Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2023-02/Vote creation eligibility

Voting on renaming the section on Wiktionary:Voting policy called "Voting eligibility" to "Eligibility" and amending the content below from:

For a Wiktionary user to be eligible for voting, the following requirements must be satisfied:

1. Their account’s first edit to English Wiktionary (made locally rather than transwikied from another project) must predate the start time of the vote by at least 1 week.
2. Their account must have at least 50 edits in total to the main, Citations, Appendix, Rhymes, Thesaurus, Reconstruction, or Concordance namespaces on English Wiktionary by the start time of the vote.
3. Only one vote can be made per person. Sockpuppet voting results in a block on all related accounts.

to the following:

For a Wiktionary user to be eligible to create or vote on a vote, the following requirements must be satisfied:

1. Their account must not be subject to a permablock, nor a sockpuppet of a permablocked account.
2. Their account's first edit to English Wiktionary (made locally rather than transwikied from another project) must predate the creation timestamp when creating a vote, or the start time when casting a vote, by at least 1 week.
3. Their account must have at least 50 edits in total to the main, Citations, Appendix, Rhymes, Thesaurus, Reconstruction, or Concordance namespaces on English Wiktionary by the creation timestamp when creating a vote or the start time when casting a vote.
4. When voting, only one vote can be made per person. Sockpuppet voting results in a block on all related accounts.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
• Vote created: {{victar|talk}} 05:44, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Votes/2010-04/Voting_policy

1. Support WF is not the only blocked user who'd be targeted by this, but most importantly I must ask why this community is so protective of a permabanned user that keeps creating new accounts? What image does this give? Why are we allowing a permabanned user to keep nominating the admin for this community? If it were anyone but WF, the votes would be deleted on the spot. We need to either decide to not unban WF or actually enforce the bans that we have in place and stop these votes from proceeding. I remember there was a time where WF votes would be autodeleted, but apparently we've decided to keep proceeding with them. It is a problem that needs a solution. And for the record, I was also tapped by WF but rejected the nomination, and I would hope for the future that folks nominated by WF would reject it as well. For me it's just not a good look to be nominated by a banned user. AG202 (talk) 13:34, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   For me, if WF's ban is being enforced then he shouldn't be editing anything. If it's not being enforced then I don't see why he should be prevented from creating votes. Either way there doesn't seem to be any reason to implement a specific policy for creating votes. WF seems in practice to be handled as a special case and it's dubious IMO to create general policies just to handle special cases. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:52, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   They are not the only user that’s been blocked that’s tried to create a vote or vote in a vote. I remember there was an issue of a user that was blocked in one namespace voting in another. Also, honestly, I don’t know why there’s such strong opposition to this. Even if it’s just for WF, is it really that controversial to have an explicit policy that states that blocked users can’t vote or create a vote, to the point that folks are opposing and not abstaining? It’s putting what should be practice into explicit text and should have been here from the beginning. As a side note, I also don’t think it’s fair to the nominees, especially those who are newer, to be thrown into the gauntlet of adminship votes when they’re not ready, and WF has nominated folks as almost a joke before, so it really needs to stop. AG202 (talk) 14:59, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   If there were a sentence somewhere in our policies that read "All votes which pass are valid", then I would drop my opposition. I don't want to create an excuse for someone to try and retroactively challenge a passed vote. Megathonic (talk) 15:16, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   Sounds fine with me, pinging @Victar. AG202 (talk) 18:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   I wouldn't support any language that encourages permablocked users to attempt to evade their block. -- {{victar|talk}} 21:02, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   This is the problem I see with the current wording though. If you're saying that if someone—after the vote is closed—discovers the vote creator was ineligible and thus should have grounds to invalidate said vote on the basis of it having taken place outside of the official rules, that opens up far more headaches. Would we desysop someone and force them to go through another vote? Do we purge a perfectly good, agreed-upon policy and wait a month until a new vote is finished before we can re-implement it? It should be obvious how absurd that would be. Megathonic (talk) 21:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   Nothing is really changing in terms of permablocked users -- any vote created by a permablocked user is already a block evade, and thus against the rules. This is just making that rule explicitly stated on the policy page. -- {{victar|talk}} 07:46, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Al-Muqanna "At the very least, this will be something that people can point to directly, and as such, people who aren't admin will be able to respond and delete votes on their own with an official written policy to back them up." Brought from the talk page, but this is an additional benefit of having this be explicitly written out. AG202 (talk) 20:11, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

2. Support It's not fair on nominated editors to reject votes to give them admin (or bureaucrat or similar) status solely on the grounds that the nominator is banned. On the other hand why should banned users be able to create votes? It makes no sense to even say that they are banned if they can. Explicitly banning them from creating votes and immediately striking out any votes that they do create is clearly the best solution. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
3. Support The bar to vote shouldn't be higher than the bar to create a vote. -- {{victar|talk}} 19:10, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
4. Support Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 22:16, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
5. Support Hythonia (talk) 15:39, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
6. Support Roger.M.Williams (talk) 10:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
7. Support — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 21:45, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
8. Support Might as well get in down explicitly and I hope this discourages the allowance of further created votes and votes cast by permabanned users which I have always disliked because permabans should be realized as actual permanent bans. — This unsigned comment was added by The Editor's Apprentice (talk • contribs) at 22:58, February 25, 2022 (UTC).

   # Support Anything to put restrictions on Wonderfool's editing is a good thing for their mental health OpenForceage (talk) 10:22, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

   To those who do not know, OpenForceage is Wonderfool. J3133 (talk) 10:26, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

   Sorry, I couldn't resist voting. OpenForceage (talk) 11:31, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

1. Oppose This vote appears to be driven by disapproval of the fact that WF nominated them, or others, for adminship. I don't see a problem here. We are not seeing inappropriate candidates becoming admins as a result of this activity by WF. The votes are appropriately being supported or opposed on their merits. And candidates should have the good sense to decline the nomination if they know they are unlikely to succeed (as indeed I did once). The vote page can be deleted, no harm done. In any case, I don't view WF's admin nominations as a problem, no-one has pointed out any other ongoing issues that might necessitate this policy changem, and no solution is required in the absence of a problem. So I see no reason to support the vote. This, that and the other (talk) 10:40, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   @This, that and the other: "No harm done" is not true. WF was permabanned for a reason: because they're reckless and enjoy trolling. I won't mention usernames, but they also have a habit of prematurely nominating users, which then fail and cause to discourage the user. They've also gone as far as to create bad-faith nominations in order to troll them. Nominating a user is meant to be a mentorship role, but WF is not the mentor you would want for someone. -- {{victar|talk}} 19:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

2. Oppose per This, that and the other. I don't see any particular problem stemming from an ability to propose votes beyond possibly wasting people's time, but I do feel anyway that admin nominations should be judged on the strength of the nominee, not the nominator. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Al-Muqanna: WF seems to have no problem doing so on user's talk pages. They're recommendations can end there for someone else to take up the mantle of creating a vote. -- {{victar|talk}} 19:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

3. Oppose Votes created by permabanned users can already be immediately deleted without any further ado, just like any other edit a banned user makes. A policy change is not needed for this. However, all votes which pass must be considered valid, even if they were improperly created. This policy change should state so, otherwise it could create an argument for people to contest the validity of passed votes which were proposed by a banned user. Megathonic (talk) 14:36, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Megathonic: You're absolutely right, but this vote actually gives someone the teeth without room for complaint. -- {{victar|talk}} 19:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

4. Oppose – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 15:28, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
5. Oppose: creating votes and actually voting are clearly different - if the creator does not vote then technically they have no contribution to the vote's passing. All the Wonderfool admin nominations have passed and failed only based on the community's votes and they are pretty legitimate. Consider another scenario, if a user from a sister project, say another language Wiktionary, or Wikipedia, etc. etc. creates a vote for some change (e.g. language related, or relating to technical matters, etc.), it should definitely not be inherently invalid even if they don't meet the minimum requirements for casting a vote. Oh, and I thought permabanned users were not supposed to edit at all, right? I seriously doubt that this vote will have any effect on WF nominations. Svartava (talk) 05:32, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

   Again, you are correct -- permablocked users are already forbidden from editing en.Wikt. This is just a vote to explicitly mention that on the voting policy page. If you like Wonderfool as a contributor, you should create a vote for him to be reinstated, not against making already existing rules more clear.

   And to your second point, having the bar to create votes lower than it is to vote on a vote makes bunk sense, and I certainly wouldn't want some Wikipedian creating votes with no edits to en.Wikt. --{{victar|talk}} 07:52, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Svartava ""At the very least, this will be something that people can point to directly, and as such, people who aren't admin will be able to respond and delete votes on their own with an official written policy to back them up." That is what I expect out of this. AG202 (talk) 14:55, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

6. Oppose. Everyone can vote. Gnosandes ❀ (talk) 02:37, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Gnosandes are you aware that, as things currently stand, not everyone can vote? For instance, in order to vote, one must have at least 50 edits total to certain namespaces in a certain time period, as set out in the existing policy text at WT:VP. This, that and the other (talk) 06:08, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   @This, that and the other: Yes, and that's why everyone can vote. Gnosandes ❀ (talk) 10:06, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   I don't get it, but okay. This, that and the other (talk) 11:25, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Gnosandes: This vote doesn't change voting rules, only vote creation rules. See Wiktionary:Voting policy#Voting eligibility for the current voting rules. --{{victar|talk}} 20:01, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

7. Oppose, because of the anti-WF provision, so to speak. It is true that WF has a history of facetious nominations, but it is also true that he has nominated several excellent staff members. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

   @Lingo Bingo Dingo: WF creating votes is already a block-evade, regardless of this vote, and thus grounds for immediate deletion. But as I wrote above, if you support his contributions, you should petition for his permablock to be lifted, not condone block-evades. --{{victar|talk}} 06:41, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

   In practice, it is already lifted as he continues regular editing. If he is allowed to edit, then how is he permablocked?! --Svartava (talk) 02:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

8. Oppose I assume the rationale behind this is to reduce the amount of so-called "bad" votes. The "quality of votes", so to speak, is not a matter of who proposed the vote, but rather the content of the vote itself. I don't think there is a need to disallow certain users from creating votes, it only becomes an issue when the votes are spammy/non-constructive and the problems becomes so egrenious that the admins have to step in and nuke them. In fact well-established users could also create pointless vote, while disruptive users can also be constructive. – Wpi31 (talk) 16:16, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
9. Oppose Banned users are banned from voting, no specification needed, but this vote leaves open the consequence of a vote created by a banned user passing. If the rationale is indirectly targeted and some kind of steering effect as reducing the amount of bad votes is aimed at then this vote is also bad; what Equinox says on the vote talk page “it is potentially a bad thing to state an implied rule explicitly.” This vote is only there to be interpreted in a way I am supposed to be unable to predict so I am against it. Probably only means “Victar is vexed by Wonderfool voting so he needs an explicit text he can point at to demand deletion from admins” though. Fay Freak (talk) 12:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

   I'm not vexed -- I'm just pro-rule enforcement. {{victar|talk}} 20:40, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

10. Oppose I am part of the pro-WF cabal. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 19:57, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

    @AryamanA: then create a vote to reinstate him. {{victar|talk}} 20:38, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

    @Victar: No fun in that! —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 03:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

1. Abstain As worded, the proposal would also prevent unregistered users from creating votes. 70.172.194.25 08:35, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   This is arguably already the case, just as you're prohibited from voting. --{{victar|talk}} 19:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   I don’t see how it’s explicitly prohibited currently. The policy doesn’t say anything about who can create votes. It’s possible to create a vote but not participate in it.

   This is pretty much just a theoretical point, as I’ve never had a need to create a vote and I don’t think many other IP editors would need to either. Just felt like pointing it out. 70.172.194.25 20:03, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   Maybe IPs should unionize. – Jberkel 20:28, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   We should have a "comments" section on votes. Then people could comment without putting it in the abstain section, which is technically voting. Megathonic (talk) 20:11, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

   Sure. Or feel free to move all of this to the talk page. 70.172.194.25 20:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

2. Abstain. Oh my god, who the hell cares? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Failed 8-10-1. Vininn126 (talk) 00:00, 19 March 2023 (UTC)