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I think it can influence some users to cast election votes for candidates with questionnaires with higher levels of votes (for any matter of subjective reasons), which is IMHO inappropriate and unfair for candidates with lower voted questionnaires.

A new inexperienced user could see the votes on the questionnaires as dependency indication from the amount of votes cast at the moment at the election or could be influenced to cast a vote for the candidate with the highest voted questionnaire.

But also an experienced user can be tempted to just agree to the mass - Point Crowd/Mass psychology, which was proven by countless studies.

Either way, I think this got a higher or less chance to taint the election votings.

Of course, cast votes on posts is a sign to express agreement or disagreement on the Meta sites and is a sign of quality but in this case - the context of elections, where votes make a real difference - I think it is not quite appropriate.

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  • 2
    If it matters my current focus is the 2020 community moderator election for Stack Overflow
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 18:45
  • 2
    Probably more relevant than the total of upvotes is whether any particular candidate has a high negative vote.
    – Daniel Widdis
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 19:30
  • With regard to my focused example in the previous comment, it end up that the candidates with the highest voted questionnaires have won the election. That just as side information. Maybe we got some influenced voters here.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 7:27
  • 4
    In many elections (except where the expected result was always clear anyway), questionnaire vote scores are very much not an indicator of election winners. Questionnaire vote scores indicate the favoured candidate of the small group of users who follow meta, which isn't necessarily the same person who wins the election. I suspect the vast majority of voters never see, read, or vote on questionnaire responses. I've seen election winners with negatively scoring questionnaire answers.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 8:17
  • @Randal'Thor "questionnaire vote scores are very much not an indicator of election winners" - That might be true but is not subject of my concern. My concern is that the votes can have an influence on a single voter and with that also the elections which is not correct. --- "Questionnaire vote scores indicate the favoured candidate of the small group of users who follow meta, which isn't necessarily the same person who wins the election." - Again, I've never said that.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 8:41
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    @Randal'Thor "I suspect the vast majority of voters never see, read, or vote on questionnaire responses." - Even if that would be true and beside that this is just a personal view, not a fact, it doesn't mean that the ones who take a look at the questionnaires don't get influenced by the votes. That's what I want try to say.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 8:41
  • @Randal'Thor "I suspect the vast majority of voters never see ... questionnaire responses." I suspect about 17K of the 32K voters "saw" them. No guarantees on reading all but the top 1 or 2.
    – Daniel Widdis
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 15:34
  • How else should users be able to show support for a candidate without needing to post to a massive comment thread?
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 15:50
  • @JoeW The thing is: They shouldn't do so at all. It is an official election, not a tea party. Showing support in public means they can influence others. Maybe we should invent a system to the candidate itself which only informs them from the "I support you" message.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 15:52
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    What election system do you not have potential voters showing support for a candidate? Showing support for a candidate isn't just to make them feel better but also to show others who is supported and who isn't.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 15:53
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    As a recent example of downvoting on meta influencing an election: In the ongoing Math.SE election, a user was "nominated" in the unofficial nomination thrread, and received a ton of downvotes and very few upvotes. They stated elsewhere (see comments to here) that they had thought of running but decided not to, so it is reasonable to assume that these events are related.
    – user1729
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 16:00
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    Showing public support for a candidate is a part of almost every major election process that I know of at least in the political world. And unless you also remove commenting at as well on the questionnaire people still have a way to show support which turns into noise that can drown out other important information. And if you do disable it then it becomes harder to call out when a candidate isn't exactly honest with their answers.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 16:01
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    @JoeW "there really isn't a way of getting around it" - There is. If there is no ability to vote on questionnaires and each and every questionnaire is locked to be at a score of 0, others can't be influenced by the votes. "I vote for you" comments need to be clearly classified as not appropriate like "+1" or "Thank you" ones are and need to be deleted.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 16:49
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    Comments on those posts can still unduly influence voters though so you still have to deal with that as well. Not to mention taking away people's voices with no proof that the votes had an impact on the election. You could argue that they got high votes on both because they had the support of the community in the first place.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 16:55
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    @JoeW Proof is always difficult to obtain for many things. We have correlation and that's all. I would argue that this means we don't need this additional popularity contest because the real one is coming anyway. If you want to show support, just vote. What's would be wrong with that?
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 18:45

4 Answers 4

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The way to express support with a candidate is voting in the election. No other way is really needed and the voting on the questionnaire answers may not have any useful purpose other than influencing other voters. But an as independent vote as possible is probably preferred. Maybe it's because we are used to vote on many things and the software allows it.

Let's look at the data (last five moderator elections on StackOverflow). I sorted the questionnaire page by votes and then looked up the candidates final place in the election (when they dropped out or if they made it, how many percent of votes they got; primaries were ignored). This gives the election position sorted by questionnaire score and can visualize a possible correlation.

2020 - 12th moderator election

The election position sorted by questionnaire score is: 2, 1, 3, 4, 6, 5. That is a very strong positive correlation (CC=0.88 (correlation coefficient with simply increasing numbers.).

Bug: In all election pages I saw the link to the questionnaire (under additional links) is always pointing to the 2020 questionnaire instead to the right one.

2019 - 11th moderator election

The election position sorted by questionnaire score is: 8, 2, 1, 4, 5, 9, 6, 7, 10. With a remarkable outlier (the one with the highest questionnaire score only came in 8th) this is a strong positive correlation (CC=0.56).

There are some numbers missing in that list. That happens if I could not find a questionnaire for this candidate. In 2019, the third position in the election (runner-up) does not show up publicly in the questionnaire. It was deleted by the candidate. By vote score (46) it is second-to-last.

2018 - 10th moderator election

The election position sorted by questionnaire score is: 10, 1, 8, 6, 5, 7, 3, 2, 9, 4. Now that looks interesting, the candidate with the highest scoring questionnaire barely made it through the primaries, while two out of the three elected moderators had relatively weak questionnaire answers. There was no strong correlation between questionnaire score and election result (CC=-0.21).

2017 - 9th moderator election

The election position sorted by questionnaire score is: 2, 1, 6, 3, 5, 9, 10, 4, 7, 8. This is a strong positive correlation (CC=0.67) with both elected moderators also having the highest scored questionnaire answers.

2016 - 8th moderator election

The election position sorted by questionnaire score is: 5, 3, 2, 6, 10, 1, 4, 8, 9 There is a significant positive correlation (CC=0.42) but it could be stronger, the 10th in the election had almost the same score in the questionnaire than the first in the election.

Summary:

There is some evidence that the questionnaire score and the election result are positively correlated (there are still the nomination pitches, which are not voted on, as well as other candidates stats and the number of votes on questionnaire is much lower than in the final elections). However, correlation does not imply causation. It's possible that the questionnaire scoring influences voters but it's also possible that this correlation is simply depending on the quality of the candidate.

We cannot rule out that the questionnaire score influences voters. It also affects the sorting order for users that usually sort by score. And I have a hard time coming up with a good reason why it's needed (after all feedback on the candidate's answers in form of a score is not desired, we want to get to know their views, not what they write after they know what we think of them). That's why for me, casting votes on questionnaire answers is not necessary.

P.S.:

From Delete votes on a Moderator Election Questionnaire "..there's no particular reason for anyone to vote on these answers at all - it has no direct effect on the outcome of the election. ..we tend to just let folks cast up/down votes as they please..At some point in the future, we may build in more elaborate support for these questionnaires, at which point it might be worth disabling voting" basically says it all. Maybe this feature will come at some point in the future.

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  • 1
    "Bug: In all election pages I saw the link to the questionnaire (under additional links) is always pointing to the 2020 questionnaire instead to the right one." Yes, all election pages are identical because there is only one version of that text. When a moderator updates it, those updates are reflected everywhere.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 9:30
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    I'm really glad and thankful for your elaborate research and answer to underlie the concern with facts rather than opinion. Thank you very much.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 10:10
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    I would be surprised if there would be no correlation: the ones deemed to be good moderators are expected to master the questionnaire well (or the other way around). You cannot follow from it, that the score of the questionnaire influenced the voters rather than the content.
    – ead
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 18:45
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    @ead It's just a hint no proof, correlation does not imply causation and I don't write that. But it's a possibility and I would rather avoid it. It's not necessary to vote on the questionnaire because the real vote follows soon anyway. Maybe you could tell me what the score of the questionnaire could be good for?
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 18:51
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    I thank you for your statistics, but I disagree with the conclusion. The possibility that good candidates tend to score good on both their questionnaire and the actual election because they are good candidates seems unexplored.
    – Mast
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 6:31
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    @Mast I now explicitly mention that possibility. I think it was written safe (there is a correlation, it might be an influence). Now I write that it also might not be. The conclusion is still that in order to avoid the influence, which cannot be ruled out, it would be better to not vote on the questionnaire. If the correlation just comes from the quality of the candidate, then one could argue that another vote is not really bad but kind of redundant. We don't know what is actually the case, but I guess that some people will be influenced. Some people like to bet more on winning horses.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 8:06
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A new inexperienced user could see the votes on the questionnaires as dependency indication from the amount of votes cast at the moment at the election or could be influenced to cast a vote for the candidate with the highest voted questionnaire.

There's a couple of problems with this line of thinking

  1. Most users do NOT read Meta. In fact, I'd dare say few know it exists
  2. If you DO read Meta, you know that Meta voting is different

In 2019 I had the top upvoted Meta questionnaire on SO and I came in 8th. So there's not a lot of correlation with Meta upvotes and outcomes.

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  • RE: "Most users do NOT read Meta. In fact, I'd dare say few know it exists". This is a questionnaire specifically linked to the election ballot page, that if I read nothing else on Meta, I would read. And roughly half of the voters did read it. Also, since the order of the questions is ranked, those with limited time may only read the top few (highest voted) responses. Unlike the random ordering of candidates on the voting page.
    – Daniel Widdis
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 19:10
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    @DanielWiddis The 2019 Meta has about 20k views for 30k voters as well
    – Machavity
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 19:14
  • As of now, 17K views on the questionnaire for 32K voters. Point being "users do not read meta" is not really applicable in the narrow use case of a more detailed post linked to the election ballot -- where specific action is taken to randomize the order to preserve some degree (or appearance of) fairness. In any case, good luck. I'm fairly confident you'll improve from 8th place this year. ;)
    – Daniel Widdis
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 19:18
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    But the ones who read Meta and are inexperienced about Meta voting can be influenced by the votes. I guess this is also what you let open implicitly. One specific case can't be really made as argument that it doesn't happen although I appreciate your argumentation with regard to your own example the last year. I'm interested to see at which place you come with the highest Meta questionnaire this year. Nonetheless, it seems inappropriate for me because it can have an influence on the election and to influence users that way is IMHO not correct. That's what I want to say/discuss.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 20:06
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    "So there's not a lot of correlation with Meta upvotes and outcomes." In your N=1, yeah, I suppose that's true.
    – user803868
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 20:54
  • @Machavity Congrats for won the election with 2nd place and becoming a new moderator! But that indirectly strengthen my thesis, that votes on questionnaires may have effect on the elections. Maybe you overthink to editing your answer now.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 7:21
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    @frеdsbend I heavily doubt on the statement that there is almost no correlation with Meta votes and outcomes. One example is the current election, where both candidates with the highest ranking end up wining the election. To say that it may has little effect is okay but matter of one's own opinion. We don't have any proof if it's really that little. Of course, I don't got a proof too that it happens at all, but I think it is very likely that voters of any kind can feel influenced by admitting to the broad mass. This was proven by several psychological studies.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 7:50
  • I also do not see how point 1. and 2. actually are arguments against the cited statement of mine. Even an experienced user, who DO read Meta and DO know how Meta voting works can be influenced to cast a vote for a specific candidate. My argumentation is relevant for ALL who reads Meta and cast his/her vote in the election thereafter, which are - I think - quite a few nonetheless.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 27, 2020 at 18:17
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Of course, cast votes on posts is a sign to express agreement or disagreement on the Meta sites and is a sign of quality but in this case I think it is not quite appropriate.

Well, it's one way for users to (anonymously) express their support for (or objections against) a specific candidate. The only other options they have is to leave a comment, which may become noise ("I support this candidate!") or can provoke undesired reactions.

But you do have a point; I remember an election on Puzzling Stack Exchange where the community spontaneously decided to 'correct' the voting on the questionnaire answers to make sure every answer got the same score. This is up to the community to decide; there are no rules for this.

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  • It was also rather common practice from what I had seen at the time
    – Mithical
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 9:52
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    IMHO there should be a rule for this. Else you leave indirectly space for unfair play and that is inappropriate. On elections anywhere else in reality, you also got no possibility to express "I like the statements of this candidate!", "I support this candidate!" or "That candidate is cool!" - Acting like that or give the ability to that voters can do so is dubious if not prohibited at any official election because it in fact can influence others.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 15:40
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    Furthermore it is plain irrelevant behind that it is harmful for the democracy voting principle. Why would I care about if someone else like the statements or this candidate in particular when my decision and my opinion is at foreground and desired, not the ones of the others? - The purpose of an election is to bundle all votes from as less influenced individuals as possible which is IMHO no longer provided when using such votes.
    – RobertS - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 15:47
  • I mostly wonder about the last sentence. Isn't everything up to the community to decide? What kind of rules would not be up to the community? I'm just a bit confused by it.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 18:38
  • FWIW RPG.se uses votes to try to balance all votes in our questionnaire phase for every election. This year we managed to keep them all at 0!
    – Rubiksmoose
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 19:16
  • @Trilarion there are unwritten rules, e.g. that one of the CMs posts the questionnaire, that it doesn't get closed (it's as broad as asking ten questions at once, some of them being rather opinion based). There is no rule for voting on questionnaire answers.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 19:30
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I was actually surprised people can cast votes on candidate questionnaires. It can potentially affect some people voting for or against some candidates. Personally, I just took the time to read what every candidate had to say.

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