Anonymous votes

I was surprised to see this particular vote being anonymous. My first thought was "darn, are the stakes that high?"

Our values are to be open and transparent and in discussions like this I think they should always be open and visible and not just shown at the end. The voting process encourages engagement if there are dissenting views and that is critically important for accurate measurement. If you can point people to an issue where you know they have a strong option but just don't participate in the general discussions (as they are less engaged in the project work) then you will get a better quality result. Otherwise it is often a tiny echo-chamber effect that is then used to justify an outcome that isn't actually supported by the wider community.

I would redo the poll as open and visible as everyone votes - as I think those who have already voted are motivated enough to do so again.

I also think polls of communities where there are lots more people engaged and much more representative of our users are more important than polls of the committers - but also getting the committer viewpoints on record and visible helps - and also to see the debate.

The other aspect is that where there is a discussion going on, people can and do change votes/opinions - and anonymous voting entirely removes that option.

@Tim Hudson

OK, I will start a new poll. Please let me know if I should proceed with:

a) Anton's system, where an individual's votes are shown when a poll is over

b) a system where an individual's votes are shown as the vote is cast.

I personally prefer a) as it makes it harder if an individual tends to vote with (or against) the crowd.

Thanks for the clarification.

@Sasha Nedvedicky It’s nice to see (a) named after me, but it shouldn’t be; and (b) what I’d like to see here too - Loomio allows for that type of poll.

To have people able to see the result and the patterns and be able to change based on others views and to encourage debate and engagement during the vote, only b) makes sense to me. I also think the current a) needs adjustment to show the running status (number of votes and expected result) at the very least to be useful for encouraging participation during the vote.

@Tim Hudson, not sure, though, that discussion on the topic has to be tied to the vote itself. Also, technically speaking, the way the poll is presented (taking https://openssl-communities.org/p/PS4NqW5C/switching-from-ansi-c-to-c-99- as an example), I see a series of statements, rather than a discussions. Not quite the same thing.

@Richard Levitte  I think in this platform we need to anyway create a thread for discussion, and it can be tied to a (new) poll.

I've started new poll here:

https://openssl-communities.org/d/3V4qoIdX/switching-from-ansi-c-to-c-99-discussion

thanks for participating again.