Should SE23.life polls be generally anonymous?

From time to time we post polls on the site, and in setting up a poll one of the options is whether or not it should show who voted.

I had some feedback where due to someone’s line of work they felt they would be better not to vote in polls unless it was anonymous. Alternatively recording people’s vote may foster a bit more discussion and feel a bit more like a community of people.

So what do people think, should polls on the site generally be anonymous or not? Here’s an anonymous poll!

Could you vote in anon mode if it was otherwise public, so mods could see the votes but hidden to everyone else?

Potentially… however anonymous mode is only available to members at TL3 or more, and if the poll is in an opt in category group, it may not be accessible in anon mode either.

I think polls should be for existing members. Otherwise a strong lobby group could do a sort of flash mob on the poll, swing things their way and then we never hear from them again. They might not even be local.

So I think we are ok as only logged in members can cast votes. Of course it’s possible a bunch of new accounts could be created to cast a vote, but I’d probably notice a sudden influx of new signups.

There was a poll on the SE26 sister site where lots of people signed up, voted and were never seen again. Accirding to their stats, total read time for some individuals = 1m. I was hoping it could maybe be set up such that you had to be a member for a month before you ciukd vote in a poll?

I see, you’d like a minimum level to vote in polls so the new sign-up with 1m read time can’t vote until they’ve engaged a little. That would make sense, but isn’t a technological option right now.

I guess it does make a case for keeping who voted visible though, so you can see if votes are from established members or not.

Generally I hope the polls are light-hearted enough that we don’t need to worry too much about drive-by signups trying to distort the result, but it’s something I’ll bear in mind - thanks!