I noticed that DP users are hardly voting on polls, there are hundreds of views for the post, but only a very few votes, why is that? Simply they feel lazy to vote ? Or they only interested in seeing the results?
Most of the polls are of a subject matter that is just too petty and frankly silly to vote on. Many of these seem as if written by children. Why would an educated/sophisticated adult bother with them? Others are written with such poor English that one is left wondering what the question was about. Having said all of that I do indeed vote when the subject matter is relevant, and the grammar is comprehensible.
I agree. Often the polls are mostly meaningless, especially when viewing the thread, or just contain too few or very limited set of options.
For me, the poll not only needs to meet the criteria as listed above, but also needs to take into consideration the audience. This is a group of Internet marketers/webmasters from around the world. If the poll is asking what is the best drugstore to buy cosmetics in West Virginia (bad example, but all that I can think of this early in the morning) it is being offered in the wrong place and I will not waste my time participating because the results will be silly/meaningless. To be honest, I have not seen a worthwhile poll on DP in a long time (admitting, of course, that I only monitor a small number of sections.)
Just a crazy thought. Maybe DP should have an "Add a Poll" category where there will be nothing but polls listed on whatever topic and get rid of the option of adding a poll in all other categories. That way anyone who wants to go "poll hopping" can just go to that category.
Not completely bad, but I think that, in some cases, even in the programming/dev-forums, a poll CAN be useful. Yes, few people will answer, but if you get at least a small sample size (and use proper choices), you might get a clue to what your choice should be. That would be hard to do / completely disappear, if you had to make a poll in a separate category, and then just link it from the actual thread. That would probably reduce the already low answer-rate to 0.
A good idea from @qwikad.com and I don't think that it needs to either/or regarding where the poll resides. The poll could actually go in the appropriate thread with the original post and perhaps there could be a Box like the "Most Popular Right Now" Box on the Home Page that shows the most current polls and simply links to them. Someone who is in the mood to take some polls could just go down the list.
Not going to happen. Do this and you will have *poll trading* where scammers purposely create polls and their friends vote on them in order to secure points. The polls would then become even more laughable and pointless than they are at present.
well, i typed some extra words along with my response above and then deleted to make it short! I intended to mention the thing you have mentioned about scamming, if there is any point system for polls, it shouldn't be "just vote and a get a point" rather there has to be some mechanism in deciding whether which of the voters deserve points , like considering how an individual's vote match with the majority votes, and looking at their past voting behaviors etc..
If the DP members are not attracted to a poll, it means that the poll does not have a strong enough magnet. Solution? Install a stronger magnet in the poll! Edit: Dang! I misread the previous post. I thought he said DP members attracted to the poll when he actually said the poll being attracted to DP members. So, I SHOULD have said to INSTALL STRONGER MAGNETS IN DP MEMBERS!
Aren't there whole websites already devoted to this? Oooh yeah, Aussies create polls as badly as they play rugby!