We’re holding a DIY debate week on the Forum, from April 28 – May 4th.
What’s a DIY debate week?
It’s been great seeing and hearing people responding positively to debate weeks (1,2,3), writing posts, getting into discussions, and voting in large numbers.
I especially like that voting on the banner prompts people to leave a comment, which then starts discussions. I’d love to know if that vote→conversation pipeline holds if we let everyone make polls.
So… we are releasing a poll-making feature for everyone to use. We’re holding this DIY debate week to celebrate that release, during which we’ll ask users to make and discuss polls.
Throughout the week, the Forum team will promote polls we think are particularly valuable. This could be by pinning them on the Frontpage, linking them on social media, putting them in the Forum Digest, etc...
The polls will look like our debate week polls (a single axis with a label on each end, and a statement above), but unlike during debate week, they'll be in posts rather than on banners.
How can I take part?
Write a post with a poll in it. This could be a new genre for the Forum, so get creative. Some examples of uses of polls I’d love to see:
- Make the case for the importance of a particular discussion (this is what I do in debate week announcements), then put a poll under it.
- Make an argument, and for each proposition, make a separate poll (you can have as many polls in your post as you like).
- Write a dialogue with a friend, and use the poll feature to get the readers to vote on who they agree with the most.
How does the poll feature work?
It’ll look like the polls we’ve had for other debate weeks – it’ll be one axis, with a custom title, and custom labels on each end. You can use the poll to:
- Ask a yes or no question.
- Determine the reader’s preference between two outcomes.
- Ask for a level of agreement with a statement.
We expect the feature to go live by Wednesday next week (23rd April), though you can start drafting your posts now and add the polls later. This is a new feature so there may be some bugs, please feel free to report any issues to us by replying to this post, or by contacting us another way.
Putting a poll in your post
There will be a new item in the editor toolbar:
This will insert a poll into your post, if you click on the poll a form will open to edit it, like so[1]:
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Some things to note:
- You can add as many polls as you like to a post.
- If you add a poll to a draft, the clock won't start counting down until the post is published.
- The widget that shows in the editor is a simplified version of what will show in the post (e.g. it doesn't have the vote count), so don't worry if it looks slightly different.
Interacting with the poll as a reader
You drag your avatar along the axis to vote, and you'll then have the option to leave a comment.
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If you leave a comment, it’ll appear on the poll, and in the comment section of the post the poll is hosted on.
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We’ll also use the feature from the last event we ran, where a percentage will appear on the comment to indicate the strength of your vote, and whether you have changed your mind since your first vote. To avoid confusion on posts with multiple polls, the title of the poll will be quoted at the top of your comment.
PS- I am OOO 'til the 23rd, so I won't respond to comments until then.
- ^
This is approximately what it will look like. We may change a few things before launching it, such as the choice of colours
Should there be an option for the poll results not to link responses to individual voters? I think there are some questions for which a confidential poll would be preferable. On the other hand, I imagine the voter-vote identity would still be known to CEA and potentially hackable (which IIRC is a reason why there is no "make an anonymous comment/post" function).
When we launched the first iteration of this slider feature for a forum-wide event, it was anonymous. We later decided to make it non-anonymous because we thought it would make people more bought into the poll (because they would be interested to see the opinions of people they recognise, and would take their own vote more seriously because it was public).
I think broadly speaking this worked, and people were more bought in to later polls. Letting people add comments was also intended to move further in the direction of "prompt for individuals to stake out their positions" (as opposed to "tool for aggregating preferences").
I wouldn't want to add the option of voting anonymously because I would guess people would use it just because it's the lowest effort thing to do, even when there's no real downside to having people see their vote. If people do want to vote anonymously they can always create an anonymous account, so a high-friction version of the option does exist.
(and: on the point about anon-voting being potentially hackable/known to CEA, fully anonymous accounts are the simplest way round this too).
This reminds me of the Taiwan Digital Minster, Andrey Tang, Taiwan Digital Democracy movement
Update: The poll feature is now out!
[Good chance you considered my idea already and rejected it (for good reason), but stating it in case not:]
For these debate week polls, consider dividing each side up into 10 segments, rather than 9? That way, when someone votes, they’re agreeing/disagreeing by a nice, round 10 or 20 or 30%, etc., rather than by the kinda random amounts (at present) of 11, 22, 33%?
Good idea, I hadn't thought of that! I've changed it to 10 like you suggested (will be deployed in ~10 mins at time of writing)