Wikisource talk:New vote on language subdomains

En: At this point, I would like to gather ideas, on how the vote should be organized. This vote will be considered as valid by the Wikimedia board only if a significant part of Wikisource users take part to it. Therefore I would like to obtain the largest possible agreement on how the vote should be organized. This is in accordance with the decision by the Wikimedia board that language domains may proceed here at Wikisource when there is enough support for them.

Es: Por el momento, preferiría recoger ideas sobre cómo debería hacerse la votación. Esta votación se considerará válida por la junta de Wikimedia sólo si una parte significativa de los usuarios de Wikisource toma parte en ella; por eso, preferiría conseguir el máximo acuerdo posible sobre cómo debería organizarse la votación. Esto está de acuerdo con la decisión de la junta de Wikimedia de que los dominios por lenguas podrían crearse aquí en Wikisource cuando hubiera un apoyo suficiente para ellos.

Fr: Pour le moment, je voudrais recueillir des idées sur la façon dont le vote devrait être organisé. Ce vote sera considéré comme valide par le conseil de Wikimedia seulement si une partie significative des utilisateurs de Wikisource y participent. Par conséquent je voudrais obtenir l'accord le plus large possible sur la manière dont le vote devra se dérouler. Ceci est conforme à la décision prise par le conseil de "Wikimedia foundation" d'autoriser un domaine linguistique dès que celui-ci aura obtenu assez de soutiens.

It: per il momento vorrei raccogliere idee sull'organizzazione del voto. Questa votazione verrà considerata valida dal consiglio della Wikimedia Foundation solo se un significativo numero di wikisourceani vi prenderanno parte. Perciò voglio ottenere il massimo accordo possibile sulle modalità di organizzazione del voto. Questo è in accordo con la decisione del consiglio di Wikimedia secondo cui i domini per lingua su Wikisource arriveranno quando ci sarà sufficiente supporto per essi.

On what should we vote? - ¿Sobre qué debemos votar? - Sur quoi votons-nous? - Su che cosa dovremmo votare?

One crucial point is which question will be put to vote. Sould there be one single question for everybody, e.g. "Do you support/oppose subdomains?" or should there be one question per subdomain, e.g. "Do you oppose to the creation of xx.wikisource.org". It seems to me that the outcome could be different, depending on which question is asked.--ThomasV 22:06, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I propose the following: There will be one single question put to vote, "Do you oppose/support the creation of the following subdomains?", followed by a list of requested subdomains. Each subdomain request will have to contain a list of people requesting it and a candidate bureaucrat. All these people must be allowed to vote. Please comment. ThomasV 00:21, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The general philosophical question about having any subdomains is a different one from the question of any specific subdomain. The general question should probably be settled separately and before individual languages are considered. If that vote receives a positive result the issue relating to the most active languages may be a mere formality after that. An important issue for individual languages is the extent that someone will be available to police copyright. The naming of bureaucrats is an incidental issue, and may often depend on who wants to do the work. Eclecticology 03:01, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. However, there is a danger that the general "philosophical" question could be misunderstood. If the question is "do you support the creation of subdomains?", some people might believe that a "yes" would automatically entail the creation of a subdomain in their own language. For example, consider the case of somebody who is not interestred in having his own language in a different subdomain (for example because he does not feel confident enough about managing it), but who would not oppose the creation of subdomains in other languages. This person could answer "no" to the general question, but at the same time would not oppose to the creation of say, he.wikisource.org. Remember that he.wikisource.org was created because nobody was opposed to it. --ThomasV 07:07, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

One thing that I've noted about wiki votes is that the subject matter can easily get out of control, or that people will start wanting last minute changes, like introducing a new logo idea just when it was looking like that issue was going to be settled. How a question is phrased and the stability of the question is important. The other side of your argument is what to do about those people who would say yes to all specific language subdomains whether they intend to participate in it or not. I don't think that the Hebrew Wikisource experience is a useful precedent any more than the experience with the Toki Puna and Klingon Wikipedias. These all date from a time before procedures were established. The general subdomain question is one of permissions; it does not carry any obligation that any will or must be created. It operates even less to require any individual to do any job. Perhaps these factors need to be made more clear in the question.

If the vote passes allowing specific language sub-domains should then be a matter of meeting established criteria rather than any further vote. These criteria will mostly be very easy for major languages, and primarily focus on the project's viability. Eclecticology 09:21, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am a bit disappointed that nobody else contributed comments to this. For me it is a matter of primary importance. So, let me state again what the issue is. It looks more convenient to have one single "philosophical" question, rather than one vote per subdomain. However there are issues with this. Suppose we have one single question, e.g. "subdomains, yes or no?", and that the outcome of the vote is yes. After the vote, a person who requested a domain in his own language might have done that against the will of his language community. In this case, it common sense suggests that the subdomain should not be granted, for a majority of the people contributing to this language are opposed to it...

In order to solve that, should a new vote be organised for each language? if we do so, then it is more practical to organize all votes right now; otherwise we will waste time...

if we organize one vote per domain, then a new issue is that somebody opposed to subdomains would probably vote "no" to all of them. This means he would vote several times, and sometimes in votes about languages he does not even speak. In order to keep balance, I guess somebody who supports subdomains should similarly be allowed to take part to each vote, regardless of his linguistic competence. As you can see, such a vote will furiously ressemble a "one single question" vote. Alternatively, we could somehow prevent people from taking part to votes concerning languages they do not contribute to, which would certainly generate endless disputes concerning the linguistic abilities of voters...

I hope I made the issue clear...

In order to sort this out, I believe there should be one single question, eg "do you support/oppose subdomains". If the outcome is yes, allowing subdomains should be a matter of meeting established criteria, as Ec put it above. We should discuss these criteria here.

But I want to make it clear that in this option, voters must accept to let people who do not necessarily speak their language decide on something about their own language community. This is like giving up a right; however this is balanced by the fact that this "giving up" is reciproqual.

ThomasV 16:28, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Minimum number of voters required - Mínimo de votos necesarios - Voti minimi necessari

• I guess the vote should not be considered valid if less than 20 people participate. --ThomasV 08:50, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• cela semble un bon minimun. Caton 09:00, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• to answer the question that was in the scriptorium (LadyInGrey), I did mean 20 voters at all, not 20 per language. However, we should keep in mind that it does not belong to us to decide whether the vote is valid or not. The final decision will depend on the Wikimedia board. So maybe we should not care about this condition. I propose to drop it. Comments?--ThomasV 20:47, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • The point about having a minimum number of votes is to show that there is enough interest in the issue. Eclecticology 03:07, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Who should be allowed to vote? - ¿Quiénes podrán votar?

• No anons/pas d'anonyme / niente anonimi
• Posséder un compte avant le début du vote / è necessario essere iscritti prima dell'inizio delle votazioni
• I would say voters should have a minimum of 50 edits. The purpose of this is to avoid sockpuppets, not to give an exclusive right to heavy users. --ThomasV 08:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

100 me semblait quand même assez peu ; il s'agit surtout que les votants soient un minimum impliqués. Caton 09:00, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ok mais voir plus bas (pondération)

Je préfère le niveau plus élevé. Pour nous qui ont déjà contribué nous savons que 100 contributions n'est pas grande chose. Avec pondération le minimum pourrait être moins. Il y a d'autre possibilité tel que considérer si les contributions sont récentes ou considérer les contributions aux articles comme ayant plus de valeur que les contributions aux wiki-politiques, mais il me semble que l'administration de ces idées serait trop difficile. Eclecticology 06:59, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Should heavy users have more weight in the vote ? ¿Debe el voto de los usuarios con más contribuciones contar más?

• I think the vote should somehow be weighted, but the risk is that people with a small number of edits will not be encouraged to participate to the vote in this case. The goal is to have the largest number of participants. Please tell me what you think, esp. if you do not have many edits but still wish to participate. I see 3 possibilities:
  • 1: One user = one vote (provided their number of edits is above the threshold defined above)
  • 2: One user's vote is multiplied by his number of edits. That is, if you have 1254 edits, then your vote counts as 1254 votes.
  • 3: Some intermediate solution, where heavy would have only 2 votes, other users 1 vote. More generally, I mean any solution where heavy users have more weight, but this extra weight is less than proportional to their number of edits. in other words, for those who understand math, the weight would be a sublinear function of the number of edits (it could be a log.) ThomasV 08:36, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

2 et 3 ne semblent pas praticables, car il seraient à mon avis injustes. Un nombre minimum raisonnable paraît mieux. Caton 09:10, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that 2 and 3 are unfair. In particular, the number of edits does not accurately reflect the level of involvement. Some people (like me :-) spend a lot of time f***ing around with author pages, while others (like you) contribute a lot of new texts. Some other users have about 50% of their contributions in the Scriptorium and related pages, and others (I won't reveal their name) mostly contribute spelling errors. So it is definitely unfair to count the number of edits. but the problem is that solution 1 is unfair too, and maybe even more. So I think we should not care whether it is fair or not. The goal is not to organize a fair vote (that's impossible), but to obtain the largest possible agreement before we proceed.--ThomasV 09:19, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and if you divide a bok in chapters you can get 100 editions in only two book without problems. But if you write it together it is only two.

Excuse my English--FAR 10:22, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Je propose alors de faire abstraction du nombre de contributions, et de chercher une formulation négative du type :Ne peuvent prendre part au vote les personnes qui ne possèdent pas de compte à la date d'ouverture du vote et qui n'ont jamais participé à l'édition de textes. Cela permet d'inclure ceux qui n'aurait par exemple que 10 contributions, mais correspondant à 10 textes. En fin de compte, ce qui importe, ce que les votants participent un peu de temps en temps. Cela dit, c'est toujours aussi injuste que le point 1. Caton 11:02, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

C´est meilleure, mais je peux edite 10 livres ou 10 (chapters, je ne sais pas au Française). Excusez ma française, il est moins bon que ma anglaise. Salut--FAR 13:32, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Caton: I agree that it does makes sense to exclude people who never edited texts. I guess having a minimum threshold of 50 edits almost already guarantees that. However, this is off-topic. In this section, the question is not who should be allowed to vote, but whether votes should be weighted. I know that 1,2 and 3 are unfair. I proposed 3 simply because it is an intermediate solution between 2 extremes, but I have no preference. All I want is to avoid the scenario of the previous vote, where the number of edits by voters was taken into account after the vote (in order to counter alledged sockpuppets), which was not planned initially. I want the rule to be fixed and accepted in advance and not to be changed once we see the results. ThomasV 23:20, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

D'accord, en fait je ne pensais que sur la base d'un vote avec 1, et je n'avais pas pensé que 3 pouvait être admis, peut-être par l'habitude des règles de vote de la Wikipédia. Pour l'instant, je ne vois pas comment définir le rapport des votes entre un heavy user et un autre contributeur. On pourrait imaginer qu'une personne, contribuant ailleurs sans contributions (ou très peu) à Wikisource et/ou lecteur sur Wikisource posséderait une voix ; un contributeur occasionnel ou plus ou moins régulier 1,5 ; et un contributeur plus important en quantité 2. Enfin je ne sais pas, 3 me semble intéressant, mais pas évident à établir. Mais tu as peut-être une idée plus précise que moi ? Caton 23:46, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that whether people contribute somewhere else should be taken into consideration here. Although the number of edits by a user is probably a bad measure of his/her level of involvement, it has the merit to be very clearly defined, and everybody will have to agree on it. In contrast, if we decide to look at someone's edits in detail, in order to decide whether they are productive or not, we might start endless disputes. This is why I do not want to use another criterion than the sheer number of edits, if we decide to give more weight to heavy users.

Now, concerning the way this could be made, I do not have a more precise idea. I guess we should wait for more comments on this. The reason why I raised the issue of giving more weights to heavy users is that numbers of edits have been used to evaluate the results of the previous vote. ThomasV 00:14, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Since I brought in the idea of weighted voting previously it is only fitting that I should comment on it here. I do agree that these matters should be worked out before the vote starts, and whatever we do now could also be a model for votes on our most far reaching issues. The first practical question that I encountered about such an idea was ease of application. The voting levels were thus based on the user levels appearing on the user contribution pages, with a person reaching maximum votes with 500 edits. At that point I was allowing a single vote for anyone who chose to vote including IPs, but that was mostly because some had already voted before I introduced the idea. In the present situation, where this is being discussed before the vote I would be inclined to use fewer than the seven voting levels that I used then. With a minimum 100 edit qualifier I would tend toward 3 voting levels; with a minimum 50 edit qualifier I would suggest 4. I did not at the earlier vote, nor do I now suggest that anyone should have an unlimited number of votes.

The point of how the number of edits is reached is an interesting one, but there is no realistic way of reviewing a person's edits to see which are more worthwhile than others. Counting only edits to the main namespace is possible, but I can't be sure that it can be done easily. The "f***ing around with author pages" is a lot of work, and is just as valuable to maintaining the organization of the site as the texts themselves. A person who takes a larger work and divides it into 20 chapters deserves the credit for 20 chapters because of the extra work involved. Making a simple cut and paste from Project Gutenburg into a single article is only worth credit for one article, because of the mindlessness of the technique. Our 4.3 megabyte sample from the Patrologia Latina shows how useless cut and paste can become. Eclecticology 07:54, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

other rules - Otras normas

1. Annonce du vote sur tous les wiki - annuncio del voto su tutte le wiki
2. duration - duración - durée du vote- durata :

   1 or 2 months - ¿1 o 2 meses? - 1 o 2 mesu ?

Ça nous aide pas d'annoncer le ailleurs si le resultat ne serait que d'inviter les votes des gens qui ne s'occupent pas de Wikisource. Nous préférerons la participation de ceux qui supportent l'idée d'un Wikisource, que ça soit dans un domaine ou plusieurs. Eclecticology 08:11, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

On which conditions should a subdomain be created? - ¿Qué condiciones debería cumplir un subdominio para ser creado? - Faut-il des critères pour créer un sous-domaine ?

• • Number of contributors - Número de colaboradores - Nombre de contributeurs ;
  • Number of pages - Número de páginas - Nombre de pages ;
  • at least one bureaucrat (or admin) candidate - al menos un candidato a burócrata (o bibliotecario) - au moins un candidat pour être bureaucrate (ou admin)

Il en faudrait des critères pour la création d'un sous-domaine, dont la présence d'un nombre suffisant de contributeurs actifs serait très important. La disponibilité d'un administrateur (pas obligatoirement un bureaucrat) pret à prendre la responsabilité est aussi important. Il y a sans doutes d'autres. Comme j'ai remarqué ci-dessus la question générale des sous-domaines est beaucoup plus importante que la question d'aucun sous-domaine particulier. Si l'idée générale est acceptée, il est fort probable que la création d'un sous-domaine français ne deviendra qu'une formalité. Ce n'est pas si évident pour toutes les langues. Eclecticology 08:37, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it is important to have active contributors. I think "a sufficient number" could be as low as 1, if this user is really involved. I will not consider requests by people who are not involved in wikisource. maybe the "involvement" criterion should be the same as the one that we use to decide if someone is authorized to vote. --ThomasV 08:44, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If the person is going to be the only one involved in a language thae involvement should probably be more significant than that. Perhaps looking at the combined edits of all those wanting that subdomain may be more important. Can we treat one person with 500 edits as equivalent to 5 persons with 100 edits each? Eclecticology 09:33, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

he.wikisource

Hi folks! As I mentioned to ThomasV, I do not plan to get involved in the current discussion of subdomains. My opinion (support) is already well-known, as are the reasons for it, and the important thing now is for other people to have their own say.

That being said, I do plan to add my vote when the time comes, and certainly would expect that contributions/edits to he.wikisource be counted towards whatever policy is worked out regarding voting. I wish everyone here good luck! Dovi 03:52, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

contributions to he.wikisource.org definitely are contributions to wikisource, and they sould be taken into account. your contributions to the debate are welcome. Please also note that the debate should not take place on this page. ThomasV 14:32, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

the campaign

I think the pages where the first debate took place are quite difficult to read. I guess we should setup a new page. In this page, I would like people to avoid adding their comments in the middle of somebody else's text. This makes reading difficult for newcomers.--ThomasV 14:45, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)