Re-requested: Being able to anonymize feedback [DISCUSSION]
Description
Attachments
Activity
Beth Tucker Long September 30, 2017 at 7:12 PM
As someone who leaves feedback for people, is a speaker, and is a conference organizer, I can see many sides of this issue. Here are my thoughts:
1. As someone leaving feedback, it is very important to be able to leave anonymous feedback. There are times when you may want to leave negative (constructive) feedback for someone you know, but you don't want them to know that the feedback is from you. There are also instances where marginalized people may not wish to have their name published on the website, but still wish to give helpful feedback.
2. As a speaker, anonymous feedback is less helpful since I can't respond to it. It would be great if the secret identity was contacted to let them know that a reply was left to their comment so that the speaker still has a chance to respond to the feedback, ask questions, etc.
3. As a conference organizer, I would definitely want to be able to see who is leaving anonymous feedback that violates the CoC. However, since people can leave feedback on the conference itself, I'm not sure that I should be able to see the name on them automatically. I think people should have the ability to leave anonymous feedback about my event as well. However, if there is a CoC violation or the feedback is inappropriate, perhaps there could be a way to request the identity of the poster?
Honestly, though, I think having it published anonymously, but making it very clear that their identity would not be hidden from the Joind.in admins and the Event organizers (perhaps list them so the person knows their identities) would solve pretty much all issues presented here.
Liam September 27, 2017 at 9:21 AM
@david - yes, from past conversations my understand is that it was omitted from the new site intentionally for the above reasons.
I'm not a fan of private feedback, however I do think some form of anon. (built while making it clear that the event organiser and site admins will know who posted it, so you can still be held to account in terms of CoC etc) would be reasonable.
David Stockton September 27, 2017 at 2:24 AM
@liam - I think this was functionality that existed in the original site that maybe didn't make it over. Indeed if I go to the legacy site, and log in and go to make a comment I have the option of leaving my feedback either anonymously and/or leaving it marked as private so only the speaker can see it.
This has come up again a few times recently - people requesting the ability to anonymize feedback submissions.
Until now it's mainly come from individuals, however we've now had it requested from an event organiser, so perhaps it's something we need to re-address?
Essentially, they've found that talks that are not as strong are getting fewer feedbacks, and as such those speakers who could probably benefit the most from the feedback are not getting it. Because they actively promote leaving feedback (running prize draws, not opening the free bar until a certain amount of feedback has been received etc), they suspect it's down to people not wanting to leave negative feedback with their name published.
As previously discussed, the main reason for requiring details is to help reduce the amount of inappropriate feedback, and also to (hopefully) guide people to provide more constructive feedback.
I've spoken to Beth about this, and she agrees it's probably needed from a conference/UG organiser point of view. The potential solution we thought of was to require people to have an account to post feedback, but to give them an option to hide their name when leaving feedback, making it clear that the event organisers and joind.in admins will still be able to see who left the feedback, but that no-one else would.
That way, the person posting the feedback knows they can still be held accountable (including the event organiser being able to deal with any CoC issues at their event that arose from feedback), but would hopefully still feel more comfortable in perhaps leaving feedback that wasn't overly positive as the speaker and other people reading it wouldn't know who it had come from.
Thoughts?