The Polls

Polls are very different, some are interesting and others are boring, but generally they're fun.
But the option to give replies to the poll is a very good one. I hope it will go through.

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Original post by Ezbez Exhibit A: this week's poll. Apparently people either devour manuals or never read them. Well, it's not that bad, but it could be easily divided up into more options. (eg: read every page of the manual, look at the quick-guide in the front, throw away the manual, download online walkthroughs, manuals are for noobs).

Not a good idea to water down polls with countless various options. The best poll really has the fewest amount of options possible. Adding all those extra ones really wouldn't help to better answer the question in any meaningful way. Plus, it's not like we're conducting serious research here anyways :P

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Also, I find poll discussion threads entertaining. Many of the polls make me want to say something, but there's no good place to do that. Like the most recent poll, where I wanted to say that recent games have much more standardized controls than older games did, making manuals obsolete for most types of games.

Well, I used to do this a few years ago after every poll for a few months. I was thinking of starting it up again, so perhaps I will.

And don't forget you can submit your own idea

Perhaps a better example of what I mean was one a little while back where the question was "Dev-C++ or MSVC++?". There were three choices; Dev-C++, MSVC++, and Other. There wasn't any Code::Blocks, nor "I don't even use C". These options were darn near necessary. I'm not talking about having 16 options for every poll, but a little bit of choice is necessary. I'd say having four to six options would be great for the vast majority of polls. Four options isn't going to make the options "countless" or anything. I just feel that polls with only two or three options tend to either completely forget significant options or the options are too general to really be worth looking at. It would be like conducting a political poll where you ask people what they're views are, but only give them the options of "I support the war in Iraq and drilling for oil in Alaska, and I'm against gay marriage" and "I support gay rights and I'm against Iraq and drilling for Alaska".

Yes, something like those topics you used to have would be nice, Gaiiden. I wasn't thinking of having it only available after the poll had closed, but that would be fine if that's the way you want to do it. If it was linked to from the poll, it would be even better (like how the article discussions are).

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Original post by Ezbez Perhaps a better example of what I mean was one a little while back where the question was "Dev-C++ or MSVC++?". There were three choices; Dev-C++, MSVC++, and Other. There wasn't any Code::Blocks, nor "I don't even use C". These options were darn near necessary.

In cases like that one, these are polls submitted to us and so I don't modify them beyond maybe clarifying the question or the options or fixing spelling/grammar errors. Besides not knowing to include Code:Blocks, perhaps they just didn't want to. It's their poll. Like I said you're more than welcome to submit your own as well. If I see one that's similar to an earlier poll I won't outright delete it, but don't expect to see it run for a few months.

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Yes, something like those topics you used to have would be nice, Gaiiden. I wasn't thinking of having it only available after the poll had closed, but that would be fine if that's the way you want to do it. If it was linked to from the poll, it would be even better (like how the article discussions are).

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The best time for discussion would be when the results are in - having people discuss while the poll is open can lead to arguments more easily, and it's not like people can change their votes anyways. There won't be a link to the thread anytime soon though - I'll put it on he ToDo list however for superpig to take care of at some point.

It would be nice if there was a thread automatically for each poll, with a "Discuss this Poll" link given to you after you have submitted your answer. Like the "Discuss this article in the Forums" link at the bottom of articles.

Exhaustive and mutually exclusive are the big two rules for survey-taking in statistics. I mean, there are others, but those are the two that seem relevant here.

Hopefully this summer we'll be able to add a lot more to the polls, they seem to be steadily popular enough to warrant a bit of attention. While I'm still against creating a thread for posting during a poll, I will most likely begin creating discussion threads for after a poll is closed in the Lounge again - tho when that'll start I can't say - so many other GDNet things to get in order first.