bomfog wrote:My counter-proposal? Reserve the right to start "serious" polls to moderators/admins, when they decide there's been enough discussion, varied opinion, etc to warrant one (with input from the <em>hoi polloi</em>, of course). Don't advertise the poll's existence in the forum's topic list. The people following the thread will know it's there.
Yup, mod/admin rights to start polls anywhere is a good suggestion, although I'd expect them to be able to anyway (not greatly familiar with phpBB).
Would non-advertisement really be a good idea? Surely having to read up and discuss an opinion poll subject shouldn't preclude having an opinion in the first place - otherwise politicians would never get elected...
really, i'm glad. i think that until the name has been changed and things have settled down polls should be down. after the name has been around a bit so people will stop fighting over it, and who would then create polls like "do you think the new name sucks", then i'd like polls to come back. i don't believe they were abused (much) before the name change. until then, however.... ty kerz.
I think that posting a name idea (as Blake has done) and not expecting everyone to get a little bit rowdy over it is quite naive.
If you post an idea and expect to get valid feedback you need to have a closed question to the forum. An open question allows people to reply with their own thoughts and ideas which makes the thread go off topic.
When Blake suggested Arias, many people started replying with different names and ideas - which gets very confusing as there are already too many threads like this.
However, as it appeared to read as a potential final name for Phoenix from the developers, I set up a poll to determine the popularity of the name - which is what the developers should do to get a valid response. A simple yes or no poll is a muchmore accurate way to show the popularity of a candidate name. This goes for any other ideas that are proposed as final candidates.
Just starting a thread with ''What do you think of...???" will just end up with a mass of "I think..." or "how about...", which ends up being no real use to anyone.
I wasn't trying to spark up any controversy, just trying to find out the popularity of a suggestion by the developers. When you start a poll, you cannot do so without a message. So I put my opinion on there.
I believe that the polls shouldn't be available to general users as they are too easy to abuse, but at the same time the admins/mods/whatever need to make a reasonable attempt to use them in an appropriate situation rather than start up a discussion and then complain when it goes off topic.
I also think that polls should be just that - a poll of people's opinions - Users need to treat them as such and keep comments to a minimum.
Just my thoughts....
Rob S.
P.S. There is still a poll running with a list of name suggestion, but the develpers have not expressed an interest ina any of them, so why is that allowed to run, but mine was censored????????
I agree that too many polls get annoying, and that they should only be used after substantial discussion has occurred on a topic...
...which is what we've had by now on the name issue. Sure, there's still some people joining the forum to suggest things like "SupahflyX07" and "Name for Ancient-Urdu-God-of-Wall-hangings" but those who have been making rational contributions to the discussion have been focusing on these names:
Scamp
Fox / Phox
Arias
Echo
Athena
Firebird
Swoop
Spitfire
These are the names that I think are popular enough to be considered for the poll (and I would oppose several of them strongly myself, I'm trying not to favour my favourites).
The point of this poll would NOT be to determine what the name should be, but to simply give us an impression of which way the popular vote is leaning. This could be useful for the dev team as well, who we trust to choose a good name but would also like to give us a clear way to tell them exactly how many of us like which names. I suggested this list in the name thread earlier today and no one insisted on adding anything.
So kill those other old polls with options like Mozquito and Zephyr and let us compare the more likely options in terms of popularity.
I'd also suggest a "2nd choice" poll, but maybe that's asking too much.
This would be sane, controlled, reasonable, and a logical thing to do at this point in the discussion.
Unless the name has already been chosen, then just tell us and get it over with!
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