Re: Yes to Publicity! Not to Anonimit! Was: Re: GNOME Foundation Annual Elections - proposal

[Aleksey Sanin <aleksey aleksey com>]

> Not with voting I don't think.  Judging from personal experience I know the
> thought had occured to me when voting as what would some people make of my
> vote.  So definately random politics, popular opinions and relationships not
> having anything to do with who should be on the GNOME board did likely have
> an effect on who I voted for.  And it should not have.
>  
The truth is that you *could not* eliminate this problem completely. 
Thus you have to understand
how bad is it and try to limit damage. As I wrote before anonymous 
voting *is not* the only solution.
And since it has its own problems I suggest to understand and carefully 
compare pluses and minuses of
this change.

> Free software review works even if you don't know WHO wrote the original
> piece of code and so it's not a good analogy.
>  
I do not talk about the quality of the code after reviewer did review 
and suggested changes. I am
talking about the way original author writes code in case s/he knows 
that nobody but her/him
would ever look at it and in case when s/he defenetly know that at least 
one poor guy (reviewer)
would read it. I've seen how people coding style changes *dramaticaly* 
in the second case.

> Exactly.  Or that your boss would see that you voted for people from company
> C rather then some candidates from company B.  I know it would certainly
> influence my votes.  Or what if your boss is a candidate.  I would quite
> likely vote for him/her then, even if I didn't think he/she would be the
> best candidate.  (Maybe I should use 'it' instead of 'he/she' since that
> just sounds crap)
>  
If my boss is a candidate and if I don't think s/he is a good guy for 
the job then probably I would
go, talk with her/him and explain my position. Usually I am working with 
people who do understand
that other people have right to think differently and I don't see that 
this could be a problem
for me, say, right now. If you have your position ("I don't think that 
my boss can be a good GNOME
Foundation member") then anonymous vote just helps you to say this to 
yourself and make sure
that nobody will notice it. If you really really think that your boss 
should not be elected and if you
care about election at all then probably you should say it to everyone 
instead (who knows your boss
better than you do?). Yes, you may have problems because of your 
statement. But it's *your*
descision. And *you* have to make it.


> > And probably there are other solutions to this problem as well.  Anonimity
> > sounds like a first option but this does not mean that it's the best one.
> >    
>
> But what is the problem with anonymous voting.  You say understand that outside
> influence is a problem, but you also gave it as the only advantage of public
> voting.
The issue by itself is big enough. And in my original email I have 
listed 3 issues that bothers me in
anonymous voting. This one is only the first one.


Aleksey