How are the exit polls looking?

any chance left for the wu wei ticket candidates?

it would be cool to have a more decaffeinated rpg se generally

Hey, so, is asking about bans kosher?

Cause I noticed that a certain person was banned a couple days ago and it was kinda unsettling for me. Like, I figure there's probably a reason and I didn't see the behavior, but it's concerning to me because we had just implicitly held up not banning said user as an indication that the banning process was working well and banning problem users rather than people dissatisfied politically with our current moderation, so, like, them then being banned is.... weird.

But I know on some sites asking about bans is, like, offensive

so I wanted to check in a less formal setting before asking on meta. I'm asking in the election room because I think if we do ask about it on meta there will probably be a kerfluffle

and primary's start today.

so... maybe not a good time?

idk

thoughts?

@thedarkwanderer This fairly recent post talks about this issue a bit.

Yeah, but this is concerning to me cause like... I wanted to ask them to nominate for moderation. But then they were banned. Which, btw, means they can't run for moderation for a year. Which is pretty intense. Also I think it means they can't vote this cycle based on the timing of the ban. This isn't about shaming them this is about sudden disappearance of vocal high-rep detractor of moderation team during election.

It just sounds really bad, and I feel like I ought to ask about it, because even if I don't think there's any malfeasance afoot when someone claims malfeasance and then is disappeared I feel like I've got a bit of an obligation to investigate, especially when it's someone I respect.

I just don't want to cause a big meta fight on the day of the election, you know? And also it might violate not-asking-about-ban rules if we have those but I don't know if we have those.

(the listed temporary susp. is 'to cool down'. I don't know what that means)

(So the meta question would be like 'a dude was banned. What does it mean for it to be to cool down? Is this related to comments critical of mod activity or is this a different thing?)

@thedarkwanderer Oh, I know what you mean. It's deeply shaken my faith in the whole thing, especially as the second time since this election began.

:(

I mean, the thing it I can see the person involved having a blow up moment or something; they are kinda hot headed about certain specific topics and maybe it crossed a line. I just didn't see that happen and have been kinda really active this last two weeks so it woulda had to have happened and been deleted while I was at work.

WHich is totally possible!

@Miniman But not talking about it because I'm worried it'll be taken the wrong seems bad, too, so I figured I'd at least ask.

Ya know, as useful as it'd be to have a moderator in a different timezone, it seems like all the excitement happens when I'm in bed.

(I did equalize all the questionnaires though)

I know right? :(

@thedarkwanderer I'm pretty sure he's been previously banned recently enough that the year-long time-out on nominations wouldn't have been up anyway.

I do wish he'd been able to participate more effectively in this election, he's a valuable voice to have.

Oh, ok. I didn't know. And yeah.

Generally speaking in the past I've seen "cool down" applied when someone is very angry and repeatedly having a hard time expressing themselves on the site in a nice way even after being specifically asked to use better words to express the same ideas.

It gives the person a chance to breath, reflect, and compose themselves. Usually they return better able to get to the heart of the issue instead of lashing out in the heat of the moment. You can read about the principles behind suspension here.

I will not speculate about how those principles might apply, or fail to apply, to this particular case.

This meta post says that if pressed, a moderator can share summaries or reproductions of actions related to the suspension (it's not a ban, I need to be more careful with that word) which remain respectful, honest, and don't violate confidentiality.

Yeah, cooldowns seem good in general, and suspensions make sense in general (and we should be using them more, probably, cause either SSD or mxyzplk said the CM team suggested that and the CM team is def. pretty knowledgeable

So if it's really bothering you, yeah, ask.

well, I'll sleep on it. G'night and thanks :)

ttfn

@Michael Exit polls show 95% of constituents are alive and not experiencing undeath, with a ~5% margin of error.

The effect of undeath on polling is not well understood.

Waaaaiiit a minute... [maths]

Nearly 2,100 of our users could be undead?

@BESW Probably more - there are many varieties of undead indistinguishable from humans.

I'm not buying it. If there were any undead, there'd be more activity during my active hours.

@Erik According to what though? Anti-undead propaganda?

No because they don't sleep, and it seems pretty clear that when I'm awake, most folks are not.

@Erik Sounds like anti-undead propaganda to me.

@BESW Between 0 and 2,100 of our users could be undead, yes.

Well, 2,080 by my calculations.

@thedarkwanderer The suspension in question expires before voting ends. There won't be a cost to voting ability.

I for one, would represent all voters, regardless of their Life Status.

Pro-Unlife in this corner. Let's make Eberron great again!

@BryantJackson Karnath has always been great.

good morning

Good morning!

@MarshallTigerus #UnLivesMatter

@JoshuaAslanSmith mornin

Nominations close in 5 hours.

@JoshuaAslanSmith repost to RPG General & I'll star it

@doppelgreener so let it be written so let it be done

@JoshuaAslanSmith so it is done so it shall be sung in song?

@thedarkwanderer So there's nothing wrong with asking, but in general it's SE policy that we're not to share details of suspensions etc. Recently there was a meta.SE saying "well, it's OK to share limited info in some circumstances." meta.stackexchange.com/questions/293213/… I am not sure "someone is curious" meets that bar though.

nvoigt posted asking about his so I felt comfortable with sharing a little (see that recent meta) but we might just decline to comment when it's just someone else asking about another user's business... Maybe let them share/inquire themselves if desired. He'll be back in time to vote in the election etc.

@doppelgreener all about the margin of error lol

we didnt have a primary really last time so kind of excited about the primary this time

@Mithrandir hello, your name is gandalf but your image is the dark lord, dont know how I feel about that

heh

@JoshuaAslanSmith he is Gandalf but from The Darkest Timeline

the one where he's like "yeah guess i'll put this thing on"

and becomes Sauron 2.0

@doppelgreener if gandalf took the ring when bilbo offered it

@JoshuaAslanSmith exactly

@JoshuaAslanSmith And I have mod powers. FEAR ME *cough cough*

My avatar has changed a few times..

shrugs whats the worst that can happen? gandalf takes ring cue montag of apocalyptic middle earth

Never ask what the worst that can happen is... ;)

Primary hype!

toats

Nominations close in 48 minutes.

@JoshuaAslanSmith I am excite about a primary, but I know that's mostly just because I'm an elections geek and it will be neat to see a primary has happened, not because I actually think it will be exciting. In practice I expect it will be an anticlimactic, predictable process.

:P

@SevenSidedDie that basically sums up my feeling

a part of me also wants someone to randomly nominate themselves with less than 5 minutes left

because drama/tropes

@JoshuaAslanSmith The good kind of drama, yeah. (Grabbing hat from under the rapidly closing stone door nomination window optional.)

@SevenSidedDie yep like good-natured 1980s teenager movie drama

posted again for the final minute!

That's some dedicated lurking, there =)

hey man

its what I do

@BESW tagging besw who would enjoy the reference but sleeps currently

so do I just upvote anyone I think is qualified in the primary?

not a limited number order like the actual election

@JoshuaAslanSmith No. Just me. =D

(But: yes. It's an up-down vote on each nominee.)

kewl

Gates are open, VOTES OF JUDGEMENT ARE UPON YOU.

The primary has begun! Wow, the voting is already pretty active.

I've been sitting here with an itchy clicker finger all morning

@MadMAxJr opens mouth to catch votes as they fall

like the escape from shawshank, but you know votes instead of rain

@SevenSidedDie I assume the inbox message while a good fraction of Stackizens are in their workday doesn't hurt =)

(It'd be nice to grab time-stamps on the votes to see what sort of decay it goes through. I'd love to throw that at one of my math classes as a little project.)

Remember, a vote for Bryant Jackson is a vote for... well, it's a vote for Bryant Jackson. Make it happen!

@nitsua60 I don't think that's available in the final ballot data that's normally released, but you could probably ask Grace Note nicely for anonymised vote-event data, and maybe get it.

@SevenSidedDie And, of course, for that purpose it wouldn't matter which election. I might have to play with this a bit.

(In fact, best to avoid asking about htis one, since I've got a potential COI.)

@nitsua60 Not sure it's a meaningful COI once it's all over. Mods have access to anonymous up/down-vote statistics on a per-post basis on the granularity of per-day, so that's about the degree of sensitivity SE considers votes in general have. Anonymous vote data for the election phase is public, too. In combination, it's probably OK to have anonymous primary data. Just nobody has asked since primaries were added, maybe?

@SevenSidedDie Yeah, but I'd probably be looking for minute-by-minute vote-data. (Or, probably easier, timestamps on all votes.)

Just looking at the idea of "gates open, early flood, tailing off..." can we model that, what might it tell us, how can we quantify the notion of "early returns"?

I'll poke around at the existing (public) data and ping Grace if it seems fruitful.

@nitsua60 I think asking can't hurt! They appreciate data and public analysis of safe-to-release data, so your reason is something they'll be cool with in principle. And they're good at saying yes or no without prejudice, based on what data they're okay with releasing. :)

We have to see how each candidate does with the swing states.

I have just moused over and clicked on all vote totals. Can someone with long SO/SE experience explain to me the point in down votes? Almost all candidates have a few, some more than others, and I'll not comment further on my findings yet.

@KorvinStarmast Well, from an election-outcome perspective, the most effective way to vote is to upvote your favorite candidate(s), and downvote the rest. From a squishier, signalling point of view, I suspect people are using upvote/no-vote/downvote for enthusiastic support/meh/enthusiastic opposition

since this primary isn't exactly hotly contested (10 slots for 11 candidates with at least 1 joke candidate), folks are probably just voting their overall impressions rather than trying to efficiency-game the system, I would guess

@A_S So we have moved min-max into voting as well? I would figure that whomever got the most up votes is the winner. (Or the t op 10 in the primary) Ya know, like in a regular election. I am thus asking the logic of using a different convention in SE/SO elections. (Ans FWIW, I don' recall having other than "up vote" options at the recent Christianity.SE election

@KorvinStarmast Oh, I was assuming that outcome would be decided by vote totals, but you're right, I don't actually know that for sure

it says "the top 10 candidates based on primary vote score"

whatever that means

@A_S00 Hopefully, someone knows. I do know that the final election over at Christianity.SE ended up in a different system. We picked our top three choices in the final, and based on that a series of vote based runoffs got us our two new mods. Down Votes never entered into it, as I recall. Maybe not enough candidates.

that's the election phase, I believe, and that will work the way you're describing

primary phase is votes, though, I think

@A_S00 Aha, maybe our pool of candidates was too small for a primary.

yeah if there's 10 or less it gets skipped

there's a "how does it work" thread that was posted somewhere, one sec

@A_S00 How cool is this! I come to SE chat room, ask a question, get a useful answer. So where's my plus one for A_S00?

@KorvinStarmast magic!

optimization is a little trickier than just up-who-I-like, down-who-I-don't. There are probably people I want to see in, people I want to see out (notionally here), and a middle ground who I could tolerate. Downvoting tolerable people the same as intolerable people makes it more likely someone I find intolerable will be elected.

So, there's a risk-management component as well as an optimization component.

@fectin I don't have the math to prove this, but isn't it the case that no-voting is never optimal (from a pure outcomes perspective)? That is, the vote totals, number of seats, distribution of candidate-tolerability, etc. might affect the threshold of tolerability at which you should draw the upvote/downvote line, but you should still either upvote or downvote everyone?

I bet there's a paper on this

@A_S00 Vote score is the usual SE meaning, being net of up/down votes.

@A_S00 I think it depends on how you view "optimum." if you have set of people you absolutely want to win or to lose, yes. If you have a range of preferences, I think no.

So it depends: is optimum "most likely to achieve your favored state" or is it "best achievable outcome"?