This poll is very split! I would really like to see the ages of the people who think it violated norms and those who don’t.
I am obviously assuming that the younger people were more ok with it, and the older people were the ones who were more creeped out.
Shall we start another poll??? 
There are ‘norms’ here?!?!
Well I was one of those who thought eww creepy, said so, and didn’t answer the poll.
However, I don’t think it crossed any SDMB boundaries (there’s boundaries here?) and voted that way on this poll.
However, if a man I knew in any capacity whatsoever, including sexual, wanted me to give him that level of detail about my nipples, he’d never hear from me again.
Female, 53.
From chiroptera’s post, it’s clear that your concerns are right. She, at least, found the poll quite creepy and yet didn’t think it was “beyond the SDMB’s norms” which, I suppose, is why the response to this poll is so much more equivocal than the response to the original thread.
I guess this whole issue illustrates how difficult it is to create good survey instruments.
As one of the people who made it clear that I don’t think the poll reflected normal male thinking when freed of inhibitions about discussing personal matters, I agree with you that it’s not as though the poll was some sort of great offense. It was just weird.
The outrage on behalf of some of its defenders (Omniscient at least) strikes me as misplaced.
Not sure if you read my post, but the goal of the poll was to try to determine if the underlying issue described by objectors was accurate.
Was the problem the context? Meaning on a different message board it may have been ok, but definitely not on the SDMB?
Or was the problem the content regardless of what the social setting - that it represents “abnormal” thinking about sex.
And what do you think now that you see the results of that section of the poll?
Do you concede that it’s possible you are in the minority?
Note: despite arguing my position, I was fully prepared to see a poll skewed the other direction regarding “male thinking” and was completely prepared to accept that I was in the minority.
Okay, now that I fixed that link I can tell what the heck you’re on about.
[Gang from Cheers]NORM![/Gang from Cheers]
And as the responses have already indicated, it’s pretty clear you didn’t really manage to formulate a question that made sense to all of the respondents. You didn’t succeed in asking whatever it is you wanted to ask (which I’m still not entirely sure about, since your posts seem so consistently to make points that aren’t really responses.) But at least a couple posters have indicated that they voted that it was within these vague “norms” and yet still quite “creepy”, meaning your questions have not addressed the issue properly.
No, I’m more clear than ever that I was right; there’s not been a single poster who indicated that that kind of weirdly explicit categorizing seemed normal to them, much less that men typically would be at all curious about things like numerical breakdowns of the size of any particular piece of anatomy (down to a quarter of an inch!) in the general population.
The responses to your poll, again, clearly seem due to the question being asked badly, since several people have, in various ways, indicated that they also find the whole concept of the poll bizarre, whereas no one, not even those few of you who are so oddly invested in defending it, have really argued otherwise. Even you ended up backpedaling to just bland stereotypes about how women would be alarmed if they knew what men were interested in, rather than indicating you thought about people’s anatomy in the same way. (A stereotype I suspect is at least overblown.)
Nor has anyone, incidentally, linked to any comparable polls here, which would both suggest that this was a normal thing to discuss here and that it was a normal thing to discuss at all. The responses to the original poll are enough to dismiss the first point; I’m pretty well secure in my continuing dismissal of the second.
Nipples.
That’s what we’re on about.
Note: yes I know, I botched the link, I was in a hurry because the first poll I botched and I wanted to get this one going before too many people responded to the first one. I was a poll virgin - hopefully the second time is more fun.
Many if not most casual polls are badly designed (here and elsewhere) and I won’t participate in them because if you do you become part of a statistic that someone is going to think means something.
The thread in question was completely outlandish but then the great thing about this place (at least used to be and probably still is) that We Do Outlandish. I think as the core membership ages we are getting more normative, more willing to shout down something socially dubious.
It’s a complex topic - I wouldn’t expect it to be perfect.
You may have a point, let’s check with the one person that knows if the poll reflects what I wanted to ask.
Questioner: RaftPeople, does this poll “ask whatever it is you wanted to ask”?
RaftPeople: Yes, it does ask what I wanted to ask - thanks for asking 
Well, that’s settled.
So even though the poll indicates that more people consider that thinking the tip of the iceberg - you are even more clear than ever that you are right?
I’m curious, what type of poll or other evidence would sway you, even if just the tiniest bit in the other direction?
Norms!
While I understand the need to use neutral wording, my criticism was that the wording is unclear. We are in a social forum that has boundaries in the sense of what is socially acceptable as well as boundaries in the sense of formal rules. I see at least three posters here have indicated they felt the nipple poll was weird or creepy but didn’t cross the SDMB’s boundaries, which indicates to me that there’s confusion about exactly what you meant by “boundaries”.
And speaking for myself here, I still don’t know what the “beyond most males thinking” question is supposed to mean. I have no doubt that most men have quite vivid thoughts about women’s bodies, but I think it much be a vanishingly small percentage who’ve ever even considered conducting a detailed survey about the size, shape, and color of a specific part of the female anatomy.
No, that doesn’t show confusion and it is exactly something I was curious about and others were presenting as an argument.
Again: some posters indicated that the feeling of “creepiness” was due to the poll crossing the boundaries of the SDMB. So we ask about boundaries.
If the poll had shown that 90% felt it crossed the boundaries, then (within the limits of our unscientific poll) it would seem to indicate that there is a social “norm” here on the SDMB that was crossed.
Given that it’s almost even, then (again, within the limits of our unscientific poll) we can reasonably conclude that an objection to the poll based on “SDMB boundaries” is not supportable. Rather it just becomes each individual’s personal opinion.
This is what I posted in response to Chronos question, does this help?
“…but is trying to get at whether that level of detail can be considered within the bounds of “normal” for the full range of male sexual thought patterns.”
I don’t know that it crossed any “boundaries” but I thought it was utterly stupid, does that count? The dimensions of a population’s nipples at various times strikes me as both overly personal and utterly useless information. When you take into consideration how few women will even be able to ANSWER said poll without extensive set-up (e.g. becoming aroused) and taking measurements, and the poll becomes ridiculous and asinine. If asinine/stupid is a boundary, it crossed it.
Here’s what we haven’t seen: any evidence that anyone is somehow curious about a statistical breakdown of minuscule details of the general population’s anatomy. In fact, when you claimed the thinking behind that poll was perfectly normal for men and women just naïvely failed to recognize how men’s brains work, and I questioned that, even you backpedaled into making a vague statement about how men’s sexual thoughts would freak women out if they knew. I know that’s a common stereotype. It may or may not be true (I suspect it’s a lot less true than is generally thought.) Your question just gets at that boring stereotype; it doesn’t even begin to address exactly what was so bizarre and, too many, off-putting about the poll.
So, literally no one here, not even you, the guy who was trying to claim it was perfectly normal male thinking, actually shares his fascination. At least as far as I can tell. A vague poll question in a poorly-written poll with a lot of drive-by respondents who I’m sure didn’t bother reading all of this crap doesn’t mean much. I bet many respondents had no idea what point I made that you’re using their responses to contest. It appears no one else actually shares the oddly clinical nature of his obsession – not only caring so much about minutiae, but (for some reason) caring about the prevalence of different minute variations across the population. If someone else has been here all this time, just been too inhibited to post a similar poll about foreskin length or the size of labia minora, they haven’t come forward yet.
What a surprise.
It is certainly one of the weirdest threads I have seen, so if that counts as crossing boundaries then it did.
It definitely does not strike me as typical male thinking. Men are visual, but that wasn’t a picture thread. Typical male thought would be more like “I know what I like when I see it, but I can’t and don’t need to describe it in words in excruciating detail”, or perhaps just “I like big butts (and I cannot lie)”.
So, you didn’t like the poll?
Well, as I just explained, it doesn’t really help much in proving your original point, that this is somehow typical male thinking. Especially after a lot of men have posted that it doesn’t match their thinking, and none have posted that it does.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
What a surprise.
[/QUOTE]
So you disagree with me, but can’t come up with an argument why.
What a surprise.