Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Frequently requested items for Polls...

Up front, I want to say that this is not an 'official' list. Just suggestions and observations.

After the last round of polls were some thing was missing to make everyone happy, I thought that it would be nice to have a thread of best practices with regard to Polls.


1. In all multiple choice questions always include the option to opt out of that question. (In my most recent poll, I forgot to include a 'none of the above' option for each of my questions.)

2. There is no such thing as a Yes/No question. It usually goes like this. Yes/No/Maybe/Why should I care?

Please feel free to update and embellish the above list.

James

I usually don't like when the choice is given like this because we don't get a solid answer.

Take for example my poll on Audio Fic...

Had I given options other than Yes/No, like maybe/can't-say/dunno, people would have obviously voted for that option and it doesn't give me a solid result or help me decide on what's the majority opinion.

So, even if the people are somewhat vacillating between the two extremes, giving the choice as
a) Yes
b) No
forces them to decide on any one that their thoughts are closer to, even if it is a negative choice!

Whereas *maybe* is something majority of the people will opt for and it doesn't conclude the poll decisively, so what's the use of the poll?

I already know a lot of people aren't gonna care either this way or that way! So, my opinion is give the extremes and let the *moderates* choose whichever side they are closer to!

Is this gonna cause another round of rows?

/Me giggles as I read the above.

So how do the rest of you feel? Do you want the option of Maybe? Please, answer yes or no.

Elisabeth
who thinks of the third choice (even if I don't know if our poll supports it): Yes, No, or fill-in-the-blank

Now you got me giggling, Elisabeth!