A little late to this room, but just wanted to say I'm excited about the slate of candidates. I think a strong slate bodes well for the future. Good luck all.

So, who should one vote for? Who is the most pro-Monica and against-Stallman? :)

@neu242 I don't think any of the nominees mentioned any of those names in their questionnaires...

@Malachi Exactly :)

(I won't say this again, so lets drop that as a discussion point, okay?)

@neu242 "they didn't bring up either name" is not a relevant argument point - both the Monica and Stallman issues are polarizing issues unrelated to Code Review and neither have any influence on whether a candidate can be a good moderator candidate on Code Review. The entire discussion is a brushfire waiting to happen, so consider the matter "dead on arrival" in this chat room.

@ThomasWard Ok, fair point!

we're at over 500 votes now, it seems

@Vogel612 plus mine now ;) (501!)

When SEDE gets updated, this query can show the voting tail for the different elections

For context: the 2015 election had 631 voters (but apparently only 626 constituents??), the 2018 election had 845 voters (but apparently only 827 constituents???)

hey @Catija what's up with the mismatch between constituent badges and votes?

Caching?

Oh, from a prior year.

@Vogel612 Maybe someone changed their vote?

User accounts deleted? That might change the badge count but not change the number of voters in that block?

@Catija that would make a lot of sense

makes me wonder... if a user votes in an election and then self-deletes their account before the election is over... does their vote still count?

and what if they get nuked as a sockpuppet?

Nope.

In fact, if you pull the data again after the election is over and run the counts, you'll get different numbers.

... I mean years later.

ohhh noes

So go pull the data for the 2014 SO election, for example, and you'll get different counts than you would have back in 2014 because we don't "lock in" the counts when the election ends.

Hopefully, we don't have so many voters leaving after the fact but we lose the voter history as users delete their profiles on sites.

can I just say that that makes me very queasy?

Last election we had 845 votes, I'm hoping we go over a thousand this time.

@Catija What is the trigger on the caching, is it time or the number of votes.

I think the only reason it's been generally considered a non-issue is that multiple people generally confirm the results when the election ends (independently of us posting the results).

@Mast Do we have the number of active users we had in 2018?

@pacmaninbw It took about half an hour for the first votes to register when the election started, so I think that works as a rough estimate.

@pacmaninbw Badges don't generally get awarded instantly, so I was thinking that there was a difference because the voters in the current election might not have gotten their badges yet - it wasn't until a minute later I realized that y'all were talking about a prior election.

@Vogel612 Why odes it make you queasy?

Mods can actually see the current number of voters during the election in the UI but regular users can't.

@Catija I was asking about the currently election, the delay is noticeable.

@pacmaninbw Not that I know, but if the user activity is linear to the amount of moderation involved in a site, perhaps 2018: a year in moderation and 2020: a year in moderation help with the numbers.

@Vogel612 I can jive with #1 but I'm gonna refrain from comment on #2 and #3

Yeah, I think badges can run as infrequently as every hour.

Depends on the badge, I think.

Well, some badges run daily because they're only valid once per day, I think...

@Catija mortarboard actually might just run daily

@Vogel612 Tom Scott has a good video on the dangers of voting electronically and why it's bloody hard to do right.

Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea

@Mast I've seen that (multiple times) and I've taken multiple classes in cryptography, one of which included a basic setup for Zero-Knowledge Proofs

I mean... we're not electing leaders of countries...

that last one is the interesting one for electronic voting

We have to associate votes to users for some period of time but the export does not associate the two - it's a live database, though and so when users delete their profiles on a site, the history of their vote is lost. I've asked about the feasibility of storing the votes separate from accounts entirely so that the vote count after the election never changes - but I don't think it's a big priority. I'm also not sure that most people have ever realized how we do it.

just dropping by to say I'm very happy with the candidates that chose to step up in this election. whether or not you're elected makes no difference: you are an invaluable asset regardless, I hope y'all keep doing what you're doing no matter how this goes. Good luck to all candidates!

I'm really stoked about this election and hope every candidate will keep carrying on the good work, elected or not.