How do you suggest measuring "general public's perceptions", "general SE users' perceptions" and "high rep SE users' perceptions"? Analytics won't give you details of something as qualitative as these.

@Oded you favour qualitative assessment? What methodology would you apply? Apologies if I misunderstood the term: I considered that analytics can also be qualitative.

That is my question to you. You are asking for things that cannot be measured quantitatively.

@Oded I'd consider it worthy of a PhD or two so that'd be difficult within the character limit for a comment. If you have ideas for PhD (I can't afford a formal one but I used to edit them so I'm familiar with the form and can wing it) methodology here please put in an answer and I'll be sure to upvote if it's useful.

As this post appears to have generated considerable controversy (many down and upvotes) I have flagged for moderator attention to see if we can get official word on whether Stack Exchange at large would help or oppose the sort of study outlined in the question and the answer. Seeking official response from the company responsible themselves.

Does that screenshot have any relevance to the actual question?

@Cai would you rather it was removed from my question? It shows the date and the question asked, as well as the community response which could be publicised with the study, but I am happy to remove as I think you may be right it doesn't form part of the question in strictly defined terms... will moderate the question...

@PeterDavidCarter If people want to see you're posts score they can just look at the score; they don't need you to screenshot what it was at some point in the past inside of the post itself.

I'm afraid this is impossible to be studied unless SE adds a stalki... erm, I mean analyzing tool to track user's behavior on voting. Now, anecdotally, I vote mainly on the content, not the user. However, snowball effect might happen: a great post is upvoted, it rises to above, and is more susceptible to be upvoted again. In the same way, users become high-rep users because their contents are usually great.

@Elephant Ok, so the answer was deleted for no reason and now you're calling me a stalker without even knowing the methodology? In fact, the methodology you (@Elephant) suggested directly contradicts the outline in the question, so you're creating a strawman.

Where did Elephant call you a stalker?

Eh, I didn't call you a stalker at all. I said "unless SE adds a stalking (analyzing) tool that tracks voting behavior" because that's the only way to get the conclusive result because voting is anonymous here. Of course, you are free to do a study on this, though it may be hard for me to accept the result.

@rlemon "I'm afraid this is impossible to be studied unless SE adds a stalki... erm," appears to be implying, but I only asked the question.

I didn't read it that way at all, and as it seems, Elephant didn't intend it that way. I think you're reading into this a little bit too far.

@Elephant you would be predisposed to deny the result even before you know the methodology that would be applied? Is this a personal thing or do you disagree with the study being conducted at all?

+3/-6 is not "considerable" or very controversial at all, and probably not worth contacting staff about.

@Cai Where are you getting +3/-6 from? Have a large number of people withdrawn their votes since I posted the screenshot, are you using outdated info or is there something else going on here? The screenshot clearly shows two +10/-8s entries.

As I said, you're free to do the study. I neither agree/disagree with the study. On the other hand, I think you should already propose the methodology or start the study so that you can convince me about the result.

+10/-8s is rep not votes. the vote count is currently +3/-6

@Elephant It appears that given my answer to my own question proposing a study was deleted with no reason given, that people in the Meta circle don't want me to answer this question. Do you disagree with this analysis?

+3/-6 is the current voting on this post. +10/-8 was the rep you had gained/lost at that time (it should now be +15/-12)

@rlemon you're saying that something that generates a 1/3 2/3 split amongst the meta community is not controversial?

not even in the slightest. also a sample size of 9 isn't "the meta community"

@rlemon not even in the slightest what? Please specify what you're replying to and give reasons

I'm replying in order, to your last question to me.

@rlemon so you're saying the idea of me conducting a highly publicised study on vote instigated bias on SE is ok, or that it's uncontroversially bad or something else? I'll note there have been a number of other studies in similar areas and there are accepted pre-existing academic methodologies to draw from, though outside the scope of this comment to fully detail.

I personally don't have a strong opinion for or against you conducting your own survey. I do however think you're being a bit pushy with your meta comments and not-outright demands that the staff look over your idea.

@rlemon demands the staff look over my idea? I saw strong criticism and flagged for a formal company opinion which seems to have been to delete the answer so the wider community can't see it.

I think this is a very interesting idea and subject that has somehow gone way off somewhere it doesn't need to be and I can't quite figure out where or why...

The answer you originally provided was determined by the community (or elected officials) to not actually provide an answer at all. so it was removed (that is speculation, I don't have the meta rep to see deleted content and therefore cannot see who deleted it). The question is still visible and the community can still vote on it. maybe wait more than 3-4 hours

It's not that they don't want to answer the question. It's that the answer isn't answering the questions. I'd expect (an excerpt from) the result of the study posted as the answer instead. If you're really interested in doing the study, then just do it, don't care about the votes. There are many papers about SE/SO already, and they just did it without asking us.

@rlemon this was not given as an official reason to me. Now, a study on why certain officials are elected on SE and if they really represent the community at all would also be very interesting. I would very much like to see proper democratic standards being applied to the new online power-brokers.

It wasn't an answer, we told you that. It's far more likely the community deleted it, I doubt staff are going to have given it much of a look, it's insignificant. You can edit the jist of the thought into your question, as that's where it belongs. But this is what you did: "hey guys, is this a good idea? What do you mean you're not falling over yourselves to congratulate me for this selfless act I'm proposing? Right, I'm telling."

For example, it would be possible to correlate election of SE officials with responses of SE denizens and the wider community, who may not fully understand coding but are certainly affected by the results of it, with stated beliefs about the internet and what they want out of it. It would be interesting to note how many SE denizens vote, if they understand what their vote effects, if they are given sufficient information to vote in an informed manner etc.

What is the voter turnout in SE elections? Is anyone debarred from voting? If so can any of those decisions be shown to be anti-democratic?

Have there been any studies on possible voter fraud in SE elections? Are there any independent bodies invigilating?

You can easily find out how many folks voted in every SE election. All the data is there on the election pages.

@RoryAlsop link please. Can you correlate voting with actual physical people? Is the voting open to manipulation by bots?

@Peter all of that is waay off-topic for this question...

As a mod on other (much smaller) SE sites, I have to say there is nothing that you have described that would be of any interest at such low numbers. I'd suggest you first do some research and see if there is anything worth analysing. It really doesn't look like it.

@Cai We've actually got to a far more interesting set of questions that are even more worthy of concerted study.

@RoryAlsop would you concede that mods here are likely biased and therefore unable to give objective opinion?

@Peter that's not how Stack Exchange works. Comments are meant as temporary notes to ask for clarifications and/or critique this existing question. If you have another question, ask it as such

@RoryAlsop please provide the link to the information you say is available.

Peter - go look at the election methodology yourself. It is considered by electoral folks to be fit for purpose. It is open and all data is available. But totally off topic for this question, as Cai suggests.

@RoryAlsop please provide a link to the election information you say is available.

Peter - put in some effort, seriously. Even google would give you this instantly. It is not something I will put in any more effort on here.

@RoryAlsop please provide a link to the information on moderator elections you say is open to the public.

@RoryAlsop Google provides stackoverflow.com/election but this does not seem to answer any of my questions and is not particularly useful. Please link to the information on moderator elections you are talking about.

From a link from the page you just linked... "This election ended Feb 2 '11 at 22:00. Download the election data and use OpenSTV for windows or mac to audit the results."

@KevinB thank you for the information; without viewing the data I cannot tell if it will be helpful, but I am hoping to help, in some small way, to usher in a new era of objectively verifiable democracy on Stack Exchange, despite the inevitable hostility.

Possible duplicate of How much bias is there in voting?

@Cai Something like that.

Also related: The problem with reputation: does high reputation attract too many upvotes? and Why is the contributor's user profile accessible with his/her posts, if it may potentially lead to biased voting?

I do not appear to be able to find "This election ended [date]. Download the election data and use OpenSTV for windows or mac to audit the results" at present after a search through the Google page linked to and the seemingly relevant pages linked from this page, but I note that the question of requiring certain badges, particularly badges for being popular on Meta seems elitist and anti-democratic. However, since the means of appeal on this would be to mods themselves... well...

Also, I am a Linux user and do not own a Windows or Mac OS computer.

@PeterDavidCarter the badges indicate your engagement/experience in doing things that are typical mod duties, so they are very much not elitist, but an indicator of the likelihood of being a good mod

@PeterDavidCarter OpenSTV is available for Linux as well, so that isn't an issue

hi; I'm not so bothered about that now

what I'm doing it writing a web bot that will be called Democracy Bot

is it ok to have Democracy Bot login and ask questions about its own code?

@RoryAlsop ?

also, can I upvote my bot? Is my bot allowed to upvote me?

@PeterDavidCarter absolutely not

@PeterDavidCarter and I'm pretty certain this is not allowed either. Questions are for humans.

If you use a bot to upvote your account or do anything you can't do with just one account, that breaches rules of conduct here