Anonymous voting only for content not the person

Hi @Lucas Auroville - I'm not sure what you mean. Can you explain in more detail what information would be hidden in your ideal situation?

If I were to guess, I think you want the anonymous voting to behave the same way, but after the poll has closed, you still want to be able to understand who voted? Currently we remove user_id from the votes when the poll closes to ensure that data export does not reveal voter identity. Do you want to retain user_id on votes after the poll has closed so you can analyze the data?

We would only retain who (user_id) voted not what (yes, no, abstain) they voted.

One almost complete if a little laborious way is to set the option to remind undecided voters to vote and send it out in closing minutes of the poll. Then you have a final list in your notification history which picks up all but last moment voters in the final undecided voters. You can tell from the final count how many voted last minute but not who. I don’t know what you want to do with the data but this has worked well enough for our purposes especially to find those who regularly do not vote and dialogue with them about why they don’t participate ( the conversation itself can be very useful!)

@Midi Berry thanks for that hack...

I love the hack @Midi Berry - actually you could reproduce the same thing using the "remind" function manually just before the poll closes.

At the same time, I feel unsure if anonymous should allow such hacks or the requested feature, because I feel worried people will trust it too much then get mad or hurt when their identity is revealed (ie: when voter turn out is low and they posted something that depended on anonymity)

@Midi Berry - have you had a moment to look at the participation report. It seems related to this topic. I'd love some feedback about it.

@Robert Guthrie Hi Rob. I am travelling at the moment and internet time is intentionally limited to about five minutes per day! So I haven't checked out the participation report but on first view it looks very useful. Is it available now? If so I'll check it out in detail when back online regularly and give you feedback.

Yes, I was writing in a hurry and did mean that the last 'remind' can be manual. Re your concerns, I can understand that this might be an issue for low trust contexts.

One of our collective's core values is transparency and we habitually don't use anonymous voting, as it has never been part of our culture. It was used once accidentally earlier this year and then the next person to raise a poll just followed suit, and the next... It was an interesting turn of events. We haven't found the moment to discuss and decide yet, although testing the waters informally, I sense the feeling is to return to full transparency in voting as soon as possible - we place a lot of value in dissent and community benefits that can emerge from exploring openly the tensions of different viewpoints - accepting and embracing shadow has always been part of our reason for being.

OK today's 5 minutes is up! Best to all 👋

@Robert Guthrie Hi Rob. Following up on your invitation for feedback on the Participation Report. Because I've been on a summer Internet Sabbatical, I'm only getting to look at the report now, so this is very much a first impression.

I love it! Thank you so much. It's useful to see at a glance patterns of participating, including who is voting and not. Also good to see patterns over time. I'm imagining the country data may be useful for us when sharing information externally. I'll be sharing with our Vivero Circle stewards and will let you know if there are other feedback comments. It's timely to have this information now as we are likely to invite a commitment 'reset' of our membership shortly, to ask if we are carrying some non-active subscribers who are here by default and would perhaps like to leave.

Anyway, first impressions altogether positive!

Thanks, that's a great idea. It is essentially like you said, to know who is not participating. There's a difference between voter id and content anonymity. As long as it is made clear and people are consenting that's fine with me. The intent is a practical one, which is to know who is not participating to ensure that communication is established and they can use the platform, since we have a lot of elders here who are not so tech savy.

Maybe one way to think about this is not as anonymous vote, but as secret vote. Like in elections (in India) where "who is voting" is known publicly and immediately as one votes, but what they voted for is secret. The result of the poll is also secret till the end of the poll when the aggregate result gets announced.

This also allows a poll in which the present votes don't influence the next voters

@Akshay yes, that's the "Hide results" feature we already have.