Add ability to add/remove/edit polls

[Planr]

I made a suggestion thread today about miniature docking blocks, and had a poll up in place offering people to vote for what they wanted to see in the future.

However, one of the people commenting on the thread shared an idea that I found even better than the ones I had come up with, and I liked it so much I desperately wanted to add it as another option to the poll.
Unfortunately the website has no option to edit or even remove polls even if its your own thread. So I have to ditch the current thread and go make a new one just to fix the poll.

Could you please change the site to allow editing the content/existence of thread polls?

 

[DukeofRealms]

That would mean you could remove parts of a poll at any time without warning. Say if you created a poll, and the suggestion you made was outnumbered by the secondary suggestion you didn't want, you could remove that poll and then re-add it, so it would look as if your suggestion was winning the poll as you removed all the votes you didn't want.

Even just allowing additions skewer the results of a fair poll. If you really need to add another question to the poll, it's easy enough to ask a moderator to do so.

 

[Planr]

That would mean you could remove parts of a poll at any time without warning. Say if you created a poll, and the suggestion you made was outnumbered by the secondary suggestion you didn't want, you could remove that poll and then re-add it, so it would look as if your suggestion was winning the poll as you removed all the votes you didn't want.

Even just allowing additions skewer the results of a fair poll. If you really need to add another question to the poll, it's easy enough to ask a moderator to do so.

I disagree. I knew your argument was going to be presented, but having to go to moderators every time you want to change the poll is very annoying. Besides, people usually notice when polls are skewed like that, and it's not much of a deal anyway.

 

[DukeofRealms]

It's not much of a deal either way in most circumstances, the forums could do the way you have suggested, it just really isn't necessary and poses some problems along with it.

I think it would work far better if only additions were allowed, although, that would require development on the forum team's side.

 

[Planr]

It's not much of a deal either way in most circumstances, the forums could do the way you have suggested, it just really isn't necessary and poses some problems along with it.

I think it would work far better if only additions were allowed, although, that would require development on the forum team's side.

As i've already explained, those "problems" you mentioned are very minuscule and even so are a highly hypothetical and rare scenario.

People can write a very motivating and logical post in a thread too and get lots of agrees, then change it to something like pictures of ducks, but I don't see post editing privileges being taken away.
So if you're going to argue about it being abuseable, I would recommend you also not be impartial on the matter and take away people's own ability to edit their posts, because they are dangerous and they will be fiendish devils and abuse it!!!

 

[DukeofRealms]

As i've already explained, those "problems" you mentioned are very minuscule and even so are a highly hypothetical and rare scenario.

People can write a very motivating and logical post in a thread too and get lots of agrees, then change it to something like pictures of ducks, but I don't see post editing privileges being taken away.
So if you're going to argue about it being abuseable, I would recommend you also not be impartial on the matter and take away people's own ability to edit their posts, because they are dangerous and they will be fiendish devils and abuse it!!!

I rather liked this post before you edited it. Perhaps we should remove edit access, if people are going to abuse it.

As for adding in the feature, giving full access isn't something that would be done, as it is a moderation permission. So what you are asking for, would have to be done through an additions only permission, which the forum team would have to develop.

 

[DukeofRealms]

Thinking about it further, if you could edit polls, it would mean you could create dynamic polls that could continue on in one thread.

Although, it would still require development. Stacked onto the list of things that need to be done.

 

[NeonSturm]

I dislike polls which change while keeping some votes.
You can agree, like, disagree (why not dislike) a post already which makes most votes redundant.

if polls are allowed to be changed, they should reset votes and -if it is not too difficult or messy- display the poll with most votes in this thread's history left of it as a hint of what peoples would vote in this instance.


I rather want the ability to make votes in posts which are not the op.

And a possibility to highlight arguments which contribute to the topic + get an overview of these. If something is neither in the first 5 posts nor on the last page, peoples tend to forget about it. A pro/contra list for example or list of stations in the current contest.

I even saw peoples pointing out an argument which is already made invalid in the op (see generic array computer link in my signature) - this really kills threads and thus peoples re-post threads and arguments and create clutter.

Replying to a sub-topic also creates clutter in the main topic ... that is what bothers me. That is why we need polls. Why this issue arose.

 

[kiddan]

You allow dislikes by adding a negative poll answer, like "No I don't like this."

 

[Planr]

I rather lked this post before you edited it. Perhaps we should remove edit access, if people are going to abuse it.

Except the actual problem of abuse is practically nonexistant. You will only see it happen on very rare occasions, and usually only with problem users. The overwhelming majority of users will use it as it is intended to be used. And even after all of THAT, an abusively-edited post/poll usually only concerns those who are actively in that thread and participating in the discussion at hand (unless of course they are forum suiciding and edited porn/gore into the post, which is an extremely unlikely event).

Also, don't forget that people are able to undo their own ratings on other posts, so once they realize that guy who made that effective thruster argument that they gave a thumbs-up or an "agree" to last week, had just edited the post to favor the opposite side of the argument, they can go and remove their upvotes on his post and change their rating of it to "disagree".

My point is that those reasons you gave for not having polls is absolutely ridiculous and employs fallacious reasoning of a highly hypothetical nature. Giving users more freedom to edit their posts is crucial on this forum. The last thing we need is a place where people have to double-post or triple-post just because they can't edit their posts, or they have to duplicate their own threads just to edit a poll. Nobody is going to want to have to wait on the moderators to do everything for them. This is a forum, not an internet nursing home.

You have to give people the control they need in order to make effective posts. Oftentimes when I make posts, I later think of an even better thing to add to it or that I had since then made more content to share with people, so I could edit it in. You're telling us we should not be allowed to do that because some rare and crazy forumer once abused his own edit priveleges and got banned. That is absolutely ridiculous and highly-illogical fear-based reasoning.

As stated previously by someone else in this thread, why not simply have the poll automatically reset its votes every time it is edited? That's what the Blockland Forums does, and it's very effective. That way, people can't abuse it by creating deceptive votes, and it's a win-win for for everyone!

 

[Comr4de]

Giving users more freedom to edit their posts is crucial on this forum. The last thing we need is a place where people have to double-post or triple-post just because they can't edit their posts, or they have to duplicate their own threads just to edit a poll.

As seen here, here, and here. Even though war song is a mod this stuff is still spammy

 

[DukeofRealms]

As stated previously by someone else in this thread, why not simply have the poll automatically reset its votes every time it is edited? That's what the Blockland Forums does, and it's very effective. That way, people can't abuse it by creating deceptive votes, and it's a win-win for for everyone!

You make a good point, I'm mainly concerned about the development side. It will take a while to get that into the forums, after all other accepted suggestions and features have been implemented.

 

[NeonSturm]

Maybe we should be able to vote agree and disagree on single paragraphs inside a post which get reset if the text (not so much formatting) is different after an edit.

Some times it is difficult to vote for the whole post either agree if you disagree on a single argument out of 4 ... if you don't want to say "you agree on all" and rather not know what to post except that you disagree on this single point only.

 

[Planr]

Maybe we should be able to vote agree and disagree on single paragraphs inside a post which get reset if the text (not so much formatting) is different after an edit.

Some times it is difficult to vote for the whole post either agree if you disagree on a single argument out of 4 ... if you don't want to say "you agree on all" and rather not know what to post except that you disagree on this single point only.

if you like some but not all of a single post, the "informative" or "like" buttons can be somewhat helpful, rather than simply using "agree" or "disagree". If you ask me, two emotes this forum also needs are "Interesting" and "Awesome!"

 

[NeonSturm]

Also we need invalid-argument rather than just old, bad spelling or disagree :D

I think it is rather important to track friendly / unfriendly than agree/disagree.
It should not be too important if you get them in popular threads (many votes), but rather on how many posts.