[Unofficial] New Global Moderator Election - [Discussion]

[shorena]

-snip-
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Mitchell]

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.

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.

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.

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).


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.

[Dabs]

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.

[Lauda]

Taking a cue from a recent real life election:

Let's Make Bitcointalk Great Again ? No Spammers.

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

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 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?

[Dabs]

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.

[Lauda]

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.

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

Trump did say America, not "our country". I think. Oh wait, he did say our country at first, but then it mutated into America.
-snip-
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.)

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

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

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

[hilariousandco]

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.

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.

Lastly, I do not see a reason for another Global mod.

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).

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.

Votes should be objective, ergo you should not vote for someone due to bias.

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.

Mprep will probably get votes from altcoiners since he moderates the altcoin section and thus altcoiners interact with him more.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Lauda]

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).

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

What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to others (or it may have been marked as 'bad').

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.

Every board should have one or two non-Globals attached and this will solve that issue of any reports not getting handled.

That is actually a good idea that should be discussed.

In an ideal world they should be subjective but we don't live in an ideal world.

Don't you mean objective?

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.

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

I'm sure there's others who would have also liked to be included.

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

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.

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.

[deisik]

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

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

I don't particularly care as long as persecutions and subsequent bans are not going to be made in public.

I don't think they ever will

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

[Foxpup]

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.

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 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:



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.

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 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.

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

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.

[Dabs]

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?

Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.
Patrol
Watchlist

[Lutpin]

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

Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.
Patrol
Watchlist

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

Show patrol link: Shows a link to the patrol page under "watchlist"

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

[Chris!]

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.


Thanks for the clarification.

[Lauda]

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.

Rules:

• You may only vote once. If your post with your vote is edited, your vote will be removed and any subsequent votes by you will be disregarded,
• If you attempt to vote more than once (i.e. post more than one time) your votes will be removed and disregarded,

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.

[achow101]

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.

Completely invalid except for the Hostfat exception.


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.

[xhomerx10]

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 you do not have multiple votes, your vote will not be counted. This does not apply retroactively.

 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?

[achow101]

If we have already cast only one vote, will we be allowed to modify it?  If so, how long do we have?

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.

How many rule modifications/additions should we expect before the 26th ov November?

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.

[xhomerx10]

If we have already cast only one vote, will we be allowed to modify it?  If so, how long do we have?

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.

How many rule modifications/additions should we expect before the 26th ov November?

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.

[Foxpup]

Two candidate preferred vote:
|
   Lauda (47.2%) ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓█▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ (52.8%) Mitchell
|
Lauda: 42
Mitchell: 47
Exhausted: 18

Swing-o-meter:
|
   Lauda (+1.7%) ░░░░░░░░░░░░████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ (-1.7%) Mitchell
|

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.

If you do not have multiple votes, your vote will not be counted.

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

I've underestimated the stupidity and lack of reading of the people on this forum.

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

[john2231]

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..