Better communication may have helped, but again, your main mistake was expecting the poll to really mean anything. You should have paid more attention to what people were saying in that actual thread, and I don't mean the one sentence replies asking repeatedly when the coin would go on sale ... like they were sitting at a vegas table. The reasons why people said this was a bad idea was all that mattered. There were ways around it, go over the cap, use your own coins to cover over the cap people, and so on ... but really if you wanted to break the rules to allow early trading, you should have also figured out a solution for all of those people hurt by that decision too.

Anyway, as you say, consider it a learning experience.