[Building Sakai] Questions about the public poll option

[Jim Mezzanotte]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get some clarity on the "public" poll option in the
Polls tool. Unless I'm missing something (and apologies in advance if
I am), it doesn't seem to be working.

I could only find the following description for this feature
(https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-18855):

"If the Poll tool is on a .anon accessible site then add a checkbox
option 'allow public to vote' between the 'Limits' and 'Results are
visible' sections. This will be complementary to adding the .anon role
with poll.vote permission to a site, but will allow an individual poll
to be public, rather than having to have them all public."

I'll confess the language here has me confused--if this option is
complementary to adding the ".anon" role, then I would assume a
"public" option would limit an individual poll. In other words, with
the ".anon" role added, all polls are public. So if you didn't check
the "public" box, that pool would not be accessible, even with the
.anon role added.

But from my testing, both in our own 2.9 instances and in community
nightly, the "public" box seems to have no effect at all. If you don't
have the .anon role added, selecting this option doesn't provide
public access to a poll; and if you do add the .anon role, not
selecting this option won't limit public access.

I also don't see any evidence of public visibility--if you add a
public poll to a site and then find that site via search on the
gateway, the poll is not displayed.

There's an existing query
(https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/POLL-145) about this option,
specifically in regards to it not being documented in Help.

But I'm wondering if this feature works at all--and if not, whether it
should be disabled. Even if it does work as designed, my two cents is,
it's confusing to end users. They won't know about the ".anon" role
and they will reasonably expect that checking the "public" option will
be sufficient for making a poll publicly accessible.

Best,
Jim Mezzanotte
Asahi Net International