Proposal:Clarify meaning of abstain votes

Clarify meaning of abstain votes
Proposal status:	Approved (active)
Proposed by:	Mateusz Konieczny
Vote start:	2020-02-12
Vote end:	2020-02-26

Clarify whatever explicit abstaining is the same as no vote

Talk:Proposed features/give box revealed that it is not fully specified how abstain votes work. There is some confusion in multiple places whatever "abstain" counts as vote. I propose to make following changes

In approved/rejected decision ignore explicit abstentions (10 vote yes, 1 vote no, 10 "abstain but have comments" would be approved).

In case of describing number of people use "N people participated in voting" (when including explicit abstentions) or "M people voted" (when including only yes/no votes, without abstain comments)

This is just initial idea - any comments? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:56, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I would probably need a wider discussion (mailing lists ?), but a clarification is definitely needed. If abstain (displaying as "comments") count as no, why does it even exists ! ;-) H@mlet (talk) 10:17, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

The proposal of @Mateusz Konieczny: looks good to me. In fact, "abstain" means "to choose not to vote" (definition of "abstain" by Merriam-Webster). Mappers can abstain and comment a proposal at the same time, but they can't abstain and vote at the same time. --Dcapillae (talk) 23:54, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Note: I am not taking ownership of this idea. I may (or may not) start discussion on talk mailing list about this, but feel free to start such discussion on your own! Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 23:39, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I have send a message to both the talk and tagging mailing list. --Dcapillae (talk) 16:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Ignoring explicit abstentions in the approved/rejected decision. --Dcapillae (talk) 16:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Explicit abstention from vote is still not a vote and should not be considered as mattering for approved/rejected decision. If you oppose proposal in its current form - vote against it. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 18:36, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Any abstention is a decision not to vote. --PeterPan99 (talk)

 Support Abstaining is equivalent to not voting . --European water (talk) 07:37, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support To abstain means to not vote. The voting instructions clearly say to pick "abstain" if you want to comment but don't want to vote. So abstensions should be ignored in the vote tally. Jmapb (talk) 17:35, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Abstaining clearly means not participating in the vote. I don't really understand why there is this discussion. --SelfishSeahorse (talk) 09:13, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

At least someone on the tagging list seems to say that we always have counted abstension as no.

 Support but I don't really where the voting rules come from anyway... H@mlet (talk) 01:25, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Oppose IMHO if you want to abstain from the vote, do not "vote", i.e. do not add the template "vote". In this way, your contributions (comments, which you can still make of course) will not count for the quorum, and will not have influence on the voting result. IF you want to "vote" abstain, then your vote will count for the quorum, but will neither count as "yes" nor as "no". The title of this section is misleading because abstentions are not "the same as no", but they might have similar effects. --Dieterdreist (talk) 09:10, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support I my opinion the description in the "Instructions for voting" is misleading. I want to do something about that. Changing the description of the "Proposal process" is one way to go which I support. The autor is still free to choose "rejected" or change something if the abstains have critical comments. Or other voters can change their vote. --ToastHawaii (talk) 22:13, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support In my opinion, abstaining by not voting means to me "I couldn't care less about this question", while explicitly abstaining amounts to "right, it's a valid question, but whatever you say I'm fine with it". I'm not sure if we have anything like a quorum which needs to be reached, for a vote to be valid, but explicitly abstaining should count for reaching the quorum, while not voting at all should not. Mariotomo (talk) 00:13, 19 February 2020 (UTC) ; Edited Mariotomo (talk) 20:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@Mariotomo:, explicit abstaining count for reaching the quorum. We are voting to ignore explicit abstentions in the approved/rejected decision only. Anyone can participate in a voting process by abstaining and commenting. That counts for the minimum quorum required, but would not count for the calculation of the percentage that decide whether the proposal is approved: "support" versus "oppose". There are three ways to participate: support the proposal, oppose the proposal or abstain. Only the first two decide whether to approve the proposal, but they all count for calculating the minimum quorum required. See Talk:Proposed features/give box for an example of the inconvenience of the current confusion.--Dcapillae (talk) 08:37, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dcapillae:, so in my case, I guess I do support the proposal. I'll fix my vote and review the comment. Or I could also abstain, but that would not be helpful, while we've not decided what's the meaning of abstain.

 Support In every voting system ever, abstaining means you're fine with both outcomes. —M!dgard [ talk ] 13:05, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Oppose an explicit abstention means "I do not support, but not strongly against." If you want something to carry then you must at least get the tiny minority of OSM involved in this process to agree with you. Jnicho02 (talk)

@Jnicho02:, if an explicit abstention means "I do not support, but not strongly against", then "I don't support this proposal, but I'm not against it either." In that case, an explicit abstention should be ignored in the approved/rejected decision. The "tiny minority of OSM" involved in the process it is guaranteed by the proposal process itself: "A rule of thumb for 'enough support' is 8 unanimous approval votes or at least 10 votes with more than 74 % approval" ([1]). We're clarifying that an explicit abstaining is not the same as no vote to avoid cases like this. As you say, if I explicitly abstain, my vote should not be counted as a vote against because "I do not support, but not strongly against.". If I did not want the proposal to be approved at all, I would vote "oppose", not "abstain". --Dcapillae (talk) 12:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Sdoerr (talk) 14:04, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Abstention to me means that I'm following the propoasal page and Tagging-thread and feel like the process has been good (or at least sufficient), but I don't have an opinion about the outcome of the proposal. I'm fine if it fails and I'm fine if it passes, but at a minimum I'm here and watching the process. --Adamfranco (talk) 14:16, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support Fanfouer (talk) 21:56, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

 Support I think that abstaining should count as an informal vote, & in any voting system, informal votes aren't counted. Party A gets 1000 votes, Party B gets 900, there are 200 informal votes - Party A wins 1000 to 900. There's plenty of time & opportunity for any comments to be made during the RFC or voting stages - if your comments have been ignored, vote No; if you think it's a good idea that could still be improved vote Yes, & in both cases add a comment to your vote Fizzie 22:47, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

---

After almost a month, 14 votes for ignoring explicit abstentions in the approved/rejected decision versus 2 votes against.

I think we can consider the issue resolved. If it is all right, we could include the clarification in the corresponding section of the proposal process.

I also think that the amenity=give_box proposal should be approved/rejected with this clarification in mind. Don't you think, @ToastHawaii:? --Dcapillae (talk) 17:51, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dcapillae: Yes. Thanks, after the change I will proceed with the process for amenity=give_box proposal --ToastHawaii (talk) 09:13, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Done! I have included the following clarification in the corresponding section of the proposal proces.

Before it said:

A rule of thumb for "enough support" is 8 unanimous approval votes or at least 10 votes with more than 74 % approval, but other factors may also be considered (such as whether a feature is already in use). All suggestions should be taken into account before a proposal is approved or rejected.

Now it says [2]:

A rule of thumb for "enough support" is 8 unanimous approval votes or at least 10 votes with more than 74 % approval, but other factors may also be considered (such as whether a feature is already in use).

The explicit abstentions doesn't counts as vote (e.g. 10 vote "yes", 1 vote "no", 10 "abstain but have comments" would be approved), but all suggestions should be taken into account before a proposal is approved or rejected in order to resolve any deficiencies in the original proposal (if they exist).

Thank you all of you for your collaboration. --Dcapillae (talk) 11:56, 14 March 2020 (UTC)