Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherCat
[...] So, hands up those here who for reasons of their own comfort, or for the comfort of those asking the question, whether in a public poll or not (e.g. the workplace), have given a response to that question that does not truly represent their view on the matter. No lying now  . |
I never lie ... whoops, that was a bit of a fib.
The honesty aspect cuts both ways. Anonymous polls are subject to jokes and pranks (some people do have a strange sense of humour), to stacking, to random selection, and so on. I'm not particularly concerned about stacking in this case, but the other problems may be an issue (perhaps partly dependent on the volume of votes we actually get). And while open votes may influence people to vote particular ways for appearances sake, there is also an element of pressure to vote for something the person is willing to defend. How do these conflicting influences come out in the end? No idea.
For reasons like those you have cited, it did occur to me that some nominations may actually benefit from anonymous votes - several of my nominations are quite generally popular rather than necessarily being literary masterpieces (
Tarzan of the Apes, for example). These nominations may receive more votes merely because more people have read them (perhaps). This is one reason why I thought an open vote would be good, as it lets each of us make our own interpretation of the results based on what we know of the voters.