part that worries me because it's creating a default bias that unless Theymos objects that this should go through, which is the opposite order.

I'm not voting.  Even though it's not official, it can be used in the future against me to imply bias or favoritism.

I'll support whoever Theymos may (or may not) select.

Your favourite is clearly theymos... smart one :P

I actually think quite the opposite as I do not expect theymos to act based on these votes (alone or even just primarily).

That's a fair point. I think the best that we could do post-election is to *archive* the thread into the trashcan section. However, someone could still archive your vote in the meantime to use it against you at a later date. That said, I wouldn't understand someone using their vote against them (this in particular).

Are we allowed to comment on the ongoing TCP count (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party-preferred_vote) and trends in preference flows? Theoretically it's public knowledge, but people may be too lazy to count preferences on their own and could conceivably be influenced if someone does it for them.

Sure.

@P4man
For what it count, I agree on what you are saying :)
I think that paid signature schemes should be banned, and even discovered services doing this on backstage, even them should be banned. (at least for a month)

Well, that does make more sense.  If Theymos won't promote any of the participants who won the election, I still am pretty sure that he would at least able to consider the needs of a new active mod and find someone else he could.


EDIT: i am trying to think if someone would be promoted to global mods the staff position would be lacking

The results so far after preferences:


Although the primary votes are nearly evenly split between Lauda and Mitchell, Mitchell edges ahead on strong preferences from achow101's supporters. Dabs' supporters are a bit more evenly split, but still lean towards Mitchell. It's still a tight race with Lauda trailing by just 7 votes in this epic election which may or not end up making any difference whatsoever. ;D

So this is what the results would be after doing the elimination process? What is "Exhausted"?

I would guess those are valid votes that have neither Lauda nor Mitchell in their 3 picks. So far, there's only 1 of them.

Yes.

Votes that didn't count because they had no preference for the top candidates (ie, every candidate they did have a preference for was eliminated). This situation is impossible in full preferential voting (where each vote must rank all the candidates) but we didn't do that, so some votes are bound to be "wasted" this way (though not nearly as many as in a FPTP election).

IMO we should be able to vote non-staff members if we wish, because the selection would be too limited if we could not vote them. IIRC the people who are promoted to be a staff is probably from the opinion mainly from the higher position. even this could result in the mass registration of election, at least it could decrease the suspicion of biased nomination.

if we neither could vote for our loyal representative, join the nomination freely, nor if the number of votings could reflect what the majority are expecting for, including the balancing of the minorities, the result could possibly result in staff system disaster.

one more thing, global moderators elected are responsible to the happenings more than what we are required to address, not only monitoring the site.

I understood your first sentence and nothing more.  ??? ??? ???
This is a vote for global moderators and hence only active staff members have been nominated.

Nice visual representation. Thanks! Maybe I should have thought twice before banning so many people from Bitmixer.  :D

I have the same problem with that post.

The votes that you have got could be a result of your action on Bitmixer. ;)  Bitmixer participants have been spamming the hell out of this forum.
That said, people should not be confusing your actions as a campaign manager, with your actions as a staff member.

That is also a possibility. :)

People tend to confuse all kinds of action around here, e.g. staff, campaign manager, trust system. The campaign was horrible, and there were a lot of people that needed permanent bans right there (blatant 1 liner abusers). At least it is now spam free.

Okay,this is getting a bit off track.All the accounts from Philippines have put Dabs as their primary choice and since he is from Philippines too,you can establish the coincidences.Nothing wrong with it but if at all the Global Mod is chosen on the basis of number of votes,this isn't really a fair judgement.

P.S. Forgive me if I missed anything in this thread since I haven't been reading all the posts.

It won't be chosen just on the basis of the number of votes. Theymos will have to take a view.
In any case, each contestant will have his own set of backers.

Well,dissolves the entire point of keeping an election.Might as well one could have sent the list to theymos and he would choose one after doing his homework but anyway...

FYI, in the first place we were given the freedom to vote and i doubt if you don't want somebody which you know better than  anyone else to be elected. Then how can you choose the right one then? that makes you feel the right judgement?  We voted fairly and when there is  no bias in voting fairly then i guess that is already a fair judgement.           

No,this is where you cunts get it all wrong.It's not about voting for somebody you know,it's about voting for someone who deserves to be a Global Moderator.To decide,to should know what the responsibilities of the GM's are and wheather the person you vote has the abilities/time/efforts to put in.If you have no idea about the remaining mods in the list,you shouldn't be voting in the first place.

Let's put it this way.1000 accounts from Philippines voted for Dabs just because he is from Philippines and 5 accounts voted for Lauda without knowing their Country or Location but solely based on their work ethics.What seems more fair to you ? No offence to Dabs,I'm just giving an example how if the Global Mod is decided on basis of voting system,it wouldn't be as fair.

Then you seriously thinks that this cunts doesn't have any idea about the other mods operating in the forum? Does that statement makes you feel reasonable? Of course if you do know that person much better then you should still surely going to vote him/her because you surely know he capabalities which similarly equal to other mods but that doesn't mean as well that other mods are not capable ,of course they all have the capability.




There you go, now you are stating the obvious ;) Even if you can all see that dabs was probably far from the score of lauda (60% lower to be specific). Another thing most of us didn't put dabs to be in our first option in the first place, your speculation is far from reality obviously.


EDITED: That is how the system works, Well i guess if you do not support that system you should stop wasting your time voting every election in your place or at least try to build your own empire lol

You may choose to disagree, of course, but from the thread title it is not clear altogether. On the contrary, it looks exactly like theymos blessed the election of the new team of global moderators. In fact, there are even two such threads which even further strengthens this feeling of official consent and blessing...

There seems to be a lot of intrigue and strife going on behind the scenes in the pursuit of power

https://media.tenor.co/images/54451401d52c0dd2fe9ee5752857d53c/raw


The fine print, yeah. We all know what that typically means, don't we?

He was just using Dabs and me, with arbitrary numbers, as an example to make a point. He's saying that voting for someone just because they're the moderator of your language/local section is wrong. I strongly agree with this statement. Votes should be objective, ergo you should not vote for someone due to bias.

Then maybe it should be altered, i.e. add the word 'unofficial' into it?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

The above arguments are exactly the reason why I don't think the votes will bring anything close to a result. While some might think that a mod is fair in his moderation if he is somewhat lenient, others might feel that another mod deserves to be a global mod due to his activity(I belong to the latter, although there is no exact data on a mod's moderation) and others might want someone promoted for (close to)no reason at all. If anything perhaps the votes of members that theymos finds trustworthy, would somewhat influence his decision.

Lastly, I do not see a reason for another Global mod. AFAIK the last promotion happened as other Glob. mods were not as active and Cyrus already had some experience in moderating multiple boards.

I certainly got the point  sir. What am i trying to say as well is that we are not being unfair and it is pretty obvious on the current scorecard i guess so? Most of us voted dabs but not on the priority

Eh, it seems a bit obvious that you were not (actively) around for a while. Some (even obvious) reports tend to take several days to handle (at times).

Well, I would rather not evaluate individual votes as you could question the intent/reasoning behind a fair amount of them. Again, dabs was an example so there's no reason to focus on their votes (or reasoning behind them).

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I feel like, the more days pass, the more this will end up being ignored. Maybe a minimum amount of correctly reported posts would be a nice criteria? However, we can not enforce that without administrators (thus not worth expending their already limited time).

Any election is bound to have a certain number of people voting for stupid reasons, and everyone involved (should have) expected that going in. As long as the majority of voters are sane there should be no issue (and if you don't have a majority of sane voters, you have a problem democracy can't fix). In any case, it's not anyone's place to question the voters' motives.

Incidentally, Lauda now trails by 11 votes in the TCP, as more Dabs voters prefer Mitchell, widening the gap.

Who will replace that Moderator's place after becoming of his"HER" Global Moderator?
May I?  ??? ??? ???

We have had 1 global moderator become an admin, that creates a vacancy for global moderator, right? Cyrus might be expected to take care of admin  related responsibilities that badbear used to do.

I suggest to add this information to the OP.

This too, it would help seeing this in the OP.

I mainly "know" Lauda from the stop-the-spam-topic leading up to the decision that made her campaign manager. And indeed, the spam-fighting is why I choose him/her^*.

I've probably seen all moderators, but I don't distinguish all of them by heart. I have a number 1 and number 2, but that's it.
Is it allowed to leave the third choice blank? Like this:

Edit after Vod's post (under this one):
^*I always thought Lauda profiles "herself" as a herself. Or maybe I got that idea from other people assuming the same. Somehow "Ninja Cat" sounds like a girl thing too. No offense I hope :P

Lauda is a guy!   :o

The name is close to the feminine "Laura", which is why people confuse it.

Are you sure? I was always told that I looked like a cat, whether I'm feminine or masculine is another question. :P TBH Laura is a nice name.

Yes, you are allowed to vote for even a singular person I believe.

It may or may not be. None taken. :D

What will be the remuneration package for becoming a global mod? I guess the pay rise would be substantially more than being a simple mod wouldn't it?

This election is much needed. Even if it may not result in someone being elected/chosen by theymos, this is a nice experiment, as it was said previously, and just shows that many people feel the same way: we need more active people fighting spam on the forums.

I do my best to report everything and I think I do a relatively nice job reporting whatever is wrong, but we need moderation to keep up with all the reports that exist and act on them (I imagine that there are many due to the spam around here). Some posts are reported but they stay there for a long, long time, unattended. I think this is a clear sign that we need more moderation, or at least more patrollers.

Already voted and I'll keep reporting whatever I see wrong, as usual.

It was a close choice between Mitchell and you.
In the end mitchell got position 1 from me because he was being a mod longer then you!

Moderators are not paid in terms of a salary, but rather receive *contributions* based on how much work you end up doing. Global moderators can earn more (if they work obviously) than standard section moderators, yes.

He actually is, although I'm not sure how long exactly (he became a mod in Q1 2015 IIRC). I don't see a lot of other people voting based on that though (e.g. mprep has been around longer than both of us).

My choice was mostly based on personal interactions with you two and how you are solving problems as mods. But as both of you are doing a good job i therefore choosed the guy who worked for longer :)

The thing with mprep is that i dont see him often. He is probaly more of the working behind the scene guy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning your decision. Mitchell is an excellent choice. Interestingly, no staff member has voted yet.

Well, I think it truly comes down to where you're looking. I've heard a lot of differentiating stories from people, regarding who they think (based on what they saw) are the most active ones.

That was my thread about (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1654834.0) proactive fighting with spam


Lauda is a female (http://www.allbabynames.net/lauda/) name itself in many European countries, mostly in Italy, if I'm not mistaken. And believe me, her posts give her away instantly. But this is off-topic, though she obviously likes it when this question is raised again and again. I would love that too if I were a woman, lol (just in case, I ain't). Regarding the elections themselves, if we really can call them so, the question looks more like about choosing only one new global moderator...

Otherwise, I don't see any sense as to why there seems to be so much ado about this matter across Meta

All the candidates are excellent, in my opinion. There's no choosing the lesser evil in this election. It's a refreshing change.

Important Update: I mistakenly forgot HostFat so he has been added to the ballot. If you voted prior to this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16935051#msg16935051, you may change your vote ONCE to include HostFat if you wish to vote for him. If you do change your vote, the time of the edit will be noted and no further edits are allowed.

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How about now? I added [Unofficial] to the title.

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That's how most people who are voting decide how to vote. That's probably why most of the Phillipines people voted for Dabs; he is the one that they have interacted with before.

The people who moderate the main sections of the forum are probably the ones who will get the most votes because people just happen to interact with them more as they moderate the main sections. Mprep will probably get votes from altcoiners since he moderates the altcoin section and thus altcoiners interact with him more.

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Probably something to do with conflict of interest. I will not be voting because of potential conflict of interest since I created the thread and am on the ballot.

now. what does this unofficial mean? is it because you guys doing all this without theymos agreement?
I want to see theymos or Cyrus to confirm that they will follow the result of this election.

Yes.

They will not. There is no guarantee that any of the admins will promote a Global Moderator based upon the outcome of this election. Read the disclaimer I wrote at the bottom of the voting thread.

Much better now!

Since I haven't actively interacted with anyone from the list of candidates and cannot objectively judge their qualities as would-be global moderators, I guess I should refrain from casting my vote altogether. Other than that, I looked through the Google spreadsheet and noticed that everyone should choose exactly three candidates. I don't think it is a good idea, either. I strongly suspect that many Bitcointalk members might not be very familiar with any of the candidates but only with one, maybe two of them

Wanna show me the rock you've been living under the last half year?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lauda&defid=4520051

I've voted for Mitchell over Lauda, even though I got more moderation-related interaction with Lauda and should thus by this reasoning select Lauda.
I don't think I came in contact with you about moderation any more than you handling some of my newbie reports, yet you can find you on my list aswell.

Personally, I don't think this election makes sense altogether since it is like letting sheep choose their shepherd. A new global moderator (or just moderator, for that matter) should be chosen exclusively by those who understand which qualification and skills are actually required for the job, and who can objectively decide if the applicant fully satisfies these requirements. That would be called meritocracy if you please...

Otherwise, one billion flies cannot be wrong


https://www.facebook.com/lauda.freitas.7
https://www.facebook.com/lauda.cardoso
https://www.facebook.com/souza.lauda
https://www.facebook.com/lauda.marinho
https://www.facebook.com/laudabruna.lourencooliveira

Which is Lauda? I opt for the first

So we should wait a few weeks for a potential next (active) global moderator to respond to a PM?

No. The mistake happened and HostFat noticed it himself. That said, he also agreed that adding him now with the option of changing your vote is better than the alternative (which would be to start all over again).

To me is even ok to restart the voting again, I mean it's good for my personal interest :D

But I'm not pushing for it, you can do what you prefers.

Well, if you prefer that I don't mind it either. It would cause a bit more confusion and would definitely lead to some conscious and subconscious vote shifting based, but I guess that's fine. I'm not sure what others think about this?

Thanks for moving this - didn't realize there was a discussion thread.


 Sure.  I don't believe the situation is so dire that we can't take the time to do it properly.


  This remedy still requires all who already voted to notice there was a change and I doubt people are going to keep checking the thread when it bumps since that happens every time there is a vote.

Choosing someone who's partly inactive or semi-active when the need for a active global moderator arises is counter-intuitive.

There's plenty of time to fix your vote. I'm pretty sure that the error rate would be marginal in the end.

The point is, when searching someone who can in the best case be active on a daily basis handling reports on global level,
candidates that aren't abled to respond to a PM in a weeks time kinda already fall out of the pool by that.

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Would this[1] count as electioneering or is it still considered an "informative" post?

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1687427.0

It's borderline electioneering. I will ask hostfat to remove that post as it is introducing a lot of bias into the voting (a lot of people have voted only hostfat). It kind of implies "you should vote for me" though, so... What do you all think?

I removed the line

"Potete votare anche per me, se volete :D"

In english means

"You can vote even for me, if you want :D"

I can delete all the post if you prefer.

EDIT:
Removed.

 Okay, wait.  This is not what I was talking about!  In his own words, Achow101 forgot to include one of the staff.  I'm saying we need to ensure no person is left behind before proceeding.  If a mod is not logging in regularly, that's a totally different story and not what I was originally concerned about.


 You're probably right.

The PM had to be split off into two due to number of participants limit. Hostfat seems to have been in the middle and did not end up getting a PM. I'm sure achow101 double checked later that everyone else got their PM.

It's not a big issue since it was tackled early (it would be if it were official though).

 Why delete your post altogether?  Is this vote only for English-speaking, full members and above?
Shouldn't there be a post in all the other local language boards?

Which ends up people ignoring the following rule (as I had predicted earlier):

 So then the vote is only for English-speaking full members and above?
How can it be considered electioneering to let people who don't speak English know there is an election?

No, that is not what I have said.

If you don't ever visit Meta, and/or are not concerned/familiar with the forum rules and moderation on a wide scale, then I have no idea why you would be voting for a global moderator in the first place?

This vote is for those who are familiar with the forum, the moderators, and the forum rules. Those who care enough about those three things are likely to be people who read meta. Those who do not read meta are probably those that don't care about forum happenings, and we don't really want their vote because they will not be as informed as those who do.

The electioneering aspect is that such posts essentially tell people in that section to go and vote even though normally they wouldn't. Because the poster is also a candidate and moderator of that section, it inherently biases the votes from people in that section towards that moderator (just like how I have votes probably mostly due to the fact that I made the thread). If all the local mods made such a post, it would bias the vote towards the local moderators because those of us who are not local mods would not be able to make such a post in our own sections to get people from our sections to vote. Thus, such posts should not exist as they make the voting unbalanced.

Seems I got hung up on the words global and election.

Seems like this election is going to divide us all if we are going to make a local moderator a candidate to be a global moderator, why not just promote it according to hierarchy? I suggest that if we are going to elect a global moderator it should be from the staff excluding the local moderators, and promote one local moderator to fill up the position of the promoted staff and have a local election to replace the position of the local mod promoted? That way this election will not be politicized by those with motive ( if there is ).

Then submit the result to Theymos and let him decide.

If I understood the moderation levels correctly, there is no difference between topic section moderators like achow101 and "local" section moderators like HostFat.
Some moderators even fill both positions at a time, like Lauda, who acts as topic section moderator for the Speculation section and as "local" section moderator for the Croatian local section.
(Same goes for Mitchell btw, who moderates Beginners&Help/Project Dev on one hand, and the Dutch local board on the other.)

Hence saying to do promotions according to "hierachy" doesn't really change anything about the current situation, all are on the same level here.

EDIT:
What I am trying to say is those who solely moderates the local boards and not handling any other main boards should not or may not be a candidate to become a global moderator... I've seen the election, it looks like it is now based on their popularity and  local supporters (including my self )fully supports local moderator... I am not against local moderators to be a candidate, but I think it would be fair if we elect from the staffs like Lauda,achow101 and Mitchell and other moderators like them who contributed a lot in main boards, and just have another election from local moderators to go one level higher...  :)

I don't know about the other local moderators, but I feel quite present on the forum :)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=203;sa=statPanel

Also, usually the local moderators have their hands on all possible sections (by theme), so it is even possible to say that there is a possibility that a local moderator can be better of other moderators that were active only on a single theme sub-section of the international part.

This isn't to say that "I am the one", but just to not lower the value of the local moderators, only because they usually work only on a different language than english. ;)

Daily update:

The primary vote is a dead heat, and Lauda still trails by 7 votes after preferences. Especially telling today is the enormous number of exhausted ballots, almost entirely from the sudden and concerning influx of HostFat voters. Most of them didn't even have a #2 preference, and so, even though they have the numbers to decide this tight election, they won't. Would it be electioneering to remind HostFat supporters to vote for more than one candidate, otherwise their vote won't count if their #1 choice doesn't win? ::)

Also, I'm still counting these votes by hand (as an Australian, I know how to do that), even though the TCP is now shown on the public spreadsheet. Consider it an independent audit. ;)

EDIT: Typo.

I think that was probably due to HostFat's post about the election which has since been removed.

As long as you don't tell them who to vote for, then that's fine.

It's good to know that my script isn't failing when used with more than three test votes.

1. Lauda should be removed from the options because he is clearly not qualified to be a global moderator, as he lacks the ability to maintain even the appearance of neutrality by leaving multiple negative trust ratings against people who his disagrees with, as well as his severe lack of maturity.

2. The criteria for choosing a global mod should not be who wins a vote (which are virtually meaningless due to the potential for alts), it should be based on who is qualified.....in other words who has the experience in moderating the forum (or other forums). Some of the main reasons why someone will become a non-local board moderator are that someone makes a lot of accurate reports, has a good understanding of the rules, and mostly maintain neutrality in disputes -- the criteria for who becomes a local moderator appears to be much more lenient. After someone has proven themselves to be a competent patroller, they should take responsibility for a few sections, then eventually have responsibility for major sections (including the marketplace and related subs, bitcoin discussion and the altcoin sections) -- until someone has successfully moderated one or more major sections for a "decent" amount of time, they probably should not be considered for a global moderator position for the most part.

Based on the above criteria, I would say that the only person on the ballot that is qualified to be a global mod is mprep. Although I really do not frequent the altcoin sections very often, it is my impression that mprep's moderation of the altcoin sections have been mostly successful. It is my understanding that immidiately prior to mprep taking over the altcoin sections, the entire altcoin sub was a hot mess, when he first took over, it looks like he made some changes, and started enforcing some rules that caused a little bit of drama/complaints. The number of meta threads about mprep seem to have dropped down and/or entirely stopped.

The Russian local section, has, by far the most number of posts in all of the local subs, so depending on his performance, it may be wise to consider xandry as a global mod. It is also my understanding that he has been a moderator for a fairly long time without any major issues.

Hostfat also moderates one of the more major local subs for what I understand to be many years, without issues, so he may be qualified to be a global mod. Although he does live in a similar time zone as one of the most active global moderators, so there may be little additional advantage to promoting him.

Other things that may be considered when deciding who to promote, would include how many reports are 'ignored' how accurately are reports handled, among potentially other things. Many moderators in general are not very active with their "moderator" account in posting in order to avoid moderator harassment -- I do not think how 'active' someone is in posting should be a considered in deciding who should become a global mod, although I would not say that being very active should disqualify someone.

3. I am not sure the problem is that we do not have enough global moderators, the problem may be a policy issue. Some policies have been somewhat recently implemented, that should, over time reduce the quantity of low quality posts, for example this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334019.0) one banning threads whose only response can be a low quality post in 'off-topic', this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1649348.0) one banning low value threads in 'bitcoin discussion', and this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1684035.0) policy of blacklisting certain signatures whose campaign operators allow too high a level of low quality of posts.

Well, you have to remember that it is unofficial. This means that even if someone wins, that does not necessarily mean that they get promoted. That said, I do not expect the outcome to have a strong influence on rational people (e.g. 'divide us all').

Yes, this was one of the original concerns, strongly pointed out by at least 1 more moderator. You should not be casting votes due to subjective bias, but this happens very frequently in every election and there's not much that can be done against it.

Thanks. For some reason I like this representation (maybe it's because of the blue color). I shall try to create a chart in the final sheets page as well.

I agree and like to add that a vote is mostly a popularity contest. I dont know how active - in terms of moderation - any of the mods are I voted for. My 1st vote went to mprep mainly because they have been around for some time and had - for me - noticable positive impact on the forum. The same is true for mitchell, lauda (lets not open the can whether or not they should be mod in the first place here as well) and achow101, from my perspective. I can say little about other mods, their activity and ableness in this regard. Does that mean they deserve the position less? No. I still voted, but I think it should stay an internal decision and it is my understanding that it still is.

than what is the sense doing all these things when you are saying there is no guarantee that admin will follow that and promote a mod to  Glob Mod seat on bases of community votes?

I think all these things are useless and waste of time..  let theymos. decide if the forum really need a glob mod or not. and who he want to give that position.

Trust and maturity are (mostly) irrelevant to a person's moderation ability. Maturity is also a subjective assessment; what you think as immature I may think as not.

Based upon the above objective criteria, both Lauda and Mitchell are qualified. Both are patrollers (IIRC) and both moderate multiple sections; Lauda moderates croatian and speculation and Mitchell moderates Beginners & Help and Project Development. Both have also had their positions for a decent amount of time.

However the candidates for this election were chosen based upon response to my PM and moderation activity during the past month regardless of time as moderator and sections moderated.

Indeed. Posting activity was not the only criteria for activity; moderation activity was also considered. I only included those who had moderation activity in the past month (and they were the only ones who responded anyways). This data is based upon mod payment data which theymos posts in the Staff Forum. Those who get paid are active in moderation activities.

Yes, additional policy would help, but with additional policy there also needs to be additional enforcement. IMO enforcement is currently lacking.

Well the majority of what the various moderators do is done 'behind the scenes' and the public does not know which moderator took a specific action. When a mod reports a post to the moderators who have authority to act in a section, no one else knows, when a mod moves a thread, much of the time, no one knows, when a post is deleted no one knows who deleted said thread.

Speaking strictly in terms of what the various mods have done for the forum while wearing their "moderator hat" -- I agree that mprep has done a good job in cleaning up the altcoin sections; I agree that mitchell has used his bot in order to stop much of the 'backlink spam' from impacting most users; I agree that achow101 has used his "staff" title to help users filter out bad advice in the "help" sections, and leverages his expert technical abilities to give very good advice in the "help" sections.

My concern about making mitchell a global mod is that many months ago, he said that he mostly reads a few select sections (I am not sure if this is still true or not), so he might not be interested in reading threads outside of those sections, which would be necessary to handle reports outside of those sections. I would vote that archdow101 be made moderator of the dev & tech section without further consideration, and the bitcoin discussion section if he has an interest in becoming a global mod -- after he gets more experience in moderating a more broad range of boards, I would not doubt that he will become qualified.

The actions of the various moderators are monitored by theymos, although theymos may not be able to monitor all of the potential conflicts that moderators are involved in. As a result of this, moderators need to be trued to avoid taking any actions involving anything that might cause an appearance of a conflict of interest if said action were to be made public.

Moderators are -- even though they are "officially" volunteers -- essentially the face the forum, and anything a moderator does or says will reflect on the reputation of the forum as a whole. If a moderator is acting like a 5 year old kid, then that will reflect negatively on the forum. If someone were to act like a kid in a job interview, I would not want to hire them, especially if their role is to interact with (either internal or external) customers.

I have seen multiple people, of which had a neutral stance in regards to Lauda, imply and/or explicitly say that Lauda lacks maturity.

I would not consider any of those sections to be "major sections". (Mitchell also moderates the Nederlands (Dutch) section). If there was a moderation error in any of those sections, then not as many people would be impacted verses if the mistake was regarding a thread in the bitcoin discussion section, and the error would not affect anyone's finances nor any kind of trade as would happen in the marketplace sections.

Correct. I was merely giving feedback as to who I believe should be made global mod.

Have you noticed any particular sections in which enforcement is lacking, more so then others? If so, which ones? Do you think it is an issue of existing moderators taking too long to handle problems, or is it an issue of problems going unaddressed at all. If theymos is not ready to promote someone to a global moderator, then he might be willing to add additional coverage to certain sections in need of additional enforcement. 

Thats exactly why I hope this decision will not be made based upon the outcome of this vote. Let the vote be the decider in case of a draw, but it should not be more.


I agree that archow101 is a capable mod, they did not get my vote because of the time served. I trust Mitchell that they - since they are willing to do the job - take the time needed to read up on sections they usually do not frequent. I would expect that of any (new) global moderator.

As you clearly state, I said that many months ago. I think that was even before I got promoted to be a moderator of certain sections. So, please, do not assume what I currently do (or don't) read nor what currently interests me as those do change over time.

I, currently, have barely anything on my Board ignore list (with most local boards being an exception), as I want to handle every report as good as possible (and else they are passed along to someone else). Also, reports from sections that I've on ignore are still shown in the Report list, so I'll still be able to handle them even if I don't want to see every thread within it. This does not mean that I do not visit that section, it just means that I do not want to see it in my "Show new replies to your posts"-page.

If you want achow101 promoted, please make an appropriate thread in Meta as it has no place in this thread (which is about promoting someone to a Global Moderator).

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As some people might have noticed, I haven't commented on this thread since it's creation for one simple reason; I do not want to influence the results in any way or form. I just do not want "misinformation" to spread, as in, incorrect assumptions about me and how I do my job. QuickSeller, this post is/was not meant to attack or insult you. I'll try and not get involved with this election any further as I do not want to cause any drama.

Taking a cue from a recent real life election:

Let's Make Bitcointalk Great Again ? No Spammers.

Otherwise, I am just amused by this whole election. Even if I never say anything, I notice names get dragged in to cause some drama. That's life.

I think the more correct 'trump-like' version would be: We are going to make our forum great again!

I do not see drama revolving you. The only time that you were mentioned is when Joel_Jantsen used your name in an example. Maybe I have missed something?

No. I think that was it. There is some drama in my section, because obviously "my people" are voting for me there, so I locked that particular thread. This forum is full of drama, whether we like it or not (and if I may say so, is the reason why some other forums decided to go make their own, and every large altcoin has their own forum outside bitcointalk.)

In any case, I'd like to see more stats, some raw numbers, how the final results are calculated, and what (if any) other results could have been if the election used different rules. This election is different from what many people may understand.


Trump did say America, not "our country". I think. Oh wait, he did say our country at first, but then it mutated into America. I didn't pay much attention to the whole thing. "America" covers both North and South, but he is probably referring to the USA only, excluding Latin America, Mexico and Canada. And his campaign has a lot of drama, even after the election.

I'd have voted for him, but I'm not American, so my vote doesn't count. (Like, I wouldn't vote for Obama, and I have relatives in Illinois, but I forgot who was the other guy anyway, LOL.)

I found three recent real life country elections interesting too, namely that of the USA (Trump), Canada (Trudeau) and The Philippines (Duterte). Each system also had a different way of counting the votes.

Anyway, I'm not in the counting or running it seems, maybe I'm in the "exhausted" part.

Well, you can the stats in the google sheets linked in the other threads. I would like some different graphical representations myself. That said, final calculation is *somewhat simple*. It depends on how many 1) votes a candidate has (i.e. in the first round, the one with the lowest number of such votes gets eliminated). For example:
Person: 1) Moderator 1; 2) Dabs; 3) Lauda. If moderator 1 gets eliminated, the votes of this person shift to 1) Dabs; 2) Lauda.

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You can read up about the system here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

He did use both and I would have likely voted for him as well. However, let's not discuss that in this thread.

No. Exhausted votes are currently primarily the people that vote only in such a format:"1) Hostfat" (no other secondary or third). So when Hostfat gets eliminated in the runoff, their votes get *exhausted*. The representation from Foxpup is the end result at the time of creation.

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Maybe someone else could explain it better than I can. This is how the situation currently stands (without any rounds of elimination):

There's a multitude of reasons why doing this isn't a good idea at all (many of which have already been mentioned), not to mention if theymos hasn't asked for it it's probably a waste of time and irrelevant. To me it just seems like one big popularity contest and mods aren't made or promoted based on how popular they are but based on whether they're beneficial/needed and only theymos will have access to the exact info to be able to make that sort of decision. I see a lot of people voting based on how 'active' people are on the forum but they seem to be basing that on how active you are in posting, yet they will have no idea how many reports that mod is responsible for handling or the time they actually spend browsing the forum or reporting posts themselves. You could make little to no posts here but be responsible for handling most of the reports, whereas you might spend most of your time here posting and not handling many reports. You could also be the most friendly/popular mod among users but maybe not the best at actually moderating in whatever capacity. The person who may actually be the best at moderating may be the least favourite among users. People will take a dislike to you just for just doing your job properly and following the rules so that gives them a disadvantage from the start.

Personally, I think there should be several criteria involved:

You should be very, very active. One of if not the most active staff member here (no point promoting someone if you're not here much or there's others that are here twice as much).
You should have been a moderator for quite some time (personally, I don't think a patroller or Local board Member should go straight to Global without having moderated other larger sections first which they could be promoted to in due course if they do a good job and are obviously very active. Put in the time and effort and you'll likely get promoted further over time).
Should be in the very top percentage of staff who handle the most reports a month (and accurately so).
Report a lot of posts (if you're not really reporting any posts yourself for whatever reason then there are plenty of other staff that still are and would be more beneficial to promote them instead).

Personally, if I was going to choose I would say mprep fits the above criteria the most but he currently seems to be one of the least popular choices and I think that's down to because he doesn't post or interact much here (not a bad thing). On the flipside, maybe there's a staff member that handles twice as many reports as he does but that's why only theymos should be deciding this stuff.


What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to others (or it may have been marked as 'bad'). Sometimes I see reports from others and I'm not sure about them or am sliding towards marking it as bad but leave it to see if another mod thinks it's good or bad or just leaves it themselves. If every Global/Admin hasn't handled a report after a while then it's likely for a good reason or certainly not urgent. I think urgent reports get handled very swiftly and the only reports that ever stay in the queue are mostly for nonsense ("he's trolling me" i.e. he said something they don't like or agree with). I wouldn't be against a new Global but if we promote one more that doesn't magically make everything ok either. What happens when they're away or at work or whatnot? A few months down the line will we be having another popularity contest or the mods who finished second or third will be claiming the same thing "reports are taking days" and I'm next in line? I do think a better solution would be to spread the workload out a bit. Currently there are several boards with no mod at all, not to mention big boards like Bitcoin Discussion and Marketplace only really have Globals attached. Every board should have one or two non-Globals attached and this will solve that issue of any reports not getting handled.


In an ideal world they should be objective but we don't live in an ideal world. People will vote against you just because you removed them from a campaign. People will vote for you just because you're from their country. People will vote for or against you just because you do or don't have the same politics or beliefs as them. What happens if there's one user with dozens of accounts that likes or dislikes you? That would probably put you out of the race instantly.


On the contrary, those people could likely vote against him. I've lost count of how many times people have created butthurt threads about him just for doing his job correctly (there's even a joke thread in the Staff forum created for logging every time he got a hate thread). This is why this whole process is silly. The person who is most suited to the job likely doesn't have a chance not to mention the people voting for them have no idea who is best suited and are voting on completely biased reasons.


Maybe they didn't want to be involved in a popularity contest? I'm not sure if I would have responded to the PM either and certainly wouldn't have been happy to be involved in such an election. Nothing good is going to come of this. There's only going to be one happy staff member at the most and they'll likely just be disappointed or upset if theymos didn't choose 'the people's champion' and went with someone else instead.


So are mprep and Eal (amongst others). Both who have moderated their sections for much longer, but one seems to be out of the race already and one was never even in it to start with. I'm sure there's others who would have also liked to be included.

Personally, I don't think the result of this matters at all so even if you didn't get m/any votes or weren't even in it to start with I wouldn't worry or be disappointed. Thread should just be left to run its course and be deemed a silly bitcointalk social experiment at best. People have stated their interest in being a Global and theymos can take that into consideration along with all the stats/info he has access to but this thread shouldn't decide anything other than who is the most popular non-global mod.

Without having anything else to add, I think this is a nicely summarized list.

I'm actually indirectly talking about a specific example that I recall recently. It was very obvious (assessed by different individuals) and took quite a while to handle (then again things have not been moving swiftly). I can PM you about it.

That is actually a good idea that should be discussed.

Don't you mean objective?

This would ruin the social experiment, but that possibility should have been known from day 1.

Everyone who was ellegible received a PM (excluding Hostfat by mistake, but they were added 1 day later).

Correct and that is covered in the disclaimer in the other thread (+ the 'unofficial'). Promoting someone just based on those votes would be irrational IMO and that is not what I expect to happen.

And I guess we all know who will be that most happy staff member


So has the idea of making bans public been dismissed after all? The thread which was intended to assess the interest (actually, to spur it up, let's be honest here) somehow got abruptly abandoned by the most active proponents of this idea without a conclusive wind-up. What did theymos decide, to leave things as they are presently and look for a new global moderator (a team of them)?

We want gory details

Once the election is over, I plan to give a more in-depth analysis, as well as count the results by different methods to see if any discrepancies arise (which they might, given how close this race is). Right now, I'm only focusing on the two candidate preferred vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party-preferred_vote) since that's the standard way of announcing the result of an instant run-off election. That Wikipedia article starts with "In Australian politics..." because hardly anyone else uses instant run-off voting. I don't understand why. It's perfectly simple:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4808372-3x2-940x627.jpg

You start out with a large number of candidates (yes, that's a real Australian ballot paper with hundreds of candidates*), and tally the #1 votes for each one. Whoever gets the fewest votes is eliminated. In a normal run-off election, a second (and third, etc.) election is held with that candidate omitted from the ballot, but in the "instant" version of the scheme, we can skip the extra elections by taking all the ballots that voted for the loser and counting them as a vote for their #2 preference. The process is repeated until only two candidates remain, and the one with the majority wins. (If one candidate has a majority at an earlier stage (possibly even in the primary), you can stop counting if you're lazy, since that candidate is guaranteed to win in the end, but you don't know by how much.)

A ballot is said to be "exhausted" when it voted for an eliminated candidate and it expressed no preference for any of the remaining candidates. In the end, all ballots are a vote for the winner, the runner-up, or nobody. This allows voters to safely vote for unpopular candidates while still having a say in which of the most popular candidates is elected. This is also why Australia has slightly more than two parties. ;D

The two candidate preferred vote is the result after all preferences have been distributed to the final two candidates. While it doesn't show how much support there was for every candidate, it shows who the winner is and by how much, ie, exactly how many extra votes the runner-up would have needed to win.

*Actually a Senate ballot, which uses the single transferable vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote) system, which is basically the multiple-winner version of instant run-off and is even more complicated (once the first winner is found, they're eliminated, votes for that candidate are weighted by how much the winner won by, and the whole process starts all over again to determine the next winner). Australia's lower house ballot papers aren't quite so ridiculous.

You're currently in fourth place, with 15 votes (14 primary, 1 second preference). Since you're out of the running, everyone who voted for you had their vote flow to their next preference (except for one voter who had no next preference and had their ballot exhausted) - 10 of your votes went to Mitchell, and 4 to Lauda.

Agree. Silly bitcointalk social experiment. Popularity contest.

BTW, isn't everyone (staff) a patroller? Do some staff here not have the "Patrol" link at the top?

That's not what makes you a patroller, else I would be one aswell.
That one is a setting, you can trigger it under the following site: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;sa=forumProfile

https://i.snag.gy/ZJvdAN.jpg

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(While we're at it, theymos, it's actually over watchlist, not under.)

Silly question but if someone edits their post will the vote count as:

• Completely Invalid - Scrapped?
• Their original post's votes?
• Their edited post's votes?

I'm not looking to edit my vote. I was just wondering.

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Thanks for the clarification.

This excludes people that have voted prior to Hostfat being added, but they are only allowed to add them instead of someone else and not change their whole vote up.

Completely invalid except for the Hostfat exception.

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Due to the large number of single votes, all votes from now on must have at least two votes in order for the preferential voting system to work.

 If we have already cast only one vote, will we be allowed to modify it?  If so, how long do we have?
How many rule modifications/additions should we expect before the 26th ov November? ;)

No, you are not allowed to modify it. The rule does not apply retroactively so current voted are not invalidated. The only person who modified their vote is redsn0w since he did so before I added the nonretroactive statement in the voting thread thus he modified it thinking that it was retroactive.

As many as necessary to keep this fair. As people keep coming up with new edge cases. I've underestimated the stupidity and lack of reading of the people on this forum.

 It seems like maybe you're the only real choice for global moderator.  I'm ready to cast my vote now.

The race is now closer than ever as Lauda gains a narrow lead in the primary vote, but it's not enough to overcome the preferences for Mitchell. A mere 5 votes stand between the top two candidates. Even though the election is nearly half over, it's still anyone guess who will win.

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Most of them weren't counting anyway. What difference is this rule expected to make?

You what? Are you sure you're cut out to be a global moderator? :P

I Think it is better to restart the votes because some voters there are not following the guidelines and now changing the votes into 2 votes..
I saw many members are posting one vote.
and i think it is better those votes are not counted or not valid..

Your calculation shows a 5 vote difference, while sheets show a 3 vote difference. I don't think that you've factored in that some votes may or may not have been invalidated by achow. I will double check them later.

The rule is in effect only after it has been posted. This means that existing votes that are singular are fine.

I hadn't seen this thread till now but i would have voted gleb in, it would be just like Trump winning the US election  :D

It would be better to lock this as well as the other thread and stop this whole shebang since it does more harm than good. As I and others have pointed out already these so-called elections have nothing to do with choosing a moderator based entirely on their qualification and skills, as it should be. But that is not my point. If the winner of this contest won't be the one who theymos himself ultimately decides to appoint as a new global moderator, it would make him feel and look as if he had to discard or neglect the choice of the forum members. On the other hand, the outcome of this "contest" itself could negatively affect the impartiality of his own choice...

I'm curious whether whoever is behind this idea understands that, or was that their real intention?

Checking. There are currently only 105 votes instead of 107, and there were definitely 107 votes on the spreadsheet when I posted (I do some checking). I counted a vote for Mitchell from redsn0w (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16937965#msg16937965) since he was allowed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685559.msg16948644#msg16948644) to change it. I remember this distinctly because it caused me a great deal of confusion when I didn't notice it was changed and my results were off by one vote. That vote is no longer on the spreadsheet, and there's no explanation of where it went, as there was the previous times votes were deleted. Another vote has vanished, and I'm still trying to determine whose, though it must have been a vote for Mitchell (after preferences) since I checked my results when I posted and they matched the spreadsheet at the time. EDIT: After manually recounting all the votes, I've discovered that Docnaster's vote (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16929774#msg16929774) has vanished, and, although unrelated to original discrepancy, the post with Seansky's vote (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16929726#msg16929726) has been deleted from the thread, though his vote remains on the spreadsheet.

I hope achow101 can shed some light on this troubling development. :-\

I do not think he was allowed to change it though. Nobody is allowed to change their vote excluding people that have voted prior to the addition to Hostfat, thus redsn0w's vote is now invalid if I'm correct.


I'll double check every existing vote from the thread, just hold up until I clear up some backlog. Maybe someone deleted theirs, since you are technically allowed to delete your vote but any follow up vote would be invalid.

Wait, that can't be right. Docnaster's vote isn't in my list of mprep preference flows. Neither of us were counting it in the first place. (Oops. :-[) Looking at the raw numbers, I see I have an extra primary vote for Mitchell that isn't on the spreadsheet (but it definitely was, because the numbers used to match). And I wasn't keeping track of the primary votes since I was relying on the spreadsheet for that. It must have been deleted from both the thread and the spreadsheet.

IMO deleting it from the spreadsheet is wrong. As long as votes get changed/removed they should be kept there with a comment (and obviously invalidated if appropriate). From my own findings, the following votes are invalid and can not be found in the voting sheet:
 wazzap  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16923068#msg16923068)(negative rating)
 Gunthar  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16928098#msg16928098)(electioneering?)
 Docnaster  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16929774#msg16929774) (Unknown?)
 Quickseller (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16930749#msg16930749)(negative rating)

This votes are present in the sheet but have been deleted (no post exists):

Yes, and that used to be case, but it isn't now.

Don't forget vindicare (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16932030#msg16932030) (electioneering).

I could have sworn I saw Yuuto's post earlier. But it's gone now. What the Hell's going on here?

[1] I have updated the sheets and added everyone back with reasoning for vote invalidation. I'll wait for Achow to double-check.

No idea. Some people wanted to delete their votes ???

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Updated post.

Foxpup, Lauda here is what happened.

I removed redsn0w, he was on there twice. Apparently he voted twice, so both were removed. He did edit his vote, and I let that slide since he only added someone to his vote and that was before I said that the multiple vote rule was not retroactive. However it was brought to my attention that he had deleted his original vote and voted again, so he was removed.

You can check the edit history of the spreadsheet.

Because it cuts both ways

As I said above, theymos appointing someone as a new global moderator who is not proclaimed as such by the mob would be effectively neglecting the choice of the forum members (that's why I come to think that there will be no new global moderator, at least, for the time being). But people aren't quite happy when they are neglected, though they understand in general that their opinion should not have been asked at all in the first place. Obviously, folks don't want to get involved in this affair any more, and after giving it a second thought, they decided to remove their votes altogether

Just made my vote, glad to participate in my own little way. Good luck to those in the reckoning.

The gap between Lauda and Mitchell continues to narrow, with just 4 votes separating them. But with only 3 days remaining in this election, will Lauda be able to catch up? It's worth noting that 4 of the exhausted ballots had all 3 preferences. These could have potentially changed the outcome had more than 3 preferences been allowed.

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??? No, I can't. It would have been easier if I could.

Lauda receiving red trust, will it effect on global mod election ?

I got my vote in.

I don't think that Lauda has any neg from a member in DT,.
In my opinion he is one of the most active staff members on the forum, sometimes maybe a little harsh in his comments but he just tells it how it is.
Its easy for others to judge but we all have different personalities and at the end of the day i always find Lauda's decisions fair
Mderating a forum is not as easy as some would think.

I can't imagine so. If Lauda had voted - which they didn't - their vote would have been invalidated, though receiving a negative trust doesn't change that they are a Staff member that is eligible to be promoted to Global.

Yes they do. Check their trust page for a rating by 'franky1'.

I find it unnerving that one single negative rating can override many positive ratings.   :-\

What's an idiot like franky1 even doing in DT anyway?

Thatd be a question for dserrano5. Seems to be unrelated to this "election" though. Im sure it will blow up somewhere else in meta or reputation soon.

It is all fine now as we have internally solved the conflict in addition to dserrano's list wiping itself. There have been pretty much no more votes today.

The election race slows down with only a single additional vote since yesterday. There's not much to say about it. Mitchell looks set to win by a slim margin.

Is the spreadsheet no longer being updated?

 I see 34 votes for Lauda and 33 votes for Mitchell but the post above shows quite a different outcome.

You're looking at the wrong sheet. The one above are votes after-elimination. This is the sheet that you should be looking at:

https://i.imgur.com/A4TI5GV.png

 Ah!  Thank you.  I see it now, we're tabulating the results as if the race is over before it's over and eliminating other candidates until one has a majority.
I guess since the voting has tapered off, this is okay but does this lead would-be voters down the proverbial garden path?   I mean let's say I wanted to vote for Xandry (hypothetically - this isn't electioneering) as my first choice but I already know he is eliminated and I want my vote to count, it could change the way I order my selections consciously or subconsciously.  Maybe the race is so close and I really don't want the current leader to win, it allows me to place my vote strategically in an attempt to subvert the election.  Just thinking out loud.
 

Correct. Achow even created a script that automatically does tabulation now.

Indeed, but that is directly caused by votes being public. Anyone can keep track of the votes and calculate the current preferred candidates (e.g. like Foxpup did).

That's why I asked achow101's permission before I started posting these results, but as I pointed out then, anyone can do what I'm doing. The problem, as I see it, is that since instant run-off voting isn't widely used outside of Australia, people might not understand it and think that votes for unpopular candidates won't count, which is exactly the situation that instant run-off voting is meant to avoid. You can safely give your #1 vote to any candidate you like, since if (and only if) they lose, your vote will go to your #2 choice (and finally to your #3 choice, if your #2 choice also loses).

Lauda and Mitchell each receive a single additional vote as we enter the last day of voting. Mitchell retains his lead. Does A!'s vote (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.msg16982306#msg16982306) count? It's not on the spreadsheet yet. Whatever, it doesn't change anything.

If this is no longer the case, then this particular statement would no longer apply to you.

If you do have an interest in becoming a global moderator, then I would recommend that you indicate to theymos your interest in moderating bitcoin discussion or another section that has a very high volume of posts/threads. If he promotes you to moderator to said section, and you can show success moderating said section (which I have confidence that you would), then you would likely eventually be promoted to a global moderator in due time.

If two (or more) moderators are (roughly) similarly qualified to become a global moderator, then I don't see why theymos would not promote both to global moderator. I would doubt that the forum would ever be in a situation where it needs exactly one additional global mod, and two additional mods would be excessive.

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Some of the rules of voting are arbitrary, results in the election not meeting UN election standards, and would likely be ignored in the event that theymos were to take the results of the election into consideration.

Being that the moderators do not take any actions against scammers, and do not moderate scams, there is no reason why those with negative trust should not have their vote counted.

"Electioneering" is a standard practice in any election, and allows voters to become aware of the pros and cons of each candidate.

Additionally, participating in this thread in ways other then to clarify rules, to say "hi" (eg what dabs did), or to clarify what is believed to be incorrect information about them would likely fit the definition of electioneering. The same is true for making the results of the voting publicly available prior to the closing of voting because if one candidate is down by a large number of votes, it is unlikely they will receive any additional votes from those that would otherwise vote for said candidate.

Also there are about 120 posts in the voting thread, but there are about 9,000 new accounts created last month, there are about 9,500 full member accounts currently, so I don't think the vote is a representation of the community.

Even if everyone on the forum cast their vote and the right to vote was also granted to account farmers, shrills, trolls and just shit posters, this "election" still wouldn't make sense (very much like other such election, for that matter). How many people actually know the wannabe moderators to objectively and impartially evaluate their skills? And once the winner gets promoted to this position, how will we see the results of his moderation, many more users getting permanent bans?

Wtf, cattle choosing their slaughterman

The cattle seem to be grazing in the other sections of this forum. :)
In any case, the candidates are at present moderators in other sections. So the candidates satisfy the minimum eligibility criteria.

If so, why all this charade then? They could just agree between themselves who is to be presented to theymos as the most skillful and qualified pretender for a global moderator job. If they don't come to a consensus, they could just flip a coin, after all. Whoever becomes a new global moderator, he would without doubt more favor his proponents than opponents if it ever comes to taking a moderator decision regarding them. The data is all there, in the spreadsheet, signed and stamped...

Just in case, I didn't vote for anyone and have no spite against any of the candidates, lol

Cattle is busy telling others how much grassland they'd buy if they had 1/5/10/X BTC.

I'd argue that someone who can not remain objective despite of those *proponents/opponents* should not be a global moderator in the first place.

Yes it does. It seems that nobody was around at that time to add it to the sheet.

Let's not be hypocrites

We all know that this is not the case. If it were so, there wouldn't be this whole shebang with electing a new global moderator in the first place. It is perfectly clear that these elections are intended to give more weight to whoever gets elected in the eyes of theymos. Apart from that, it is normal and human to like somebody more than somebody else, for whatever reason. Otherwise, there shouldn't be a point in the forum rules saying that moderators are allowed to interpret these very rules as they feel appropriate

Because then theymos has to pay more. It could entirely be about costs and whether the forum pulls in enough ad revenue to continue to pay those moderators at the rates that they have been paid.

I was following the practice of Felon Disenfranchisement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement) where convicted felons (i.e. scammers/those who have an overall negative trust score) are not allowed to vote. Given that this election is mostly based on the Australian election system, it also follows their use of felon disenfranchisement.

Electioneering is not just that. Electioneering also includes actively influencing others to vote for a specific candidate, which is what we are primarily trying to avoid. The goal of the No Electioneering Rule is to avoid people saying "You should go vote for X".

That is true and unfortunately a result of having to make this election publicly verifiable. Even so, the goal of using IRV is to allow people to vote for whoever they want and still have their vote matter. It would have been better to use full preferential voting but I was feeling lazy.

It's not public information, but mod payments are based on some activity which is unknown even to mods, and possibly based on ad revenue. How they are related, I don't know (if ad revenue is low this month, does that mean mod payments are low this month too? For the same amount of work, do mods get paid less?)

Based on what is known, mods get paid if they do something. Mods who are absent or on vacation, don't get paid.

What will happen between global mods is that the activity that could have been done by one, can be done by the other, and they get the corresponding points or activity, which determines their payment. The more active global mod gets paid more.

If we suddenly have more than one global mod, the "shares" of their payment will get assigned proportional to the amount of work they do. If two global mods are promoted, and one acts as if he did not get promoted (remains in his original or local mod section), then he gets paid as if he did not get promoted.

Previously, (some months ago, maybe a couple years ago), mods were not paid. There is no promise to continue payment, nor to increase, nor to decrease, we don't even know what metrics are used to determine payments. It wouldn't be a good idea to stop or lessen payments now though.

Comparing to other industries, mods are paid "straight commission". There is no "minimum wage". And for most mods, depending on what country they live in, they don't even get minimum wage for being a mod.

Thanks for shedding some light on how the staff payment system works around here. I would like to ask what do you mean by 'shares' of work for each mod? Does this include like the number of posts they do in a month, the number of bans they have issued, the number of reports they have processed etc.? And I have noticed some mods are super active so I gather they are getting paid more for the extra posts or? So all in all mods that are from countries with lower living standards would spend more time in here because the payments they are getting would make a bigger financial difference in their lives. Makes sense now.

AFAIK mods are not paid for posts, but for handled reports. I think its also likely that some mods get paid for other duties as well, but I would be very surprised if they get paid for posts.

The only mods being paid for posts are the ones participating in signature campaigns. :) (Like everyone else.)

The "shares" is just a term I used to describe the proportion of work among all the mods that can work on a section, or globally. If there are two global mods, if they do equal amount of work, then they get 50% each of what should be paid to both of them. If one does more work (like one handles more reports than the other), it takes away from the pool of work since once a report is handled, it normally does not get handled by anyone else.

I don't know what metrics theymos uses, and I'm quite sure none of the other mods also know, not exactly. Yes, it has something to do with activities other than posts, but it's all a guess.

As for mods from 3rd world countries, well, I'm supposedly from one of them ... don't get paid much because my local section is pretty well behaved, some spammers, some newbies. But most behave because 1) local posts are sometimes not paid, 2) they don't want their accounts banned, because 3) they get paid in bitcoin and can sometimes earn more than government mandated minimum wage once the BTC is cashed out in an exchange.

(all the signature guys in my local section get paid more than their mod.)

I don't know how to "be more active" in my section since there's not much to do as long as forum members follow rules. They can discuss almost any topic they want. Redundant posts or threads go to the trashcan. Newbie spammers get nuked. Some posts get edited to remove ref links, or the whole thread is deleted. And when I get a report in the middle of the night, sometimes a global mod has checked it out before I get to it.

Modding, at least for me, does not pay my rent or any bills. Maybe I can buy an SSD or a water filter; memory cards, boots, a camera. (OT: I buy them through purse from amazon paid in bitcoin.)

thanks Dabs for the informations being here from a while and i do not have a clue about this :)
and by the way it is nice to see a mod talking a little from time to time ;)
for the negative trust i think some members deserve to vote after all, for example ognasty/luptin before few weeks... maybe case by case
for sure eliminating them all together from the vote will simply make thing easier and less controversial
+- after all

There are currently 4 exhausted ballots that had all 3 preferences (and presumably would have had more if they were allowed to), and only 3 votes separating the top two candidates. No offence, but your laziness is likely to call the outcome into question. :-\

And the winner is Mitchell with 51 votes with Lauda close behind with 48.

We will likely recommend both to theymos for a potential new global moderator (or two).

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No offence taken. The results of this are already questionable.

What were the raw counts? I'm 3rd or 4th from last? What's the popular vote?, and anyone else who isn't lazy to calculate for any other voting system?

The only convicts here are those who have served at least one ban.  :)



When is Theymos likely to take a call? Two additional global moderators might result in a vast improvement over the current scenario.

All votes and results are recorded at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bOitaEjce12xUzddwAwtwXGn9pH7FOpyPKl5Cbeo6ww

Lauda got a couple of extra votes in the final day, but in the end it just wasn't enough. Congratulations to Mitchell.

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Here's how the result would have turned out under some other voting systems:
Lauda would have won under this system, though the rankings of the other candidates would remain unchanged.

Mitchell still wins by a narrow margin, but with no eliminations, achow101 takes 3rd place. With #1 votes not as helpful under this system, and not having much else to go on, HostFat drops down to 5th place. Last, and in fact least, there is no longer a tie for last place. Xandry loses having received only a single #3 vote.

Mitchell is the only candidate to reach the requisite 59 votes and is the clear winner. As with the Borda system, achow101 is in 3rd and HostFat is in 5th, with #2 votes being more decisive. Again, xandry is in last place, with the single #3 vote not counting at all.

It's worth noting that this election was close enough that under systems where ballot exhaustion is a possibility (instant run-off and Bucklin), the exhausted ballots could have decided the outcome had they counted. Most of them were cases of people not putting a #2 or #3 preference. The outcome might have been different had people known how to vote properly. ::)

(Some percentages may not add to exactly 100.0% due to rounding errors.)

That is a great analysis Foxpup, thanks for doing it!

 That is an amazing analysis.  Did you type that all by hand or did you write some code to push it out?

Everything from counting the votes to formatting the charts was all by hand, with some help from a calculator and two cans of Red Bull. That's why it took so long to push out. If we're ever going to do something like this again, I really ought to write some code to automate this work; a hundred ballots is about the limit of what I can manage in a reasonable time frame.

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Bonus half-arsed analysis: Since two moderators might be promoted, I should note that under a two-winner single transferable vote (the multiple-winner version of instant run-off voting), Lauda and Mitchell would both win, regardless of what rules are used (if the Droop quota (33.3̅%+1) is used, they both win in round 3 above with 0.6̅ surplus votes each* (an exact tie), while if the Hare quota (50%) is used, Mitchell achieves quota in round 5, and Lauda wins by default being the only remaining candidate for Mitchell's 1.5 surplus votes to transfer to).

*These 1.3̅ votes would be subdivided further between the remaining candidates (HostFat and Dabs) based on the averaged preferences of all the votes for the winners, which means counting them all over again, which I'm not going to do because 1.3̅ votes isn't quite enough to bump Dabs into 3rd place, no matter which way they go.

Excellent analysis Foxpup; thank you for doing that.

I may be inclined to run another random election just to get some more of these stats. Maybe Miss Bitcointalk 2016? :D

Foxpup, those charts are amazing. Thanks for doing them!

Oh, no, please not again!


Are you going to participate?

I think such a contest might attract by far more voters than the recent "elections", provided the contestants would be able to prove their identities first. Somehow, I won't be quite happy to see among the winners of this beauty contest some 50-year-old bald-headed crook with a pot belly and a set of false teeth

Well, I was out for days and seeing the results just sounds fair to me, tnx to that expert above who spend some time in taking and analyzing everything out. Now it would go up to theymos by now i supposed? Much likely how the candidates want's the forum to be better again not just in terms of banning but also helping others

cheers,

More analysis! It's head-to-head time as we pit each candidate against each other candidate in a one-on-one contest for majority. For each match-up, only ballots which voted for one or both of the candidates are counted (ballots which voted for both count for whichever candidate was ranked higher). Here are the results:


As Mitchell has a majority over every other candidate, he is the Condorcet winner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_criterion). Conversely, xandry is the Condorcet loser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_loser_criterion), being defeated by every other candidate. (Note that an election will not necessarily have a Condorcet winner and loser.)

This system always elects the Condorcet winner when one exists, so naturally Mitchell comes out on top. As with the other systems where #1 votes aren't as important, achow101 reaches 3rd place and HostFat drops to 5th. Notably, the result is perfectly linear, as each candidate loses to every higher-placed candidate and defeats every lower-placed candidate, ie, there are no non-transitive preferences.

My head is spinning with all this analysis.
We should have an electoral college for this election.  :P
Let the contestants win local boards and then we will have a face off.

Well, it's been over a month since the so-called elections ended... So what's the final outcome of all that? Did anyone get promoted to a Global Moderator office? What was theymos' decision on the candidacy of the winner? It was Mitchell (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=113670) if I'm not mistaken, but he is still only Staff (I just checked). And while we are at it, what's become of the Banned rank suggestion discussed earlier?

I haven't been closely following Meta recently, so please bear with me

Unfortunately nothing has been done. I have PM'ed theymos and attempted to get his attention about this but so far he has not responded.

nor he will..
I don't think theymos will show any interest on these play of kids type activities which you guys are doing.. everything here is nothing but just a none sense game. this is not a way to select a global mod.

What is the right way then ? Please enlighten us Bitcointalk Jesus.

That should have been expected

Personally, I don't care so much about who will get promoted to a Global Moderator position (at least as long as they don't interfere with normal posters) as about the idea of the Banned rank, which has been seemingly abandoned by now. Implementing that would render very bad service to the forum, and it's a pity that those supporting this idea don't fully understand the consequences


How former and present Global Moderators were selected?

A democracy in a private property of someone else  ;)
Well wonder know how theymos thinks about this and if he thinks that the forums needs a new global mod or not for the moment.
The experience was great and I personally liked it.

You liked the experience of voting for something in which the vote was literally not listened to ???

Democracy doesn't work. Neither here, nor anywhere else

And you were given another chance to see this yourself. Maybe, theymos himself was going to select Lauda for a Global Moderator position, but now he can't do that because it would mean going against the crowd opinion (well, the choice of majority), and he may not want that. Maybe, he wanted to pick up Mitchell as a new Global Moderator after all, but now he won't do that since it would mean indulging the crowd, and he might be strongly opposed to that. Aren't we supposed to be this way overall? Consequently, these elections have likely left him no other option but to completely ignore their results, which is perfectly understandable and expected

Yes I liked it, it was exciting after all.
What this election missed is the prior agreement of theymos. If it was obtained the result would be listened to for sure.
For the moment, nothing is clear and no one knows what is the next step of theymos.
We will see anyway.

I already said this sentence to resume the whole situation :)

The experience is not just about voting. The experience is about learning how others vote as well.
That too me was very interesting