Site improvement: Proper Surveys

[CheshireCat]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

But group the polls in one subforum then, as they do mess up the forum.

 

Totally agree.

 

I think the system whereby a mod can create a poll if a member makes a reasonable request, which is what we have now ( in theory, nobody ever does this) is a better way..

I personally am not looking forward to "do you brush your cat before you make a "new lens" shot and if so with a brush or a comb? " poll threads.

 

This is not working, as you said, nobody does this. What happens now is that users post a

wannabe-poll-normal-post such as "Survey: is your cat smiling inside when you are trying a new lens on him ? Please only reply with yes or no and keep a counter of the number of Yes and No before you [...omitted...]" - with the net result of forum pollution and user confusion.

[bill]

This is now perfectly clear to me, but I propose to change it to make users happier.

 

Please don't speak for me. I am a "user" (Forum member) and I am happy now.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[jaapv]

Nobody asked you - this is not a poll!

[bill]

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[CheshireCat]

Please don't speak for me. I am a "user" (Forum member) and I am happy now.

 

But you can always be happier

[LUF Admin]

CheshireCat,

 

please accept that we are not going to allow users to create own polls.

 

As my co-moderators wrote: If forum users need a survey we are happy to help.

In the German forum it's often used to find dates for user meetings and count heads for restaurant bookings.

 

As forum owner I don't want that surveys are abused - intentionally or unintentionally.

 

In order to generate valid results you need the right questions, right answering options and formats, logical graphs, enough participants and the correct target group.

 

If you have any kind of agenda it's easy to set up surveys like:

What are the most important flaws of the Leica M240?

 

And with a little trick you get results like "95% of all Leica users think that the Leica M240 is too expensive"

 

I'm not going to allow such surveys as well as fun polls or any kind of Yes/No question which can't be answered so easily: "Do you want a cheaper Leica M without viewfinder?"

OK, easy question but the result is very predictable...

 

Bottom line:

We are happy to assist anyone with surveys which will generate valid output.

But no free feature for all.

 

Andreas

[bill]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

But you can always be happier

 

You know me so little...

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[CheshireCat]

Andreas,

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain the rationale behind this choice. This is your forum, and I will respect it.

 

I find this forum very valuable, and it is because of its users. Some of them a bit stubborn (I am no exception), some of them more or less biased (who isn't ?), and some others more or less polite... but at the end of the day it is between opposites that energy flows. Please don't try to enforce order a priori; you have great mods perfectly able to steer when needed.

 

I would like to end this thread quoting Linus Torvalds:

 

"If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it."

[erl]

I have a friend who has a parrot called Poll.

It never stops talking rubbish!