MeatballWiki

WeightedConsensusVoting

WeightedConsensusVoting is a voting procedure for wikis; it's an attempt to DevolvePower, and may be a possible solution to CommunityMayNotScale.

Each member of the community is given a voting weight on their home page. It uses a CommunitySolution to assign voting weight -- the voting weight page is freely editable like any other. In practice, giving someone a weight is like awarding a BarnStar -- voting weight is given by someone else for successful BarnRaising. Before the voting weight may be used, it must be ratified by community consensus, e.g., by waiting until other versions have expired from KeptPages or through TeaTime's AuthorizedCopy concept.

Votes may be changed (you can vote on a given issue as often as you like), but voting (and ratification of voting rights) is indelible and irreversible. When you vote, you specify a weight and a yes/no/wait answer, with the restriction that the weight can't be more than your given voting weight. In the TeaTime context, the subject of a vote is a approval of a specific edit in a particular TeaRoom, and the results are tabulated and executed by the TechnologySolution; in the Meatball context, the subject and the tabulation would be by CommunitySolution, but tabulated and executed if necessary by an administrator.

In view of VotingIsEvil, the proper spirit of WeightedConsensusVoting is to vote only when necessary, and only as weightily as necessary. In particular, the minimum-weight vote is a zero-weight vote, which anyone who has been ratified into the community can override (with another zero-weight vote if desired), but with which outsiders and newcomers may not interfere, and this option should be given serious consideration once the decision to vote at all is made. By varying the weight of the vote, there is a sliding scale between zero-weight voting and majority voting, allowing the application of the principle of minimum force.


CategoryUncommonWikiTechnology


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