Polls on the GDB?

[Shabago]

Go.

[triste]

PLEASE

^{_{Anyone who ruins it by multi voting with alt accounts can eat the minge of my alt account}}

[LidlessEye]

I voted 'Yes' but the 'irony' is something I'd have chosen too if it were allowed 

[Halaster]

I voted 'no'.  Not because I don't think we should have polls, I'm all for them.

'No' just looked lonely to me and I felt bad for it.

[triste]

Sometimes nicknames are earned, Halasturd.

[Krombat]

No, the amount of people who avoid the cesspool that is the gdb is staggering.

[mansa]

It is hard to know how the players react to changes, or whether they are enjoying some storyline.  Feedback is important.

Having a poll is another form of feedback, which is easier to interact with because I don't have to reply and share my personal feelings and have the community vjudge my typoos

[Usiku]

No, the amount of people who avoid the cesspool that is the gdb is staggering.

Like Mansa said with his typoos, having the feedback is useful. Polls can also be fun. I feel like people who don't want to engage in big GDB debates are also more likely to pop an opinion on a poll without having to get too 'stuck in'.

Should note, we're not going to suddenly assume that the results of a poll on the GDB alone represent the desires of the whole player base. We do know not everyone participates here.

Aside, it would be nice if we could try and move away from calling community forums a 'cesspool' and the like though, we really do want to try and improve the relations here and stuff like that is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. It becomes more toxic just from people calling it toxic, ya know?

[Jihelu]

It would be neat if there was more interaction between the gdb and the client. Do we have a big poll going on? A link on the homepage suggesting someone vote on it could be appropriate.

[Narf]

I voted yes for no other reason than the desire to use it to get a sense of people's playtimes for events. Even if that's the only thing it's allowed for, I think it'd be nice.

[zealus]

Yes.

Also: Oh the irony.

[Tuannon]

Yes if you can revoke troll pollers' polling priviledges.

[Lotion]

It would be a useful feature. I voted Irony even though I think yes.

[Barsook]

Yes, for the sake of feedback but with some regulation.

[Hestia]

My ideal idea for this idea:

Clan leaders can create polls in their clan GDB forum for arranging RPTs.
Staffers can use them to get a down and dirty numeric count of opinions on a topic.

Polls would be disabled in certain sub-forums completely.

[Barsook]

Like!

[X-D]

My ideal idea for this idea:

Clan leaders can create polls in their clan GDB forum for arranging RPTs.
Staffers can use them to get a down and dirty numeric count of opinions on a topic.

Polls would be disabled in certain sub-forums completely.

What I was thinking. But I would also have a sub just for Arm related polls for the players. Disable on most other sub-forums.

[Night Queen]

How many of the Yes votes are the same people though?

..

I think it's driven out of a desire to find technical solutions to social problems, but sometimes things are just not that easy. When someone has to justify their "vote" with at least a sentence or two there's at least some level of transparency (by making a post instead of clicking a button) and a chance for people to notice something might be fishy, not only relying on people having to spend time investigating (or wasting really, when stuff is happening in game all the time!).

As well as that, on the back end side for such things it's trivial to just change the numbers by anyone who feels like it, and no way to know (and it's been one thing that keeps coming up over and over that the website is old and keeps breaking and it's usually security warnings), that's why the "topmud" on topmudsites went and bribed the owner into selling it

I like the idea and the earnestness behind it, but I think it's not workable in how the forum is set up, maybe if there was a stronger link to currently active characters that verifiably play more than a few hours per week, or something like that (but even then that doesn't solve the problem of the votes being an opaque black box that not even staff can independently audit, which ironically isn't very democratic )

Maybe keeping it clan forums only would be a good thing though, that'd be ok. I don't pay attention to sites like reddit for anything important because of the "voting" (companies pay for what's now called reputation management services), I think these things always start with good intentions but create cruel and abusive structures that let the more innocent think that they are seeing democracy when it's just sooo easily messed with.

"posted from TweetDeck" ;)

[Greve]

As long as it's only used for things that really should be put to the vote.

Good poll:
"Should we have the RPT on Friday, Saturday or Sunday?"

BAD POLL:
"Is armor effective enough at reducing damage?"

There's a ton of changes that were made to the game which had originally been proposed by a player on the GDB and met with widespread disagreement from other players. I personally recall suggesting stat priorities back in the day and getting lambasted by a bunch of posters for being a stat-obsessed twink. If there had been a poll, it would probably have been 80% No. Plenty of other examples of the same kind. The GDB has a very contrarian culture where many posters will invent reasons on the spot to disagree with absolutely every suggestion that ever gets made, and polls would make that worse.

So yes to polls for things that are "harmless," like event scheduling and favorite clans and whatnot. No to polls for things like code changes and roleplaying discussions. Those things should be discussed and not swayed by anonymous votes.

[MeTekillot]

Greve, the irony of your argument is absolutely delicious.

[najdorf]

That's the problem with regulations. Rules, more rules, and people concerning themselves with how to tackle them, with additional rules. Allow full freedom of expression for everyone, as long as they are not insulting others openly.

[triste]

That's the problem with regulations. Rules, more rules, and people concerning themselves with how to tackle them, with additional rules. Allow full freedom of expression for everyone, as long as they are not insulting others openly.

This. I can't even remember the last time I reported a post, the only person who offends me here is [redacted due to rule: no personal attacks except against Halasturd].

[WarriorPoet]

I will be far more likely to vote on a meaningful poll than engage in the toxic, nitpicking bullshit that the GDB has devolved into the last few years.

[Barsook]

I will be far more likely to vote on a meaningful poll than engage in the toxic, nitpicking bullshit that the GDB has devolved into the last few years.

[Night Queen]

I like reading the discussions on the ArmageddonMUD forums, they are interesting, even when people disagree it's still interesting to read, I've seen way worse... It's usually pretty civilised... When you just insult the entire forum randomly it's just making people who contribute with good intentions feel bad too (like Usiku's post) :/

It's totally possible to code my suggestion to make it so that only some accounts are able to vote, but people still wouldn't be able to see for themselves if a "vote" is legitimate in the way that you are able to judge for yourself based on the words written when it's a post - muuuuch more fair than allowing people to add as many votes as they want.