Seeking stakeholder involvement is the product of publicity and outreach, not just technically something being in public. I do a lot of community organizing and local government stuff and "the meeting was public" doesn't cut it if you don't advertise it. In fact, people will rightfully get pissed off if you say that.

I'm not going to spend a bunch of time worrying about this either way, but a bunch of devs and admins talking about it on matrix isn't exactly community outreach. Rimu puts universal messages for other things, so it seems like that could have drawn some more widespread input.

And again I know this isn't the place to debate this, but a lot of users in that thread seem to want to preserve private voting. It's mostly admins and devs punting on the issue.