Should Polls Stay In Sardelac?

Alright... well, Inde said the new poll feature in Sardelac is a test run. So lets give him some data to work on.

Do YOU want to polling option to stay in Sardelac?

Personally, I'm against them. Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons...

1) We have gotten a LOT of repeat thread ideas. Within the first day of the polling feature came up, we had people posting polls asking to change every major title. We have had this http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10307358 ANOTHER new realm of the gods suggestion thread. Normally, these types of posts would be locked within hours. But since they are now polls, they aren't getting closed. Just because a poll is added to a thread doesn't mean an idea hasn't been discussed to death already.

2) The results of polls, while intellectually curious, provide worthless results. For example, in the thread asking people if guild leaders should get a commisison from the gh merchant, the discussion on the thread immidately turned to the /notsigned option, with plenty of logical reasons given. However, there was still 15% in support of the idea. Not one of those people posted in response to defend the idea. That leads me to only one conclusion:

Due to the anonimoity of a poll vote, people were able to post whatever they wanted, and could esentially post "troll" answers in support of bad ideas simpley for the heck of it.
If my poll on this thread had a "I like cookies" option, it would still get 10-15% of the vote... maybe even more.

It has problems, sure, but it's better than it was. Once everyone has got the idea of not posting /signed non-responses, this forum will be much better off.

The argument of multiple polls of the same subject is moot; it's no different from before with same-subject threads. It's a basic moderation job, duplicate poll = delete on sight.

Personally I find it a hell of a lot easier to gauge people's opinion on topics when there is a poll, rather that trawling through multiple pages of inane +1s. Hell, sometimes I vote and read nothing but the OP

its still +1's all round,adding polls hasnt really had the desired effect imo. but its still in a trial period,so might get better

Something amusing about an anti-poll poll.

I'm pretty much with Snograt on this one, I'd rather see instantaneously how the poll is than read through inane +1's that I probably would have posted myself.

I say yes purely because it's far easier to see how popular an idea is when people are actually voting for it instead of having to sift through the signed/unsigned in 30 odd pages of posts just to get an idea of how the 'community' feels about a certain idea.

i say yes to polls i think its a better system because it allows people to stop in and say yes or no and not have to post. and leaves the posting space for people who have comments or suggestions. also people who disagree normaly voice there option

Polls are generally easier to read than wading through 10 pages of "/signed lawl 12 char kk qq".

As for the third option like pudding, cookies, eggs or other useless third option answers, didn't Inde set up a rule asking not to do this?

Quote: Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Polls serve us twofold:
1) To let the curious know how popular an idea is
2) To give the moderators the ability to enforce no-exception deletion of /signed /unsigned spam posts.

If an idea is good, it'll be implemented regardless of the poll results, just as it'll be implemented regardless of how many /signed spam posts there are. The goal in Sardelac is just to share ideas and build on them. To that end, we need a system with less /signed posts that will still give users the ability to give their opinions on whether or not they like an idea.

My MAIN problem right now is that the moderators aren't inforcing their own rules. I mean, we have another dwarven armor should be added to the HoM thread started. It is clearly a repeat idea. A.net has said no. It has been discussed to death already.

WHY isn't that poll closed? Because its a poll we are going to keep this open? I'm going to start more ridiculously out of date topics in Sardelaic. How about a "Should Factions not have duplicate skills?" poll?

...or you could just report the bad posts or send the mods of that forum a PM.

I don't know where in the world you get that just because something's a poll makes it off-limits to any moderation. If it's something that legitimately should be deleted then the mods just haven't gotten to it yet.

I'll distill it down to its most basic form for easy understanding: polls are replacements for /signed spam. Nothing more, nothing less. The rules haven't changed just because they've been implemented.

What you have is a problem with the moderation, not the new system. That's something that can be easily taken care of in PMs.

Quote: Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Pretty sure 1/2 repeat threads about a good idea is a good thing to allow atm, simply because polls have been added. Makes it easier to see who supports etc

Quote: Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Quote: Originally Posted by quickmonty

Quote: Originally Posted by HawkofStorms 3) Its not like the moderators are busy and haven't seen the posts. They see them. The poll asking for dwarven armor remained open. Another post made 5 miniutes later asking for the same thing was promptly locked, as a repeat thread idea. However, the poll remained open for days (and still is). Ready Children, after 3, repeat after me...

1, 2, 3..
Quote: Originally Posted by Lasareth you could just report the bad posts or send the mods of that forum a PM. Also..
Quote: Originally Posted by HawkofStorms 3) Its not like the moderators are busy You know nothing of how busy some of the Moderators on this forum are.

To be perfectly honest, I don't see a problem with a new post created for an old idea, which hasn't been discussed for a long time, in order to have a Poll attached to it. The creator of the older thread may no longer be active on the forum in order to add a poll so there are 2 options:
1. Create a new thread with a poll.
2. PM a Moderator and ask them to add a poll to the old thread.I also agree with Earth in that fresh discussion on good previous suggestions is not necessarily a bad thing. If you disagree with a Moderator's decision to leave a thread open, just flag it up and ask a Moderator to review it.

Quote: Originally Posted by HawkofStorms 1) How should I know if someone is male or female? It's not like I talked to them on vent or seen a photo of them. "He" is the placeholder generic personal pronoun in every major foriegn language. I was just informing you. Now you know. No need to get your panties bunched up.

I think poll should not be commonly used because it's too easy to cheat at them (on the net, it's very common to ask friends and family to enter votes for your opinion, plus you can use multiple IPs/accounts to do so yourself). And I've got the feeling that they reduce the amount of posts and thus quality of the discussion (even if they remove lots of useless +1's...), in particular as people will jump on polls as they see one. Even when it's obvious for certain threads, like in Sardelac, that it's only about Yes/No answers, I'm not sure that polls succeed at what they're trying to achieve (a bit like election polls IRL...). I've tried in this thread to organise player's feedback and it was a pain, but I feel I've achieved interesting results.

In the end, if Inde decided to try this, we should leave it like that and wait until she makes a final decision or asks for feedback. We don't have the global view.

No, it's not a perfect system. There are flaws, help us with suggestions or guidelines you think could improve it! HawkofStorms, I too saw the repeat threads the day they opened and debated what to do with them. Close them, merge them, bump the old one and add a poll to it... Wasn't sure what the best course of action was. Please consider next time that rather then us "not doing our jobs" we may have seen it and taken into consideration that there were several ways to handle the situation and we decided that leaving them "as is" was the best course of action. Just because we didn't do the course of action you would have preferred doesn't mean we are breaking any rules. The guidelines in Sardelac about making repeat threads, no they are not rules, are just that. Guidelines to help the section flow better, to keep in mind before you post, to cut down on threads that keep continually popping up and are repeated to death.

Once I saw the number of repeat threads popping up, I went into each one and am continuing to go into them to see if there's quality discussion in there that justifies a new thread. The Sardelac mods are doing the same. So we did take all this into consideration. If it becomes a further problem please let us know! This trial month we can scrutinize and take all your comments and suggestions into account. We can make new rules/guidelines from there or modify it so that it can improve that section.

Alright here is my take:
I think polls should be enabled anyways. For everyone. This is the only forum I go to that you have to pay to use the polling feature, and it seems weird! Polls are very good and powerful devices, and I disagree with Fril here. Most polls do not impact the discussion, because generally if someone votes in your poll, but doesn't post they weren't going to post anyways.

So I do not believe it really impacts the discussion, as long as you can force the discussion to actually happen somehow. This is easily possible if the OP makes a good topic. There are a lot of topics that are polls on this forum and have discussion. The extra votes are just that: extra votes for your stuff, without the tying down of possibly having to write something out.

Personally, I think polls would benefit every forum, not just Sardelac. The extra opinions (even if they aren't explicitly written out) are always always helpful.

EDIT:
And besides polling, there are a few other things you could try out in Sardelac in general, but I'm not very hasty to suggest these because a lot of these suggestions (if combined, especially) would require a moderator who is active A LOT who can watch that forum with an eagle eye which might not be possible? :P

I'm still working bits and pieces of the suggestions out, but I'm not sure how people will take them.