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

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Sat, Sep 13, 2003 at 02:08:16AM -0700, Aleksey Sanin wrote:
> >And it's exactly this kind of outside influence that we're trying to
> >avoid with anonymous voting...
> >
> Why??? It works, you get better results with it. Why you want to remove 
> it??? :)

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.

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.

> Anyway, it sounds like there are two positions on the subject and none of
> the sides is will change its opinion. Can we try to go in another
> direction? As far as I can understand, the main reason for introducing
> anonymous voting is the fear that a guy A from company B would get votes
> from people working for company B just because s/he is a guy from company B
> and s/he can make life of a voter from company B a nightmare if this voter
> would not vote for guy A (replace "company B" with any other group of
> people, say "friends or fans of John Smith").

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)

> 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.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   If you think nobody cares if you're alive,
   try missing a couple of car payments.
                       -- Earl Wilson