349317 - Ability to make votes anonymous

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Paul]

One of the most important aspects of voting is anonimity.  Bugzilla has a page just to exploit who the voters are and this is wrong.

It's good enough to know the number of votes.

This page should be removed.

MYOB.

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> One of the most important aspects of voting is anonimity.

I can see why that might be the case for some installs, but I don't think that's true for b.m.o, as an example. So I think making this change unconditionally is a bad idea.

Comment 2

[Paul]

IMO it's probably most important on bmo.

It seems that Bugzilla's voting system has roots in democracy but now it's governed by the few.  I don't want people to look to see if the VIPs vote on something to deem that it is good or not.

Comment 3

[timeless]

too bad we wontfixed the voteagainst bug. i'd use my non anonymized vote to vote against this bug.

in open source, things aren't democratic. who you are matters because of what you've said or done to show that your input is valuable.

in commercial products that aren't open, a manager's vote usually outranks a secretary's. and the ceo's probably outranks the manager. and no matter what, each person's vote, who they are, what they've said or done, and what else and how else they've voted in the past affects what they're saying by coting here.

i don't see any in betweens. provide an example installation (bmo doesn't count) and a real explanation from real admins of that install as to why they feel it's necessary for votes to be annonymous.

note: i'm not opposed to allowing an admin to pick a GROUP that people have to be a member of to see who voted for individual bugs. I'd gladly set that group to canconfirm on bmo if people agreed. then you could not see who voted for bugs and everyone would be happy :).

Comment 4

[Paul]

(In reply to comment #3)
> too bad we wontfixed the voteagainst bug. i'd use my non anonymized vote to
> vote against this bug.
> 
> in open source, things aren't democratic. who you are matters because of what
> you've said or done to show that your input is valuable.

umm sorry to disagree, but if what you are saying is true then it invalidates the voting system altogether.  We should just do have what the VIPs want us to have.  (This is exactly where we are today.)

note: I am not opposed to getting rid of the voting system altogether.

> 
> in commercial products that aren't open, a manager's vote usually outranks a
> secretary's. and the ceo's probably outranks the manager. and no matter what,
> each person's vote, who they are, what they've said or done, and what else and
> how else they've voted in the past affects what they're saying by coting here.

I must disagree again.  Usually the silent majority doesn't speak up because they are afraid of repercussions.  An anonymous vote allows them to express themselves.
> 
> i don't see any in betweens. provide an example installation (bmo doesn't
> count) and a real explanation from real admins of that install as to why they
> feel it's necessary for votes to be annonymous.

I am a real admin and I am telling you that people won't vote because of that screen.  They don't want the responsibility.

> 
> note: i'm not opposed to allowing an admin to pick a GROUP that people have to
> be a member of to see who voted for individual bugs. I'd gladly set that group
> to canconfirm on bmo if people agreed. then you could not see who voted for
> bugs and everyone would be happy :).
> 
I agree that there are no in betweens.

Comment 5

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

My vote is also for WONTFIX. I haven't seen any real-world problem caused by this.

Comment 6

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

wontfix.

This is all about some very custom enviornment where people are afraid to vote for bugs for technical products.
It's not only against open source way of thinking, but against whole idea of cooperation on product. If the user wants, he can remove this screen URL from his template.

Comment 7

[timeless]

bugzilla knows who voted for what, as such any admin can investigate this by asking the database. if we instead really did simply allocate X votes to a user and transfer votes, we could have anonymous ballot stuffing, administrative voter fraud where votes are deleted because you can't prove someone voted for them in the first place. and various other fun things. and of course users would lose the one useful feature, which is being told when things they voted for were resolved.

voting isn't anonymous. even if bugzilla did manage to implement something, anyone w/ webserver access could snoop the logs and find out who voted for what/when.