Anonymous Suggestions

[charmian]

It seems like the request for anonymous suggestions at the suggestions comm has gathered quite a bit of support, although some of that is because there's a separate problem in there (namely, the way currently you can't set the option to turn off notifications when making the suggestions, although you can by editing the post afterward).

Personally, I think that while anonymous suggestions themselves are not very harmful, and there seems to be no compelling reason against the feature itself (this is my usual rubric for voting against a suggestion, whether I think there's a compelling reason against it. (Why is it necessary to know who someone is? I don't know who most of the suggesters on dw_suggestions are anyway) Whether I would use it or not use it is fairly immaterial to me, because as like... a person who uses only one icon, I doubt my use of the service is representative. XD However, if it seems totally an edge-use-case thing, though, I may sometimes vote against it), I'm not sure the problem complained about exists to such a great extent, and also, the logistical arguments against it seem compelling. Perhaps a better idea would be a non-technical solution to an essentially social problem, namely, opening up a comm where people could anonymously submit suggestions in the comments or something, and interested parties could take them and post them to the suggestions comm.

The thing is, I'm not so sure there are so many people who are unwilling to bring up their suggestions publicly? Are there really? And even if there are some, isn't the nature of suggestions that often another person will come up with the same idea and propose it? What I think it more likely is that people may hold back on suggestions that may be seen as unpopular, which is another problem, but a somewhat separate one. On the other hand, I guess I would think "meh, I know this suggestion is going to be unpopular, so why bother to suggest it if it's just going to get voted down into oblivion?" and that would apply whether I was putting it under my own name or not.

I think the dw_suggestions comm is, if anything, more open than the LJ suggestions comm, also, possibly because DW is seen as a work in progress.

Comments

[sub_divided]

Not allowing anonymous suggestions is backward. Restaurants let you fill in "how can we improve your service?" cards without asking for a name. Sites have "how are we doing?" boxes that don't ask for any information, besides an email address, which they promise to keep private. LJ is getting non-representative suggestions from people who don't mind full writing posts, while signed in, that hundreds of other people will see.

[charmian]

I suppose, but in those situations, there is assumed to be no value to discussing the service with the other patrons. We don't have a discussion area in a restaurant where it's talked about, and IIRC DW has a feedback section to discuss how the service can be improved.

Perhaps DW should simply allow people to submit suggestions to feedback, then, and then if the site owners feel that there are some that should be discussed, then the mod should post it to dw-suggestions?

[zvi]

Suggestions isn't for feedback, in the general sense. Feedback in the general sense should be directed to a support request.

Suggestions is specifically for "please make DW work differently in this fashion." And because this wouldn't affect just the person making the request, but all DW users, Mark and Denise want other users to be able to weigh in on the question of whether or not working differently in that fashion would be of use to other users.

[syderia]

I do know people who are really shy, and who in particular have trouble posting to communities because it would be putting themselves out there.

I don't think they should all be anonymous, but a mechanism to make anonymous suggestions might be useful.

[charmian]

Yeah, I just question, in light of the technical considerations Denise brings up in that thread, whether it couldn't be done in other ways (such as through a community where people could pick up suggestions and submit them), because LJ software really doesn't have that mechanism. (IIRC some other social blogging sites do; Tumblr does actually)

[syderia]

I agree that the implementation doesn't have to be technical.

I think that Denise's objections are more because anon suggestions aren't what she wants for DreamWidth.

[charmian]

Quoting from Denise in the thread: ... anonymous suggestions, or ones that are posted by someone else or on someone else's behalf, destroy accountability and transparency, and is very much against what I want for Dreamwidth.

Well, I can see her viewpoint on it; it's kind of a problem if the person suggesting isn't around to clarify the text of their suggestion, which may be what she meant by "accountability."

However, I think she also is correct that there are substantial administrative/technical barriers regardless? Anyway, like I said, I think the way to do this is by informal means. If it doesn't really matter who posts a suggestion, the person had might as well just ask a friend to do it.

[yvi]

I am not sure about the technical limitations. There is a bot that was once supposed to be the poster of these entries anyway, I think? suggestions_bot. I think it might even still posts the private entries that have the link to directly transfer a suggestion to the bugtracking system.

[charmian]

Huh, I had no idea about that bot.

[pne]

I wonder why people don't simply create a sockpuppet account if they want to post a suggestion that they don't want linked to their main journal name?

[charmian]

Because they ran out of invite codes, I guess?