Polls Forum Please

[Malorn]

You should create a separate forum for PS2 polls. That will help the PS2 discussion get out from being a complete pile of shit.

And then prohibit the creation of polls in every PS2-related forum except for there.

That keeps all this shit collected together, the good polls should (in theory) get bumped and have continual discussion so they float to the top of that forum. People who want to participate in polls can and they are nicely clustered together. All the terrible polls would fall to the bottom.

And best of all the PS2 forum stays nice and clean from all of the worthless shitbag poll spam.

[Ghryphen]

A solution is under discussion.

[Malorn]

Thanks, looking forward to the end of PollSide Universe.

[Sirisian]

Oh thank you Malorn. Came here to post this exact thread. Hamma already knows how I feel about polls. :lol: Just get rid of polls altogether. Most of them are biased or missing explanations so no one knows what they're voting for. They also stifle the discussion by boxing in people when they reply.

[Zulthus]

It depends... polls can be very useful but they are being abused quite a bit right now. I wouldn't say get rid of them but there needs to be some sort of measure to prevent them from being spammed.

[Malorn]

Oh thank you Malorn. Came here to post this exact thread. Hamma already knows how I feel about polls. :lol: Just get rid of polls altogether. Most of them are biased or missing explanations so no one knows what they're voting for. They also stifle the discussion by boxing in people when they reply.

I would agree with that. Polls often force people to make decisions before they even read the posts, which doesn't get you any sort of real information. Phrasing of the polls is rarely good and usually horribly biased so you don't get anything out of them. The only polls worth having are like faction polls and what not, and we already know the faction's are going to be very close.

Whether something is a good idea or not should stand on its merits and the quality of the idea, not what random forum idiots think of it. Like Elfailo's ADS discussion...would have been really terrible if he had a poll on it. Which is why I never create polls - ideas are not equal ;)


If you want quality control on polls I think the only way would be to have a poster request a poll be created by the mods and put in the desired options and let the mods filter out the shitty polls and biased options. And they can make the call on whether the topic should even have a poll.

Quality of the forums has really gone downhill the last few weeks, stupid polls are one reason, though I think a lot of new people who are missing a lot of the tribal knowledge about the game that we've picked up over the months is another.

[MasterCalaelen]

Poll creation has been turned off for now (excluding contributors) until we can find a more permanent solution.

[Stardouser]

Whether something is a good idea or not should stand on its merits and the quality of the idea, not what random forum idiots think of it.


I am not disagreeing with the idea that rules could promote better quality polls. As you said, "Polls often force people to make decisions before they even read the posts...", and I agree with that. The idea of discussing an issue for a few days and THEN adding a poll makes perfect sense. But the idea of avoiding polls altogether does not, because numbers do matter. So, if you want only moderators to be able to make polls that sounds reasonable to me, as long as there is not a secret policy in place in favor of rejecting requests to add polls for fear that the majority might vote in a way that's considered undesirable to the powers that be. As long as the thread goes on long enough for varying viewpoints to have been presented and rebutted, that's what matters.

And so, I would say, that a procedure for requesting a poll be added is needed. I.E., thread must have at least 50(or 100 or whatever) posts, and/or have run for at least 5 days, and so forth.

[DirtyBird]

Should be safe to bring them back now?

Got out of hand with beta speculation but that moment has long passed.

What say ye?


Ye saideth Yes.