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Do I use too many polls? How many polls are desirable from a particular person? What do you think about polls? Are polls an accurate way to measure popular opinion, or is that obscured by poor wording and difficulties picking the best category, even the instance of multiple desirable categories?

Thoughts?

I like your polls partially because I have come to expect them, but I also think polls are fun. I am not sure if polls are an accurate way to measure opinion. I think wording could sometimes be an issue. There have been polls in the fourms that I have not voted in because they were a bit convoluted. Like Yes...with opinion added. My answer might be yes, but I do not share the opinion, so I will not vote.

Polls give me the satisfaction of having a say without the responsibility of backing my opinion up.

Not enough, we need more!


I can't really say, I guess as long as the subject at hand keeps people interested in it, on the other hand, people may get lazy, depending on the poll, if it requires someone to justify their vote, I suppose.


well, they are fun.


well, probably it would depend on the poll and the question, the more complicated the propositions and the subject at hand, the probability of error may increase from the voter, and I'm inclined to think that the wording and difficulties on picking the best option, as the lack of options that the OP may have forgotten or did not think of including, that could be a problem I assume, about getting an accurate result. Another possibility is that of the honesty of the voters, and I could say some may chose a random option for the heck of it, or the opossite from their opinion, especially if the reason is for just seeing what are the results.

An example I can think of relating to inaccuracy is that of including options that are sarcastic in order to be fun, such as the alien threat or "[The op] is this...", just to say an example, it is fun and it seems to give relief and that, but, given that few people would chose that option rather than pick any other which are actually related to the subject in question, the exact result on popular opinion would not be accurate because of that.

However, I think we can only make an aproximation on how the result seems to indicate, whith some level of uncertainty rather than claiming accuracy.

Last edited by greenblue on 18 Feb 2009, 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The problem with polls, as they're applied here at least, is that everyone leaps in after reading the question and sets out what they think about it. Every now and then, someone says something controversial and a flame storm ensues, but one thing that never happens is a reasonable discussion.

Actually, that's not just a problem with polls...

as long as the option to shout my adoration for your perfectness is there keep them comming

Sedentary people who spend time at a computer arguing with people who rarely are well informed or reasonable enough to compose a good defense of a position must be given leeway on occasion to blow their tops in a relatively harmless area.

Polls posted by AG are a special exception to the law of diminishing marginal utility. They are so awesome and glorious that they actually have increasing marginal utility- the more polls AG posts, the better each individual one is and the more the next additional poll will be valued.