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SecurePoll: More intuitive drag-and-drop
Open, In Progress, Needs TriagePublicFeature

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Authored By
jrbs
May 16 2025, 5:49 PM
Referenced Files
F63620255: image.png
Jul 9 2025, 11:37 AM
F60077704: Screenshot 2025-05-16 at 1.03.58 am.png
May 16 2025, 5:50 PM
F60077703: Screenshot 2025-05-16 at 1.04.09 am.png
May 16 2025, 5:50 PM
F60077702: Screenshot 2025-05-16 at 1.03.48 am.png
May 16 2025, 5:50 PM
F60077589: Untitled presentation.png
May 16 2025, 5:49 PM
F60077580: Untitled presentation (1).png
May 16 2025, 5:49 PM

Description

Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
When voting in an STV election, it would be great to have the options on the left and for the voter to drag these options over to the right in order to rank and vote for them.

At the moment voting looks like this. It is not clear to the voter that additional options can be selected:

Screenshot 2025-05-16 at 1.03.48 am.png (912×2 px, 105 KB)

Screenshot 2025-05-16 at 1.04.09 am.png (1×2 px, 122 KB)

Screenshot 2025-05-16 at 1.03.58 am.png (1×2 px, 118 KB)

Ideally it would look more like this:

Untitled presentation (1).png (540×960 px, 25 KB)

Untitled presentation.png (540×960 px, 25 KB)

Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):

At the moment it is not particularly intuitive that one can vote for multiple candidates in these elections. The dropdown remained filled with the previously-selected option, and just spawns a box below it - it's not clear that box is movable or intended to be the final vote for the user.

Benefits (why should this be implemented?):

I believe an implementation more like this would make it more clear to voters that they must "rank" those they wish to vote for, and that those rankings can be moved around into the desired order.

Event Timeline

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript
Amdrel changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Jun 16 2025, 6:29 PM
Amdrel claimed this task.
Amdrel moved this task from Backlog to Actively working on the MediaWiki-extensions-SecurePoll board.

Change #1163067 had a related patch set uploaded (by Amdrel; author: Amdrel):

[mediawiki/extensions/SecurePoll@master] WIP: Replaced the STV vote form's combobox with a drag-and-drop widget

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1163067

Change #1163067 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/SecurePoll@master] Replaced the STV vote form's combobox with a drag-and-drop widget

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1163067

image.png (1×2 px, 211 KB)

The new drag-n-drop STV voting interface looks nice, but may require some explanation for maximum clarity. Should we consider adding some text directly above or below it that explains how it works?

Example text to get us started (feel free to iterate):

Drag candidates from the "not ranked" area to the "ranked" area to vote. You may vote for multiple candidates. Please place the candidates in your order of preference, with the #1 slot being the most preferred, the #2 slot being the second most preferred, etc. Leaving candidates in the "not ranked" area means you are not voting for them.
STran subscribed.

cc @jrbs for product-y decisions.

Please place the candidates in your order of preference, with the #1 slot being the most preferred

The slots are automatically numbered as you drag and drop so I'm not sure if we want to imply that you are directly putting any option in a specific slot.

This did remind me that I forgot to file the follow-up, T399072: Remove numbering from unranked candidates in STV's drag and drop interface, which may or may not affect your opinion on clarity.