Anonymous votes
Nicola Tuveri
Public
Seen by 17
I believe we should avoid whenever possible to run anonymous votes in the communities, also I think the discussion with open votes before the closing of the voting period would in general be beneficial. Especially in OTC seeing the motivations of each voter and discussing different point of views helped creating a more solid consensus and it was not unlikely for people to change their initial vote based on further considerations after looking at the problem from alternative perspectives.
I am writing this in relation to the c99 vote, where I filled my initial tentative vote, and included a bunch of questions for other committers to discuss as I currently have a relatively uninformed opinion that could benefit from shared discussions.
But in general I believe we could adopt open votes with open results even before closing as the golden standard, for sure in this community where we all know each others, but I’d say across most if not all communities.
Dmitry Belyavsky Wed 14 May 2025 8:37PM
Can we switch this poll to non-anonymous one (or create a parallel one)?
I don't think technical votes should be anonymous
Tomas Mraz Thu 15 May 2025 4:21AM
My position was always that decisions about people (i.e., elections) should be anonymous and any other polls/votes should be public.
Tomas Mraz Thu 15 May 2025 4:26AM
However committers and individual communities are a little bit special in the sense that the people represent just themselves in these communities which differs from the other communities where your votes should be public also because you should vote on behalf of a company/organization and not just based on your individual interests.
Sasha Nedvedicky Thu 15 May 2025 8:18AM
@Nicola Tuveri Thank you for starting a discussion. I always prefer voting anonymously; in my opinion, the result from anonymous voting is more solid (although it might be surprising quite often). People participating in an anonymous poll cast their vote without fear of how others may feel about their position. I agree that there should be an open discussion that precedes every poll, where various reasons and views are shared among participants. In this poll (ansi-c -> c-99) the discussion was skipped. I think I'm just experiencing a learning moment here. Next time I will start with a discussion thread before proceeding to a poll.
@Dmitry Belyavsky There are two options: continue with the anonymous poll or scratch it and start from the beginning. It's just not fair to change the rules while voting is running. Do you want me to cancel this poll and start a new non-anonymous one?
@Tomas Mraz It did not come to my mind that we can distinguish between elections (about people) and technical polls. We can go that way so elections will be anonymous and all other polls non-anonymous.
If you don't mind, I'd like to continue with the anonymous poll here. Also, keep in mind that even the result (change to C-99) means nothing here because the decision about the switch will happen elsewhere. We (as committers) are going to ask advisory committees to change the technical policy so ansi-c will get replaced with C-99.
I'm not sure what's going to happen when the poll is over, if every participant will be able to see comments/questions at particular votes. Perhaps we can just do it the other way round, we can finish anonymous voting and then discuss the result. This, I think, also works.
Dmitry Belyavsky Thu 15 May 2025 8:22AM
We can continue this poll as anonymous, WFM
Kurt Roeckx Thu 15 May 2025 1:05PM
Anonymous voting has come up in Debian too, where only elections used to be anonymous. But this vote changed all votes to be anonymous: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_001
Anton Arapov Thu 15 May 2025 1:12PM
I really like the point shared in the link below and hope others take the time to read it. It genuinely makes sense to me and reflects what I think about this topic.
Sasha Nedvedicky Thu 15 May 2025 4:04PM
OK I see the point in the paper:
Voting should be organized in a manner which means simply that no one
can be sure that how he votes will be hidden from his friends and associates.it makes sense and I like it. However, I don't know how to set it up in the tool we are using. I'd like to organize a poll anonymously in the sense that no one can see how others vote until the poll is closed and the results are shown. Maybe I misremember, but during the election to the board, I could see how other people voted in my group and I could eventually (even unconsciously) adjust my poll accordingly. This is bad. I need people to cast their vote independently as much as possible. I expect people to do the homework, re-think the question, and cast their vote, such is the best for them and the project. I don't mind if the poll gets unanonymized after results are published, but I don't know how to set it up here.
Sasha Nedvedicky Thu 15 May 2025 4:10PM
OK I've just found it in the manual: one has to tick option 'Hide Results' In this case the tool will do exactly what I want. voting will not be anonymous but results are not shown until the voting period closes. After that everyone can see how each member voted.
( https://help.loomio.com/en/user_manual/polls/starting_proposals/index.html#hide-results)
I think this is the right way to do. Another learning moment for me.
Neil Horman · Wed 14 May 2025 7:06PM
Adding some discussion here, I'm personally ok with non-anonymous voting, but it may be worth considering the implications that non-anonymous voting vs anonymous voting have, particularly those situations in which a given individual may be part of multiple communities for which there might be outside influence.
For instance a committer which works for a company may have an interest in the outcome of a vote for which a committer (who is an employee of that company) has a viewpoint which is at odds with the companies desires. Not saying that does or even will happen, but it might be worth taking into consideration.