When hosting conversations, often people would sign up and then something would happen and they couldn’t attend. However, the only way to make it so I could get an accurate vote count would be to remove them from the participant list.

The problem, though, is that they wouldn’t get the event report when it wrapped up. Or, if they showed up late, they’d have to register again!

Not good.

So now, I can mark someone as an observer and their votes don’t count as part of the outstanding votes. Problem solved!
The interesting effect of this is that when a person shows up and they are marked as an observer, they can’t vote. They have to ask me to give them that power again. Unless, of course, I notice before they do!

I think that’s a fine tradeoff.