Suggestions polls: not viewable to everybody?

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Suggestions polls: not viewable to everybody?

Area:
suggestions

Summary:
Would the quality of suggestions voting and discussion be improved if suggestions poll results were concealed?

Description:
Polling designed to get people's honest opinions about things can be subject to social chilling effects. If someone has an opinion that turns out to be the opposite of the crowd opinion, they may feel inclined to change their vote, or perhaps not speak up about their detailed thoughts about the feature.

Changing the poll insertion widget to make the results viewable to 'None' (actually the community admins and the person who posted the suggestion) could perhaps improve the frankness of the voting, and improve the quality of the discussion.

However, visible poll results can also be a boon to developers, who might decide to pick up one bug over another based on popularity.

Poll #4292 Suggestions polls: not viewable to everybody?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
8 (14.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (5.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
29 (52.7%)

(I have no opinion)
14 (25.5%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (1.8%)

Comments

[yvi]

However, visible poll results can also be a boon to developers, who might decide to pick up one bug over another based on popularity.

Overall poll results are always viewable by everyone, no matter who can see the detailed results.

[aedifica]

If so, then I wouldn't mind this suggestion being implemented. I don't care if I can see who voted for what, but I do want to be able to see the numbers that voted for each.

[azurelunatic]

Hi, brain! *headdesk*

Though I think I may have conflated this with the idea from somebody that 'none' should really mean 'none'.

[yvi]

Which was actually my suggestion :) However, it's 'none' as in 'no-one can see the detailed results, not even the poster of the poll' (which was just implemented today, actually! http://changelog.dreamwidth.org/723817.html ) and not 'no-one can see the overall results'.

[yvi]

Wait, damnit, I misremembered. Jep, http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1694 actually also has a part with "This could control who can see how the overall results look, which is now
*always* visible.".

[cesy]

Could we make it so that a summary of votes is visible to everyone, but the details of who made each vote is only visible to admins? That way it's got the useful information for the developer, but reduces the social chilling effect.

[jumpuphigh]

I think even seeing that your vote is the one dissenting vote amongst 20 voters can cause a change in vote even if you can't see who the other voters are.

[cesy]

Yes, hence me saying reduces rather than eliminates, but I don't think we can avoid that while still keeping the information available for developers.

[jumpuphigh]

Is there a way that we can do both? Perhaps, once it has been decided to implement something, we could then share the results of the poll.

[cesy]

I like this idea.

[triadruid]

That seems reasonable (along with making the results available to devs/suggestion admins).

[kyrielle]

+1

[noracharles]

This is not a democracy, it is a debate to uncover problems and solutions and give users an opportunity to voice their opinions.

The numbers don't matter very much. However, transparency about who are helping influence and shape dreamwidth's direction does matter to me, and is one of the major selling points of dw in my opinion.

[matgb]

Exactly, some of my suggestions have been tagged for implementation despite a vote against, and others rejected despite a vote in favour, and that has to remain the way it works.

I get what Az is saying about some people wanting to go with the crowd, and it is a valid problem (I forget who did the research I read a few years back), but overall if someone is so unwilling to stick with their opinion, is their minority opinion as important anyway?

It's not like votes in polls actually matter.

[jadelennox]

I have seen people get pissy when their suggestions got shouted down, but in general it's the discussion which made people get touchy, not the votes. And we can't make the discussion anonymous (nor should we), and that's the most valuable part of the suggestions community, IMHO.

[matgb]

Aye, I tend to avoid LJ suggestions these days (sorry Az), but I've seen some massive slanging matches on there. Frequently from people putting forward suggestions that're either obviously not going to happen or worded in such a way as to completely offend site culture anyway. Or in one case special pleading from someone who thought she should be allowed an exception to site data limits as a BNF.

But the discussion is the important bit, it allows clarification of ideas and can sometimes come up with a much better implementation, I've submitted ideas that came from Suggestions discussion, and sometimes the later suggestion is much better, but solves an earlier problem as well.

I don't think the polls are a problem, and I like being able to see them for myself, as a useful guide. And restricting it to OP plus admins would mean I couldn't see responses to joint ideas or "I was going to suggest that" stuff, at least one recent was on my list of things to submit.

[denise]

I think one of the things that makes dw_suggestions work so well is that I don't hesitate to reject things out of the queue: I actually only let through about 40-50% of the things that get suggested, and it's only because the suggestion is a duplicate/in Bugzilla already/already planned about 75% of the time. The remaining 25% of the time it's something that just flat out isn't going to happen for some reason or another, and I have no compunctions about rejecting the submission with a friendly note about why that suggestion doesn't fit with DW's current vision or what-have-you. That way people aren't set up to fail, with posting a suggestion that I know is going to get savaged (not that y'all are ever so uncouth as to actually savage a suggestion, but as you know, Bob, a lot of people can take any sort of disagreement badly) and they'll be more likely to try again the next time they have something else they'd like to suggest.

I think that does a lot to make dw_suggestions a friendly and helpful place, where people are very interested in what's best for DW (and not necessarily what's best for them) and commenters are really good at teasing out all the implications of a suggestion, looking beneath what's actually suggested to find the root cause of the impulse. (A lot of times, what people suggest is actually a second-order problem; what they're actually trying to get at is the problem that leads to the problem they're trying to solve, and while their proposed solution might be a Do Not Want, the solution to the real problem might be something everybody likes or can at least live with.)

Part of what's integral to that process, though, is the transparency. Everybody can weigh everybody else's opinions based on their usage patterns of DW, etc, which I think is really important to consider. For instance, you and I use DW in radically different ways, so if I were making a decision based on input from the two of us, I'd need to take that into consideration. I know that setting poll results to admins-only would mean I'd still be able to see that, but I'm not sure if it would be a good thing for other participants to lose that information.

[azurelunatic]

And it's possible to reject things out of the queue at the rate you do because the buck stops with you and Mark.

And there's also a certain amount of security that the regulars have, that leads to even suggestions that are Do Not Wants being treated thoughtfully, because of the history of site ownership being very well in tune with what is Do Not Want and what is not. There is no particular pressing need to jump up and down screaming "DO NOT WANT" when a thoughtfully expressed "Do not want, but what about ... ?" is likely to be listened to.

[denise]

And one of the things I really like about dw_suggestions regulars is when someone says DO NOT WANT, and I explain why you have to get it anyway, the reaction is not hollering, it's "Well, I still DO NOT WANT, but I see your point, and here's what you could do to do the thing anyway in a way I could live with."

That's such an incredibly valuable thing.

[feathertail]

I feel a bit better about the idea of dw_suggestions existing now that you've explained some of the decision-making behind it. I was worried that it was making the site into design by committee, as opposed to helping give feedback and provide you and Mark with useful suggestions.

[feathertail]

a lot of people can take any sort of disagreement badly

Sorry about that. >.>b

[azurelunatic]

I think votes could possibly mean the difference between accepting or rejecting an idea that the owners are on the fence about -- if it's something that they were uncertain about, but turns out to be unexpectedly popular.

When I see no-votes for something that's otherwise popular, even a few, it does make me stop and re-examine my thoughts on it, particularly when the person who does not want it is someone who I know to be generally levelheaded and well-thought-out in their opinions. Sometimes I then find things that I add to the discussion, even if I'm in favor of it as-is. I like the hammer-out-all-the-implications culture of Suggestions.

[matgb]

Agreed, but...

If someone is in a minority on instinct, but changes mind when sees everyone else thinks differently, is that really a 'no', or is it a 'not sure, probably not, oh, it's popular, maybe then'.

Generally, the people who have an objection, or even strongly support something generally opposed, will cut in and make their opinion known, while some will be swayed to switch vote with majority, that isn't going to skew the results, because it only happens if there's alreadya strong majority, n'est ce pas?

[melannen]

I'm not convinced the social effects are a bad thing in this situation. I can't really see someone on this community saying "I really doh' want that option, but everyone else does, so I'll change my vote!" but I can see people saying "I really don't want that option, but everyone else does; what am I overlooking?", which in my mind is a good thing.

[inarticulate]

For reasons of rounded discussion being important. Even if poll results are hidden, discussion won't be, and, in some cases, being the minority view has made me realize it was important that I get why I was voting that way across in comments rather than voting and moving on.

[zvi]

I feel like this is a solution in search of a problem. If someone is self-aware enough to know that seeing how other people voting is likely to change their opinion, they can always comment and then vote and then close the entry without looking at the voting.

I agree with you that knowing other people's votes can change one's vote if you find out about their votes beforehand, but our system is not set up for that to be the default, unless you're logged out.

What might be useful is putting the poll behind a cut, so that if you're logged out and viewing your reading page, you can log in before you go vote, but otherwise, I just don't see the benefit.

[daweaver]

Psychology suggests it is always easier to agree with the contributions made so far than to voice opposition. This is true whether the previous contributions were votes or comments, though I suspect it's easier to go against the established position if one is able to explain one's thinking.

The value of suggestions is that contributors are able to kick ideas around in a relatively informal manner, before they're considered for formal development. While more contributions - even a simple "I (dis|)agree with this idea" - make for greater community involvement and a better result, I would caution against setting much store by the raw vote numbers. Some of the best ideas are so blindingly obvious that they attract little traffic.

About the only benefit I could see for exposing who voted for what is that it might be possible to spot various accounts belonging to one person, or cliques who always vote one particular way. Not a tremendously compelling argument.

[charmian]

Put "with changes" to indicate that I think there may be merit in concealing exactly who voted for what from the public, but that the general "how many people voted for such and such" should be public.

[archane]

I have no problem with hiding who voted for what option; I can see value to both leaving it open [transparency] and hiding it [a more honest response without people looking for what user=miss_popular voted and changing theirs to match].

Changing things so that no one could see the overall numbers, though, would drive me away from voting in a big hurry. I don't really care what the results are, but seeing tangible evidence that there are results and that it's not just the people who have the time / desire / spoons to leave comments being heard matters to me.

It's also nice that, when I tick the radio button and press submit, I get the instant gratification of seeing that something happened, and that my opinion is being counted regardless of its popularity.