I’ve run into this error tonight while trying to create my annual poll for best #1 song of the year, which I’ve been running since 2010. There are 22 songs that made #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020, and I can’t list them all for voting because of the cap, which didn’t exist on vBulletin (and which would have wrecked some of the retrospective polls from the '70s where there were 30+ #1s.) I suppose I could leave off two songs that I would consider unlikely to win, but that really wouldn’t be an honest poll.
Is there any way the mods can adjust the limit? I suppose I could divvy up the 22 songs into two qualifying rounds of 11 each, but I’d rather just run one poll if it’s at all possible.
An alternative would be to have two polls in the thread, one in post 1 and one in post 2. Not sure if you know, but Discourse does polls on a per-post basis, not a per-thread basis.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember if your polls allowed multiple votes. If they did, then it would just work. If not, then you could include an option to indicate that your choice is in the other poll. Or just put in bold “Only vote in 1 poll.”
It just seems like less work than having two rounds.
My thought for a workaround, at least for something like this we’re you just want to squeeze in two extras. Double up two of them. Instruct people to choose their favorite song, if the song is paired with another song, pick that one anyway. If one of the doubled up options wins, have a second poll with those two songs to see which one is the winner. The other thing you could do is instruct people that if they choose one of the options that has two songs listed, they need to comment on which of the two songs their vote is for. If you do that, I’d suggest telling people their comment should be a standalone comment with ONLY the song listed, if it’s mentioned as part of a bigger post, you’re going to miss is.
Neither option is perfect, but at least both options will only come into play in certain circumstances.
That only comes close to a valid approach if the doubled up option(s) has at least twice the votes of any contender. If not it is possible those votes are (close to) evenly split and those two songs are actually second and third.
The run-off election would also need to be with only the voters for those options in the first poll, or you’re giving the other voters a kind of limited ranked choice voting option.
Good point, I hadn’t thought of that.
What about my [now modified] second option. Have one option listing 3 choices, if you pick that option, you list which one you’d choose in the comments. OP would then have to wade through the comments and tally them by hand to see where each option falls in the list.