If you have real use cases for seeing who rated a page how, let me have them. Otherwise, this still looks like complexity that can be killed and just because it's already there is no protection… :-)

Example: "Do you like the new version of ….. ?"
[+] Yes / [-] No

Reason to keep the 'who rated' data: Gives the ability to look up who voted "No" and ask them why they don't like the new design, so that it can be improved next time.

If this data is removed, the Rate module cannot be used for this (very useful) purpose.

Sounds fair enough but do you actually believe people either use this, or that it's the best way? Surely the simplest is the combination of a poll and comments, so people can express themselves.

To give a concrete example, we propose a new syntax for the Rating module and allow you to vote, then we contact those who voted No and ask them why… That's a pretty opaque way of working. No-one here would accept that.

I'm not really convinced of the use case. In fact, I think that if people realize their rating can be monitored, they're less likely to rate.

If I'm not mistaken the ability to show who has voted, or not, is already available.

It is already available but my question is whether anyone actually uses it. Not theoretically, but currently (the rating module has been around for three years). If no, it must go. If yes, we need to ask what the actual use case is, and whether this is still the best solution. Note that when we made the Rating module we had no watchers, notifications, _templates, etc.

i use it when ever i can. bugs wishes etc.

let me give you and example.
who wants to share mny million euros i have just found lying in the road.
[[module Rate]]
i get 10 ratings.
Two of them are, lets say, helmuti and michal,
the other eight are all squark who has used his 8 email addresses to create 8 user names and vote.
i KNOW helmuti and michal are genuine because i can see they have good karma. I KNOW that squark is taking the micky because his fictitious accounts have no karma.

Please don't take something away thats already there. especially as YOU can chose whether to turn it on of off or not.
Make it a little more flexible instead, and it could get used far more.

I still can't quite believe anyone cares in such detail who rated a page. It seems… massive overkill. Rating is not a scientific thing, it only shows people who care enough to click in the first place. It is much more logical to allow people to discuss and draw conclusions from that.

Again, I use the example of this design. I do not care who rates it. The overall rating may be roughly interesting but what I really care about is the discussion itself.

However, people seem to be attached to this feature. God knows why. You need to realize that every line of code in Wikidot is a cost and reduces the chance of new and necessary functionality. It's not as simple as "we have it, we should keep it" but "we pay to keep it and that may prevent new functionality, is that a good bargain?"

For example, it's quite plausible that keeping the "who rated" functionality makes it too hard to add the ability to rate with different names. Thus, we do have to be quite brutal sometimes about throwing out rarely used or marginal functionality to make space for new and necessary stuff.

Anyhow, the tradeoffs here aren't clear yet, so no decision.

I also like seeing who rated an item up or down.

Maybe it's not useful, but still some fun.

What about the problem that if people know they are being watched, they won't rate things honestly?

If this is a problem, you enable the anonymous rating. Most of the time, this is not a problem (see digg), also prevents spam-rating-up-or-down.

Please cite an example where we've seen spam rating up/down and where this feature helped prevent it. If you're going to use this as an argument, please quantify it.

What does the reference to Digg mean? How does rating comments (on Digg, to make them visible/invisible) compare to saying "I want to join this party"?

A very confused thread when everyone thinks how they might use a feature but few people can actually explain why they need it.

The best explanation I've seen now is simple curiosity. This makes it a "nice to have".

It is already available but my question is whether anyone actually uses it.

I do.