> I'm a regular user on the main site and have been for the last two year. Despite this, I had no idea that this discussion was taking place.
> I would say that the reality is that many of the users on the main site have no idea that meta exists, nor what it does. It can be argued that those that don't vote shouldn't complain about the results of an election. I would say that the majority of those that don't vote, don't know that there is anything to vote about.
This was mentioned in an answer (by the user with many names):
> Moderators are elected on such figures (in the latest elections, 86 votes sufficed), with no questions asked.
I suppose that this is reality of this site. And that the page will work well if most people are mostly devoted to the main site and only a fraction is interested in meta, elections, site maintenance, etc.
Still, it is interesting to see this discussion from a few years ago.
BTW do we have some numbers about number of users that voted in past election? And also some relative numbers (compared to total users or active users at the time)?
I mean I know that I could go through each election post and find numbers.
@MartinSleziak I am not aware of a synthetic post but the data is readily available in the banner on the old election pages https://math.stackexchange.com/election/X where X is the number of the election. (But those are not very visible I think.) If you ask the question on meta, I'll answer it, no problem. (Only I'd prefer slightly if you wait until after this election finished. It may also come more natural like "How does this elections turnout compare to earlier ones" or some such thing.)
I assume that total numbers of voters can be find this way. (Although as you can see above I only checked the last election.)
I wonder what would be right number to compare to if we want some kind of relative numbers (voters turnout).
Users which made at least one post in the last year before election? Or last month before election? What is a reasonable way to estimate active users? (If we want to find out what percentage of users actually voted.)
From the query used in the post linked above, it seems that when somebody tried to find out something about voters, they used Constituent badge.
@quid Yes, but eligible voters probably include many users which are no longer active and haven't visited site in years.
So maybe if we want number to be at least a bit realistic, we should somehow restrict eligible users to users that were still active (for reasonable definition of active).
I guess part of the problem is to choose reasonable criteria. And another part is to find the numbers (probably using SEDE).
Yearling is awarded also to inactive users. (For example, if I was active for one year and earned 1000 points, I will eventually get 5 yearling badges.)
Ok, so I have to look for a better example; but still even if I am wrong and the reputation was given in that year, the user was no longer active on the site.
According to Jeff Atwood's answer: "You'll get the yearling badge as long as you have at least (Years * 200) rep by the target date. We don't actually test that you got the reputation within the specified year."
The second link says: "Have a reputation of at least (number of years since registration) × 200 + 1 (starting reputation)"
Perhaps you mean that it is slightly more nuanced, as explained there: "So half way through year 3 (i.e., after 2.5 years), you’d need 2.5 × 200 = 500 reputation to qualify for the second yearling badge."
In any case, my main point was that to get yearling badge it does matter whether the reputation was actually earned during the last year.
@MartinSleziak It seems that actually one gets the minimum of "complete years" and "floor of (reputation-1)/200", see e.g. this user, this or this one.
In any case, yearling badge is probably not exactly reliable indicator whether the user was active on the site during the last year. (Which is how the whole thing started.)
@amWhy I was referring to the election page. Where above the candidates there is a banner saying election closes in 2 hours. The 2 hours has no tooltip. (Contrary to for example the "election ends in 2 hours" in the box on the right.)
@DanielFischer "Asaf is quick. Last election, he posted the results 1 minute 19 seconds after the election ended." Does this means that it is Asaf Kargila who totalizing the votes?
@Surb No, but the ballot file is automatically published right after the election ends, and Asaf is so quick downloading it, running STV and making the post that he beats the employee who would otherwise post the announcement.
I used [ctrl] + f and searched for the number 3, which came up with 501 instances, some of which are not involved in the choices cast (e.g. ballot number)
@SimplyBeautifulArt: Your search must have not covered all the ballots. I count 1865 ballots with 3 votes (counted by searching for "3 ", where the space occurs only after instances of "3" that are votes).
