New feature: Anonymous polling
Wooof two updates in one day!
We've also recently deployed a beta feature called 'anonymous voting'... another one of our more-oft-requested features. There's been some rich discussions about the feasibility and utility of this feature going on here and here
We've decided to implement this, and have deployed it to a few expressly interested groups. It could be something which is available as an option to anyone, but I'd like to get a little closed beta feedback about it first. If Anonymous polling is turned on for your group, simply select the option when creating a poll:
And anyone who's not you who votes in the poll will have their identity
hidden, although their vote and reasoning will still be visible.
(Note that at present anonymous polls remain anonymous even after voting has closed. This is one of the things I am open to hearing feedback about :) )
If you'd be interested in trying out anonymous polling in your group, shoot an email to [email protected] and we'll turn it on for you. Thanks for your help!
James Kiesel Mon 18 Dec 2017 3:28AM
I've just turned this on as an option for all groups, because we've had quite a bit of interest in the feature. Let me know if there are any issues :)
Matthew Cropp Wed 21 Mar 2018 7:24PM
Bug: I created an anonymized poll in a group and asked it to notify me when people respond to it. While the responses are anonymous in the poll itself, my notifications still say who responded each time someone does, which could make it easy to infer who answered what.
Perhaps change the notifications to "a group member responded" for such situations?
James Kiesel Wed 21 Mar 2018 8:11PM
Thanks for the report; this should now be fixed (for future notifications :) ).
Matthew Cropp Thu 22 Mar 2018 1:19AM
Thanks, @gdpelican!
Matthew Cropp Sun 8 Apr 2018 2:18AM
One other thing that would be useful would be to have the results of an anonymous poll not be revealed until the poll closes. In particular, I'm about to run a board election with 6 candidates for 5 slots, and being able to see the results seems like it could create an incentive to hold off voting until folks have seen how others vote.
Jamie Farquharson Mon 16 Apr 2018 8:59PM
I would also be interested in this feature, for comparable reasons.
James Kiesel Tue 24 Apr 2018 10:23PM
I think this is an easy addition and I'm going to take a crack at it today.
Benny Benny Tue 24 Apr 2018 3:31PM
Hey! I've been trying out this feature and it's really cool. I'm using it for a poll for which a group member expressed interest in being anonymous.
One note: as the vote admin, it looks like I am able to revert the vote type from anonymous to not anonymous after a bunch of folks have voted, thus removing their anonymity! This seems kind of tricky / unsafe to me. I wonder what you think. Maybe anonymous-mode should not be changeable after a poll is created?
James Kiesel Tue 24 Apr 2018 10:23PM
Yes, my best advice for this at the moment is 'Don't do that'. :)
In the future we'll be taking a good hard look at 'draft mode' for polls, which will give a grace period for editing options and context around a decision, and then allowing you to explicitly open it for voting (at which point some options, like adding additional polling options or whether the poll is anonymous or not, will be set, and unable to change)
Z. Blace · Thu 16 Nov 2017 9:39AM
Looks like good initial implementation.
Post vote de-anonnymizing is great option but i guess not essential.
Keep up the good work!