As unwilling commissioner of elections, I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I say,
to hear of improprieties with the voting process.

That said, I'm not shocked (and we've seen it before).

I am absolutely opposed to:

1) Setting weights on voting.  0 is just as valid a vote as 3.
2) Publicly shaming the offenders in Code4Lib.  If you run across
impropriety in a forum, make a friendly, yet firm, reminder that
ballot stuffing is unethical, undemocratic and tears at the fabric
that is Code4Lib.  Sometimes it just takes a simple reminder for
people to realize what they're doing is wrong (it certainly works for
me).
3) Selection committees.  We are, as Dre points out,
anarcho-democratic as our core.  anarcho-bureaucratic just sounds
silly.

This current situation is largely our doing.  We even publicly said
that "getting your proposal voted in is the backdoor into the
conference".  The first allotment of spaces sold out in an hour.  This
is, literally, the only way that a person that was not able to
register and is buried on the wait list is going to get in.  And we've
basically told them that.

One thing I would be open to is to put a disclaimer splash page before
any ballot (only to be seen the first time a person votes) briefly
explaining how the ballot works and to mention that ballot stuffing is
"unethical, undemocratic and tears at the fabric that is Code4Lib" or
some such.  I would welcome contributions to the wording.

What would people think about that?

-Ross.

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Richard, Joel M <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I disagree with this suggestion. Personally I vote for only those I find interesting and useful to me, but I don't put an response for every talk listed. I only respond on those I'm interested. Everyone else gets 0 points. I would expect that others do this, too. Katherine's suggestion also puts an burden on those who are legitimately participating while doing nothing to prevent those who are misbehaving.
>
> I like Edwards's suggestions, which are easy to implement and don't really impact the process that much.
>
> Personally, I believe that the proper response to this is to:
>
> 1. Publicly shame those who are participating in this. :)
> 2. Delete their votes, or at least those you can identify.
> 3. Disqualify the person who is receiving illegitimate votes. See #1.
> 4. Eliminate voting altogether and have a committee of 10-15 people from the community select from the proposed talks. Isn't this what other conferences do?
>
> In the end, the conference organizers can invite whoever they want to speak. The voting ends up being a courtesy to the rest of us.
>
> --Joel
>
> Joel Richard
> Lead Web Developer, Web Services Department
> Smithsonian Institution Libraries | http://www.sil.si.edu/
> (202) 633-1706 | [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Dec 1, 2011, at 8:06 AM, Lynch,Katherine wrote:
>
>> I was actually going to suggest just this, Kåre!  Another way to handle
>> it, or perhaps an additional way, would be give a user's votes a certain
>> amount of weight proportionate to the number of sessions they voted on.
>> So if they evaluated all of them and voted, 100% of their vote gets
>> counted.  If they evaluated half, 50%, and so on?  Not sure if this is
>> worth the effort, but I know it's worked for various camps that I've been
>> to which fall prey to the same problem.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Katherine
>>
>> On 12/1/11 6:55 AM, "Kåre Fiedler Christiansen" <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>>>> Behalf Of Michael B. Klein
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>> In any case, I'm interested to see how effective this current "call
>>>> for
>>>> support" is.
>>>
>>> Me too!
>>>
>>> Could someone with access to the voting data perhaps anonymously pull out
>>> how many voters have given points to only a single talk or two?
>>>
>>> If the problem is indeed real, perhaps simply stating on the page that
>>> you are expected to evaluate _all_ proposals, and not just vote up a
>>> single talk, would help the issue? It might turn away some of the "wrong
>>> voters". Requiring to give out at least, say, 10 points, could be perhaps
>>> be a way to enforce some participation?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Kåre