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not the result I expected
As many of you know, I'm a moderator on two Stack Exchange sites, Mi Yodeya (where I was elected) and Writers (where I have a temporary appointment, until the site graduates out of beta). Stack Exchange has more than a hundred sites and I participate on some other ones to varying degrees. One where I've answered a lot of questions is The Workplace, which, as the name implies, is for questions and answers about things that come up in working life -- management, working with remote employees, job-hunting, work environment, recruiting, work-life balance, and so on. The Workplace graduated from beta several weeks ago.
Graduation means electing moderators, and people started lobbying me to run. I wasn't going to; I can do a lot of good for the site as a high-reputation regular user and, while I'm willing, I wasn't itching to pick up a third moderatorship. Eventually I consented to run (and you can see my answers to the questions from the community here). As one of six candidates for three positions (and there were no bad candidates on the list), I figured I'd probably come out in the middle of the pack somewhere (3rd means elected, 4th means not). After all, there were other candidates who wanted the job and are capable.
You can see where this is going, of course.
But, seriously, roughly a third of the first-place votes in a single-transferable-vote (Australian ballot, preference ballot) scheme? (See the results.) For context, jmort235 (the next-highest first-round vote-getter) was a beta moderator widely considered to be doing a good job; I assumed he would be the top vote-getter by rather a lot. And I don't think it's that people were gaming the ballot;1 it doesn't seem like that kind of community.
I haven't downloaded the ballot data to see what else was going on in there; I've only looked at the summary charts (and corresponding output from the tally software). It looks like for most ballots only the first-place votes mattered, so I'd have to look at the raw data to see how I compared to others on second- and third-choice votes. I might at some point but it's not a high priority for me. (On the other hand, if I could slurp all the data into CoMotion... but I can't.)
*Blink*
1 In a preference ballot you do a round of voting and if you don't have a winner, you drop out the lowest-voted candidate and redistribute those votes. (In this particular flavor you also redistribute "excess" votes for winners.) Since it's "safe" to assume that jmort235 will get a seat, people might deliberately vote for other people first and give him their third vote (everybody gets three choices, ordered). That can backfire, of course, so if you're that kind of voter you need to make sure you're not hurting your candidate.
Graduation means electing moderators, and people started lobbying me to run. I wasn't going to; I can do a lot of good for the site as a high-reputation regular user and, while I'm willing, I wasn't itching to pick up a third moderatorship. Eventually I consented to run (and you can see my answers to the questions from the community here). As one of six candidates for three positions (and there were no bad candidates on the list), I figured I'd probably come out in the middle of the pack somewhere (3rd means elected, 4th means not). After all, there were other candidates who wanted the job and are capable.
You can see where this is going, of course.
But, seriously, roughly a third of the first-place votes in a single-transferable-vote (Australian ballot, preference ballot) scheme? (See the results.) For context, jmort235 (the next-highest first-round vote-getter) was a beta moderator widely considered to be doing a good job; I assumed he would be the top vote-getter by rather a lot. And I don't think it's that people were gaming the ballot;1 it doesn't seem like that kind of community.
I haven't downloaded the ballot data to see what else was going on in there; I've only looked at the summary charts (and corresponding output from the tally software). It looks like for most ballots only the first-place votes mattered, so I'd have to look at the raw data to see how I compared to others on second- and third-choice votes. I might at some point but it's not a high priority for me. (On the other hand, if I could slurp all the data into CoMotion... but I can't.)
*Blink*
1 In a preference ballot you do a round of voting and if you don't have a winner, you drop out the lowest-voted candidate and redistribute those votes. (In this particular flavor you also redistribute "excess" votes for winners.) Since it's "safe" to assume that jmort235 will get a seat, people might deliberately vote for other people first and give him their third vote (everybody gets three choices, ordered). That can backfire, of course, so if you're that kind of voter you need to make sure you're not hurting your candidate.