Those are the polls that bother me, too.
I usually skip them too; but I do wonder whether the people posting them think the results are meaningful, even to the extent that anything from this particular sample group can be taken to be meaningful.
I don’t think any of us assign any level of meaningfulness to these polls.
That said, I have no problem with - and often create - polls with limited options. If the options do not fit your experience, the poll is not for you.
For example, I may be interested in how many Dopers who drink Pepsi or Coke - and have a preference for one over the other - like Pepsi over Coke. If you only drink, say, Seven-Up (or buttermilk), I don’t include you because that is not the aim of my poll and you are not in my target demographic.
Nothing personal. 
mmm
People like to vote. Why not include “neither/other/no preference?”
Yep, this. And I, also, tend not to vote in them (like pretty much never, but maybe once?).
I suppose that wouldn’t do no harm.
mmm
I like to pick a random option to screw the result as a punishment for
not including an “Other” option.
It just hit me why I dislike polls with an “other” option, even though I usually include one myself. Whenever someone selects “other”, especially in one of my own polls, I’m always dying to know exactly what the voter meant when they selected that option. What did I forget to include? But under the rules of the Polls Only thread I’m not allowed to ask, and they’re not allowed to say. And then I end up regretting including that option at all.
Well … this thread was made for you, then !
You could list it as “other – please specify in the discussion thread.”
Which is exactly what I did in the sketch comedy poll, but comparing to the number of people who selected “other” to the number of people who actually did post here, the majority of people didn’t bother. Which makes me wish I’d just omitted the “other” option and just framed the question as “which is your favorite out of this group?”
In that example “other” could mean “I’m not familiar with any of them” or “I don’t have a preference.” Of course, it could also mean, “you left out the one I like the most.”
People assume we all have the same background. There was a poll today (or recently) asking us to rank a guy’s name and a title. John Smith’s A Christmas Carol for example (I forget the actual name). I had no idea if it was an album, movie, book, or podcast. There was no “other/I’m not familiar with this work” option, so I ranked it randomly. (I’ve decided to leave no poll unanswered)
I usually just skip those; but there have been quite a few in which I had no idea who or what the choices referenced were; as well as some in which I did have an opinion about some of the listings, but didn’t feel I could rank them compared to those I knew little or nothing about.
Usually I don’t mind skipping that sort of thing; but some seem to have implications beyond pure matters of taste – political issues, for instance – and I’d like to be able to in some way say “question does not compute”.
Yes, often the other option is a way to indicate this poll doesn’t work for me. I like poll creators to acknowledge that possibility.
“Other” is just too vague and, especially where more people vote for that than for any of the listed options, renders the poll meaningless. I think it’s usually, if not invariably, best not to include it.
How can it be too vague ?!
If most people vote for other, i’d suggest that the poll itself is at fault.
this.
What’s your favorite ice cream flavor
–butterscotch
–wild cherry
–other
Heh, this reminded me how much I like butterscotch ice cream.
Bingo.