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In the ongoing election on Mathematics, one of the candidates noticed that they are able to edit their nomination post even after the nomination phase has ended.

The nomination posts otherwise seem to be locked, with the message, "Comments disabled on deleted / locked posts / reviews" displayed below each nomination, and the pop-up error message, "Comments on locked posts are not eligible for voting" appearing when trying to upvote another user's comment or delete one's own comment on a nomination.

So, is it intentional that candidates are allowed to edit their nomination posts even after the nomination phase has ended and comments on the nominations have been locked?

2 Answers 2

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Yes, it is intentional.

When we were defining the improvements to the election system that were rolled out in the spring we realized that including the questionnaire in the election page as opposed to on the child meta site meant that we needed to think about the possibility that someone might realize the election was going on shortly before the nomination period ended and would only have time to nominate themselves and write their nomination statement. Or, even beyond that potentially unusual chain of events, the questionnaire has simply always been editable on meta and we'd likely have people frustrated if it wasn't!

This meant that we needed to give space to allow the questionnaire to be edited - or even created - after the nomination period had ended. When discussing it internally, it was determined that it would be somewhat complicated and likely confusing to only allow the questionnaire to be edited but not the nomination statement itself.

In the end, we made the decision to go with the solution you see - while no new nomination can be created after the deadline, they can be edited.

In all honesty, I don't remember discussing whether comments would be locked or not as part of it. I remember talking about how one of the main concerns I had with moving the questionnaire to the election page was that there wouldn't be a comment section just for the questionnaire itself and we discussed the amount of content on the page during the voting phase.

I think there's likely more work to be done in the future to improve issues around comments on nominations - many concerns have come up recently over the facts that they're only available during the nomination period and aren't visible on the primary/election pages at all. It's a balance between making the election page easy to use and not an endless scroll of content and making potentially important information visible.

Our focus was about getting the questionnaire more visible - by putting it on the election page rather than hidden away on meta behind a link. The comments became an issue because comments on nominations were always locked when voting started but the addition of the questionnaire created a frustration for people who were used to the questionnaire being a meta post that could be commented on at all times. While there may have been grumbles about comments being absent on the voting page, it wasn't seen as a major concern.

The issue is, including the nomination, questionnaire, and comments - and leaving comments open for the entire election - feels like a lot of content on one page unless we collapse comments entirely - which means that, for the most part, most people still won't really be aware that they exist other than the "Show n more comments" button.

We probably don't have that balance perfect yet but I'm going to need to really understand why we locked comments and didn't bring them to the voting page in the first place before any decisions are made.

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    I know I probably sound like a broken record on this topic, but I'm compelled to point out that this is just another example of why the comment system needs to be reworked. Discussion on posts should not need to be limited because it causes scrolling. Neither should discussion be shunted over to chat, which has its own slew of issues. I know I'm annoying; I speak up because I care :)
    – ColleenV
    Nov 22, 2021 at 15:14
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"Comments on locked posts are not eligible for voting" appearing when trying to upvote another user's comment or delete one's comment on a nomination.

As an aside to Catija's explanation (besides displaying or not comments after the nomination phase) a strong argument can be made against allowing comments (or votes on comments) during the voting phase since this roughly corresponds to pre-Election silence. (If you check Wikipedia you can see it's a popular concept that a lot of the users are likely to appreciate.)

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  • That would be fine if we had a reasonable period of time to vet candidates after they nominated themselves, but not when we go straight from nomination to voting with no debates or other opportunities to ask follow up questions.
    – ColleenV
    Nov 22, 2021 at 18:57
  • @ColleenV your argument purposely ignores the nomination is a 1 week period where candidates are asked plenty of questions by the community.
    – bad_coder
    Nov 22, 2021 at 18:59
  • Candidates don't all nominate themselves the second the nomination period starts. They can nominate themselves a minute before nominations are closed.
    – ColleenV
    Nov 22, 2021 at 19:01
  • @ColleenV that's a separate discussion of what I addressed in my answer. If you have something to add post your own answer instead of picking a non-sequitur or XY argument with me in the comments.
    – bad_coder
    Nov 22, 2021 at 19:07

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