And voting in a public poll is not like posting in a private poll. A public poll is basically a “show of hands” situation, exactly the same as if the OP was asking a question and didn’t put the poll in at all.
I understand not wanting to vote in certain public polls depending on the topic, but I don’t quite get the thought process behind a blanket “never will I ever” mentality. What inherently and unalterably offensive quality does a public poll have that an average “tell me your opinion” thread does not?
Humans love rules. We’re drowning in rules and bureaucracy in virtually every part of our lives to the point of absurdity. The NFL had to assign a special committee to decide when catching a football constituted catching a football. Obviously, we need a LOT more rules here because we’re falling behind the curve.
Well, I don’t really expect the board to ban public polls, since posters start them and use them without incident. But it’s an excellent way to frame discussion about public polls and increase awareness about how many posters avoid them.
This sounds like you’re in support of getting rid of public polls, since their function can be “exactly” fulfilled by a thread without a poll.
It’s not that public polls are offensive, it’s that 1) they’re used in place of an option that is better because a) it’s the only option on this board that allows posters to privately express opinions, and b) would attract more votes because both those concerned with privacy and those who aren’t can all vote. And 2) their function can be duplicated by a regular thread.
Technically they can, but a lot more clunkily. To fulfill their function exactly, you’d have to have lots of posters posting short, contentless answers to a mundane question (which many of us are loath to do), and then someone would have to keep counting up the responses and reporting the results.
The general method (publicly polling for an opinion) is identical, but the end results are much easier to parse because nobody has to do any kind of manual tallying.
Case in point: There’s a current poll thread asking whether people pronounce the vowel sounds in “paw” and “bra” the same or differently. It currently has 88 votes. Do we really want a thread like that to be a couple of pages longer than it is, cluttered up with lots of posts that just say “I pronounce them the same, of course” or “I pronounce them differently, duh!” strewn in amongst all the other posts that have something more substantial to say on the topic, and then have someone go through and tally the responses?
That one’s not a public poll, but I don’t see how it would much matter whether it is or not. Is there anyone who really needs to keep private how they pronounce words?
6 people who don’t like the idea that their opinion will be recorded on a public discussion board. I guess it takes all kinds.
I guess I could understand wanting to make it more obvious that it’s public so no one makes a mistake. Like maybe we could start a custom of putting “Public” in the thread title.
Right, that’s a totally reasonable stance to take and one that I agree with.
What baffles me are the people in the zombie poll thread who apparently have a policy to never vote in public polls under any circumstance.
These posters would presumably be willing to publicly offer up their opinions on any number of topics in a non-poll thread, so what is the fundamental difference between the two? That’s what I don’t understand.
Does it really make any substantive difference? I mean, how “public” is a public poll when the participants here are anonymous people that virtually no one knows? I don’t consider the fact that “Jasmine from Chicagoland” pronounces two words the same or differently an invasion of my privacy.
I’ve already agreed that there are circumstances in which anonymity is relevant, so what on earth does that have to do with my question?
Let us consider two possibilities:
Option 1) A normal thread in which posters are asked whether they prefer hamburgers or hot dogs.
Option 2) A public poll in which posters are asked whether they prefer hamburgers or hot dogs.
You and others are saying that you would participate in Option 1 but not Option 2, since you will never under any circumstances answer a public poll. I am trying to understand why, since I cannot perceive a functional or philosophical difference between the the act of posting in Option 1 and voting in Option 2.
