DPL vote, 2012
So, the vote is over, and Stefano won.
During many past DPL elections, I've made my vote public, and this one is no different:
V: 1223 597c362e6156ec7e37b334837161da26
That's me, in this list. Obviously I wouldn't run if I'm not serious about it, so I voted myself first. As to the other part: I thought long and hard about that, but eventually came to the conclusion that both Stefano and Gergely had properties as a candidate that I liked, and properties that I didn't like, and that therefore I couldn't prefer either of them over the other. I found Gergely's platform to be fairly similar to my own, which is a good thing; but there were a few details that made me have some pause about his candidacy. And while I stand by the things I said during campaigning about Stefano as a DPL, the truth is that the project could be far worse off than to have him re-elected.
As to the outcome... I can't say it's entirely unexpected. I knew it was a long shot even before I started, and then campaigning didn't excactly go as I would have hoped. I expected to lose, but not by such a margin—what Stefano did wasn't winning, it's called 'trashing the opposition'. Congratulations, zack, for a truly exceptional performance; and thanks, also to Gergely, for being a worthy opponent.
In closing, I'll say that I don't think I'll run again. I've gone through the process three times now, and have never gotten very close to winning; this probably means that what I feel about the position of DPL is somewhat removed from what the project as a whole thinks about it. So, absent some radical changes in either the project itself or in the way I look upon it, another candidacy from me is highly unlikely.
I guess I'll have to find other ways to spend my time...
I’m not sure if you can really say that you have not been “close to winning“. Thanks to Condorcet voting, we can see that, if Zack had not been running (a realistic prognosis for next year), you had been the clear winner of the vote.
Also, I would not look so much as the votes comparing you with zack; even if a majority of people would think „I believe Wouter would be almost as good a DPL as zack“, the result can look as if he trashed you. More important are the votes comparing you with NOTA, and while Zack gets indeed very good results there, yours are not much worse than, say, the result that got Steve into office in 2008.
"Trouncing the opposition" would probably have come across as you intended.
To my natively en_US ears, my first reaction to "trashing the opposition" is an accusation of negative personal attacks against one's opponent. It doesn't necessarily imply that the person doing the trashing is saying inaccurate things, but it's definitely a phrase that suggests that the trasher is not competing fairly.
I did realize you probably didn't mean it that way, and re-reading your post convinced me that you meant a rather factual "he beat all opponents by a sizable margin." I'm just agreeing with the GP on how the phrase sounds to at least some native Anglophones. Hopefully anyone offended will think twice and/or read your comment, then no longer be offended.
As I said on IRC, thanks to you and Gergely for caring enough to run seriously, and congrats to Zack.