Going back to the privacy of voters (if you were to do the private top 25), privacy for those people would be important because teams that would be left out from that person's top 25 would be upset with that person. Also, voters that are team members or mentors on other teams don't want to bring any opinions upon their team that shed a negative light on the team purely because they didn't include X team on their list. Also, people could question voters polls if they don't recognize the username from around Delphi. There are obvious people on delphi (cocoEd, chris.is.me, dave lavery respectfully) that are obvious experts on the many teams in FRC but there are definitely many people on Delphi who don't often comment due to either their team rules, or because they don't want to bring any opinions of them onto their team. These people still surf Delphi on a daily basis and are familiar with the many teams, especially the ones that post on delphi. Also, often times the people that surf delphi daily are also the ones who weed through bluealliance when the regionals start. I guess all I'm trying to say is that there are many experts out there, but people just don't know that they're experts. You probably also don't want to pick all experts from veteran teams, because they might lean towards other teams, even if it is subconciously.
This is just stuff to keep in mind if you were to do a private poll for T25; privacy is important to protect those users and their teams, and variety of experts (veteran-to young teams, active users-"sleepers": readers only).
Either way I think a top 25 is a cool idea and should be fun. And I think it also might force more teams that want to be involved to be a little more detailed and thorough with their scouting. Should be good as long as St. Louis doesn't turn into the BCS!
