That's all well and good, when you do a poll right. However, when you make them biased, you change the statement to "Look how narrow minded I am making a poll that's biased. People aren't going to listen to me!"
A poll should have
- An Affirmative Option (Or more than one)
An option for people to agree with your thread. Either "I agree" or something more specific.
However, if you have several things in your thread try and cover all eventualities. Don't just say "Agree","Disagree" because people may only agree with 1 point and not the rest.
A Negative Option (Or more than one)
An option for people to disagree with you. Either "I don't agree" or something more specific.
Unlike the affirmative, you can just have a general "I don't agree".
An Optional Poll Whore Option
This is just an extra option tacked on. The reason people do this so people who aren't interested in the actual poll but want the gold can. If you don't stick one of these in people will just pick either other option without reading them. It can skew your results.
- A bad poll: What do you think?
I love the idea!
- A good poll: What do you think?
I agree with point #1
I agree with point #2
I agree with point #3
I agree with them all
I agree with more than one (Please post what ones you agree with)
I don't agree to any of them
Free gold for those don't want to poll
Why is it better? Well, it gives the option to agree with a specific option, all of them or a combination (Asking the user to post that). It also allows for disagreement and has an extra option so people just voting for gold don't hurt the poll.
The first one only allows for agreement. Chances are if you post that in Site Feedback you'll just get posts saying "Biased Polls Suck". 100% votes on the first poll makes no indication of the popularity of your idea, it just shows your poll is biased.
I designed this short lesson based on idea based threads, whether it is discussions, feedback or whatever.
If you just want a poll like in a Minishop or Chatterbox it doesn't really matter.
But if you are using your poll to show popularity of an idea, do it right.
By the way, this is my opinion of a good and bad poll. Other people may have their own ideas on what makes a good poll.
Community Member
I also think that if your poll is for something serious or you want to know how many people are on the positive side or the negative side, you should have the poll whore option. Just so you aren't getting votes that mean diddly squat.
Oh no! I went on babbling again! sweatdrop