There’s a poll hereWhat kind of car/vehicle do you drive where in order to answer, your selection MUST be made visible to everyone. While I’m not ashamed to own a “basic family car” I think the whole idea of having to be listed in order to be counted is absurd, and frankly un-American.
Stand up for the sanctity of the ballot and refuse to start and participate in those polls. That is my ruling. I mean, that is my Humble Opinion. Thank you.
The system allows the person setting the poll to decide whether names will be shown or not. (PLEASE NOTE: moderators cannot reverse this by later edit. If you screw up the set-up of a poll, we can help fix pretty much anything, but not that choice!)
While I agree that some polls should be anonymous, I can see some polls that might be useful to have names. For instance, “I’m going on a driving tour out west, which of the following cities do you live in? Only vote if you’d like me to contact you when I come through.” THen the poll would be the list of cities that she’s driving through. It would be useless without names. Hence, the system allows each person setting up a poll to decide.
And, of course, each individual can decide whether to answer a poll. If you don’t like answering a particular poll with your name, then just don’t answer. You could post your reason for not answering.
Messed up the title, had too many links in my multi-link clipboard.
The question should read the same as the thread title "Do you think we should have “public” polls? "
While we’re discussing this, and yes I know the board does not write the software, it would make sense to me not to demand a separate question from the title in the first place. And I would like that implemented retroactively to cover this thread. Thank you.
Wow. How convoluted and unlikely is that? Why not just ask people to state their answer in text or to message or email you. No, I can’t see that one as an example.
Actually, at least in my state, if you own a car, you are listed. Or if you own a home, you are also listed. I can understand what you’re saying, and I think it would apply to certain polls, like “Have you ever cheated on your SO?”.
But there are also times when a public poll is useful. For example, “Do you believe in God?”. I’m always befuddled with the tragedies posted in MPSIMS. I don’t know what to say. A person of faith would love to hear, “God go with you,” but an atheist might prefer to hear, “All the best to you.” It would be nice to know how people feel about certain issues, and shown in a listing.
In any case, if you don’t want to participate in public polls, just hit the back button and move on. (It will tell you whether it’s public or private before you have to tick a box.)
I don’t see a huge problem in it, but it’s up to the poll maker in the end. If he/she wishes to make it public, that’s their choice. Polls that will show your public answer warn you of it before you vote, so it’s not like anyone would be fooled or misled in any way.
I suppose if a person wants to make a public poll, they’d have to realize and take into consideration there might not be as many voters and if that’s not an issue, I don’t see a problem with it.
I’ve edited the poll title, Mad Hun to match the thread. I also need to point out, you’ve made this poll one where names are show. So, if anyone “feels creepy” about it, they likely won’t vote at all. Consequently, biased results.
OK, so I picked what may be a bad example for a poll where names are helpful/necessary. That’s sort of tangential. My point was that there could be polls where including names was important – just because I didn’t come up with a good one doesn’t mean there aren’t such – and I don’t want to be the one to say “No, never.”
Back to the tangent, I’m not so sure my example is that awful. One could react to ANY poll by saying, “Why not just ask people to email you or text you?” or “Why not just ask people to post in the thread?” Frankly, I’m not sure why “polling” is necessary for anything. Convenient, yes, but not necessary.
The abortion poll being public certainly bothered me. For issues where some political party or individual could be interested in checking the user’s profile for an email address, I would think that it would be basic manners to make it a private poll. And yet it was public.
While I’m not so shy as to not answer, I’d much rather that all such polls were private. Given the limited usefulness of a public poll, it seems easier to just turn the feature off.
Keep the feature available. No one need answer a poll, and knowing who gave which answer can be useful in the ensuing discussion.
nm
I’m having a hard time coming up with a scenario where it’s necessary to have the results public, but certainly there are polls where it’s fun. I started a poll on who’s got what pets, and I’m enjoying seeing the results not only as numbers but with the option of seeing who said what. (Hey, I didn’t know so-and-so, who I know mostly from Cafe Society, kept fish, or isn’t it funny that someone with “cat” in her username doesn’t currently have any pets.)
Having that info be public is no different than if we had run the poll in the old-fashioned way, with people posting one at a time, specifying what kinds of pets they have. By doing it with our shiny new poll technology, the numbers are easier to see and updated automatically. Plus, I’m guessing a few people might have answered who wouldn’t’ve bothered to post in an old-fashioned poll.
Necessary? No. Fun? Yes. And it’s nice that we can have polls on these frivolous topics.
I do agree that there are certain topics where you’re going to get a larger number of answers, or more honest answers, or whatever, if the poll is anonymous. In that case, we can hope that the OP would use that option in setting up the poll. If he or she didn’t, however, you can just skip participating if you don’t want to be identified with a particular answer.
IOW: Although there are times when the anonymous answer is preferable, there are times when it isn’t, so disallowing the option of public answers is way too extreme.
AFAIK, as I said above, a public poll will SAY that your answers will be visible to others. You just have to read the typing below the poll.
What I’m not understanding is why necessity itself is necessary with this issue. Why must it be necessary that public polls be useful? It’s not necessary that I have an underlining feature, but I find it useful for my purpose at this time. It lets me emphasize words and convey the conversational tone I would be conveying if I were saying this aloud.
So, as I see it, necessity isn’t the predicate for this issue at all. Rather, possibility is. Sage Rat has suggested eliminating even the possibility — for no reason other than it isn’t necessary. At least not that he can see. Right now.
But maybe someone someday will actually have a situation in which a public poll is necessary, at least to them. Why block off the entire option? Why not just leave it to be possible? If you don’t need it, don’t use it. If you do, it will be there.
No I suggested eliminating it because it has bad but no good. Underlining has good but no bad.
I believe you are mistaken with that concept, as it seem inevitable that somebody will eventually misuse the tool, even if it is just to annoy someone else.
I personally think it is stupid to remove a feature that hasn’t been, and is unlikely to be, abused. If you* are stupid enough to post in a place where your vote is pubic, yet you wanted it to be private, well, perhaps a less intellectual board would be better for you.
*Generic you. I have yet to see anyone who indicated they were too stupid to be here. If you just made a mistake, I’m sure a mod would be happy to remove it, at least for the first couple of times.
I agree with BigT. I don’t get how anyone can be so “sure” it would always be bad and never good. Seems to me if you don’t like the feature, then just don’t vote. Very simple.
But really, that’s a moot point in itself because, for the third time: It says what polls will or will not have public votes. Just don’t vote in them if you’re so strongly against it. If people think as you do, then they won’t vote either and you can rest easy at night.
Yeah, okay. But you haven’t supported that with any evidence. Good use examples have been given. Let me give mine again.
“If you’re having a personal tragedy, which do you prefer?” The choices are “Prayer”, “Good wishes”, “Silence”, “Something else”. That way, when there’s an MPSIMS thread about their personal tragedy, I can check the poll to see whether I should say “God go with you,” or “All the best”, or just not post. If you don’t want to register your preference, then simply don’t.
I guess the question is, why can’t you just leave other people be to do as they please when no one is forcing you to do anything? Answering polls isn’t manditory, even if they’re public. […shrug…]
My first paragraph of my first post was evidence. There was a poll that should have been private, the consequences of it not being that I could end up on some hate mail list or fund drive list. Abortion is a very strong issue. There’s people getting shot and killed for supporting abortion and here I’ve got my name attached to it for eternity, right next to a place where people can look up my email address and personal website.
That there is no significant positive use of public poling has been fairly well demonstrated by everyone’s difficulty in coming up with something. If you want a list of names or locations, it’s easier to just ask people to speak up and identify themselves. You don’t really need to know percentage of answers for that.
If there were no polls, then the poster of an opinion in IMHO would be known. That is the same as a public poll.
Why is this a public poll?