POLL: DO YOU LIKE POLLS

I'm making this partly because it's half 5 and what else am I gonna do, partly because a poll about polls just seems like a good idea right now BUT also because I think it's important to see if people actually approve of the use of polling as a means of determining potential change around the site/forum. Historically it's been accepted by nearly everyone that Hx management can pretty much do as they please and then Feedback exists as the place to put forth individual arguments for/against/within/around/antelope whatever's happened, but more and more with recent developments it appears that direct polling (albeit of a tiny minority of active members) is the preferred method of discourse.

Personally I think polling and majority votes have no place in a community such as Habbox, but I'd be interested to see what others think should be basic protocol for decision-making



And yes I am aware of the irony of the possibility that a no-poll template gets accepted because of this poll

GO TO BED!

Can't tell if this is serious or not so I will reply as if both and you can open whichever you prefer.

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HEIL HABBOX!

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The problem I've had with the 'what management says goes' line in the past is that it seems to be the excuse for managers - general management in particular although department managers also use it - to not produce any rationale for their decisions. Managers are human and they will make mistakes but by putting a rationale out into the open for decisions made, you can then allow others who disagree to challenge your rationale and you've then got to find the evidence that supports it. If you can't then there is room for change. On the other hand, it's important to remember that ultimately it is the managers who have to put up and work with the ideas suggested. It's no good suggesting to do x,y and z if it's impractical to do so but managers need to explain to members why instead of 'I said so ner ner ner'

I do think polls cause more problems than what they're worth as we saw with the userbars. Thing is, if management leave it down to discussion there's always some people that say they missed out on the thread (fair enough), and that they missed out on discussion. So management then decide to have a poll so everyone can vote, but then everyone still doesn't vote in them and you get the risk of people voting for something they couldn't care less in.

Discussion before action is definitely the right way and management should make the decision on the pros/cons rather than the amount of people voting for each thing. Just how I would do things really.

It depends if the matter has been properly debated and the poll is the final step in seeing if a change is viable and popular. As Habbox attempts to be a big time business (but fails miserably), I shall use an important institute that debates on a constant basis and uses a poll-based system for the final outcome:

British Parliament: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. They debate matters ad nauseum and use a final poll to determine if the House wants a change of law or policy to go through. They do not randomly vote on the title of a document (which has happened before at Habbox), they discuss it in detail. It's worse when polls are made at Habbox and the poll is ignored and the debates within that thread are also ignored. The infamous "remove any thread that says "Post Your..." is one example where both a poll was ignored and the discussions within the thread were ignored - mainly the quality of the arguments rather than the discussions themselves - they listened to people who didn't even understand their own reason for change and went with them for the sake of over-liberalism.

That said, Habbox very rarely create a poll for no reason. The last few polls were born through some discussion or other - Userbars / Christmas VIP etc. If anything they should publicly announce a change by inviting members to discuss the matter in a thread without a poll and when there are a range of different poll options you create a poll to count popularity and whittle away until you get the conclusion, or abstain and leave the thing that apparently needs change alone.

Tbh I don't like the feedback forum never mind the polls.

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Would be interesting if someone who is pro-poll could put forth a written argument in its favour. Feels kind of indicative of the value in polls that this one seems to suggest that the people who are more concerned about majority opinion than pragmatic reasoning offer nothing by way of actual expression

I voted the fourth option but I could do without the polls, I rarely ever vote on them even if I've posted an opinion in the thread on the matter since the views expressed in the thread should have made their way to a firm conclusion by the end of the thread anyway.

I have to go with 'Leave it to management, they can implement changes which can later be discussed in Feedback'.

I trust managements decisions and more often than not, users hate change or don't see the potential in a change that a manager might and therefore it never gets implemented. It should be implemented, tested, discussed and kept or removed after people see the change go live.

I don't see the point in polls.
If we used polls, people are still gonna argue with the poll outcome and create a feedback thread anyway, so why not skip he poll and go straight to the discussing etc

I don't have a problem with polls, I mean without a poll we wouldn't have been able to demonstrate just how not wanted that change concerning post counts was - the fact a large bloc of the forum was against it (as shown via the poll) thus made it harder for management and the advocates of that meddling rule change to bring about a not-needed change which the majority didn't want. This seems to me like a way of shutting users up and it reminds me of a former General Manager.

Didn't work, eventually if you ignore opinion too much then people get angry/fed up.

I back User-led discussions in Feedback with a supporting poll.