STOWiki:Policy/Voting

When to vote
There are two main uses of votes on STOWiki:
 * Policy votes
 * Deletion votes

In very rare cases votes may be used for other purposes, and this page details this process.

Terminology

 * The issue being voted on and action to take are considered a proposal.
 * If the Yes votes win (see constraints below), the proposal is considered accepted.
 * If the No votes win (see constraints below), the proposal is considered declined.

The Voting Process

 * The issue being voted on should be clearly identified in the discussion page of the article, and a voting booth created. See "How to start a vote", below.
 * People now have an opportunity to vote. The Vote/Talk template explains things for the most part.
 * For the decision to be made, the count for the winning side must exceed the losing side by five (5), i.e. 5:0, 6:1, 10:5, etc, and then a waiting period, or vote closing time, of 3 days must be observed before finally closing the vote and taking the proposed action.

Results

 * Yes wins: Once the vote is closed and the Yes votes have won, the proposer should feel free to take the proposed action as accepted with the trust of most STOWiki users and backing of the admins.
 * No wins: Once the vote is closed and the No votes have won, the proposal is effectively declined.
 * With multiple-choice votes the comparison is made to the closest competitor.

Voting FAQ
'''How do we know what to vote on?
 * See the Votes in progress (category) list.

'''What really shouldn't be voted on?
 * Here are some cases:


 * Administrative issues: The admins who run STOWiki can make certain changes in order to keep the site running smoothly. Admins should avoid unilateral decisions, but sometimes they must take matters into their own hands - for example with legal issues.
 * Factual accuracy: Although we can dispute what the truth is, you can't really vote on whether it is true. If someone posts something that appears factually accurate, but someone has a reliable or official source that shows that it is not, you can't really vote to keep something untrue in an article. This especially applies to lore. If Cryptic says this is the lore of Star Trek Online, STOWiki users shouldn't really vote to keep some lore that disagrees with it on the site. That's just silly.
 * Terminology: This is sort of a gray area, but usually its best just to put the all the meanings of a commonly used term and indicate which meanings are widely accepted vs. narrowly understood. You can vote on narrowly vs. widely, but unless the meaning attributed to a term is vandalism, totally nonsensical ("frog means an arrow with a rocket on it that speaks many languages") or that only apparently one person has ever heard, its okay to be in the wiki.
 * Policy violations: If a page violates policy, the matter really isn't up for vote. If however you do not agree with a policy, you are of course welcome to vote to change the policy!

'Why have a vote closed time''?
 * Think of it as a cooling off period and a time for the losing side to campaign for more votes. If the losing side can't drum up enough votes in the time period, it usually indicates they don't care enough or they can't get enough support. We tend to keep the time shorter than we would for policy issues, but the wait time is generally short just because you don't want to be sitting around waiting for no good reason.

'''What do I do if my side loses, but I still strongly disagree with the outcome?
 * Propose another vote! We may at some point decide that the result of a vote should "stick" for some time period before allowing another vote, but for now if you want to thrash it out again, you can always do it.

What if the loser just undoes the change of the winning vote?
 * Well, assuming you followed the proper voting process, you can revert the change back, appeal to an admin to revert the change, or even appeal to an admin to block the user for a time period. Hopefully there will be a policy for violating STOWiki policy that you can get enforced.