Voting procedures

Hi,

There have been several discussions around voting procedures in W3C, which  
are used to select the TAG and AB. The most recent is a thread in www-tag  
- I think http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2012Dec/0056.html is  
a good starting point.

There are a few common issues:

===Tactical voting vs Desired outcomes
The current system, with multiple votes of equal weight, strongly rewards  
tactical voting for a single candidate (although for example the current  
TAG election is for four, and AB elections are for four or five).

This puts the voters in a dilemma - do they vote tactically to ensure  
their most desired candidate has the best chance, or do they vote  
according to more general preferences and hope they are in line with  
everyone else so the result is reasonable.

A couple of alternatives have been proposed - either using W3C's current  
WBS system (essentially ranking all candidates in preference order, I  
don't know the details of the algorithm used from there), or "a system of  
optional preferential voting" (there are plenty to choose from, each with  
slight differences).

In any event, these are systems sometimes also called Single Transferable  
Vote, familiar to many, but unfamiliar to many North Americans. Luckily,  
with hundreds of years of geeking about this already completed, you an at  
least find out about the different approaches on the Web :)

===Who should vote?
Particularly in the case of the TAG, it has been suggested that the  
Advisory Committee are not the ideal group, and that there should be some  
form of participation by the broader Web Community, or chairs, or groups,  
or some other audience.

===Should we have a vote?
There have been suggestions that these groups should not be elected at  
all, and instead be run more along the lines of ordinary working groups as  
self-selecting communities.

If this group can come to some agreement (I know, let's vote on it ;) ) on  
a suggested way forward - which may include "change nothing" - or even  
provide clearer information about what those here think are the sensible  
and foolish ways forward, I think that would be valuable input to W3C.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2012 11:12:22 UTC