Poll...

[OtomeWeekend]

Um, I know this is kinda stupid but...
Just a minute ago, I was browsing the OLDEST pages here in the general discussion and i found polls...so um, why is it not available anymore? I think it would be nice to have it back ^^;

(I'm sorry if I'm asking such a stupid question. I'm just curious why it's not available anymore).

[LateWhiteRabbit]

People used them for frivolous things, and the polls didn't encourage serious discussion on a topic. Too many people just click a button on a poll and move on, while the absence of polls forces posters to write out - and thus think out - their reply to a question. It also too easily dilutes complex topics into binary choices, robbing those topics of nuance and making meaningful discourse more difficult. Polls boil everything down to what is the most popular answer, or what choice is ahead, and can cause people to not even post in the topic if they see they will automatically be outnumbered on their viewpoint.

Finally, it forces forum members to actually have something to say on topic before they participate. Polls contribute to "drive through" behavior where posters click the button they want, see what the results are, and then move on quickly without even reading the posts in the thread.

[OtomeWeekend]

Ooh.. i see... well, then perhaps not having it might've been a good idea :/

Thank you for replying.

[PyTom]

LateWhiteRabbit is, as usual, is spot on.

IIRC, we tended to have a lot of polls that were polls simply because we couldn't sustain a discussion about them. Things like "What hair color should my character have?", where the only answer is "Who cares?".

The forum administration does have the ability to create a poll if we somehow need it. But there hasn't really been a need for one in a good long time, and I think we've been better without them. (Now to crack down on poll-like threads.)