Monday, May 18, 2009

First Poll Draft (Not a Proposal)

Create a new Glossary entry after “3.1 Flavor Text”, called “Polls” which shall read:

There is a specific type of post called a “poll” which contains a question, and two or more answer options. If a given poll is not a type of post which can be enacted (passed) or failed, it must also include an expiration date. Otherwise, it’s expiration date is considered the same as the date on which it was enacted (passed) or failed. Any post fulfilling these requirements is considered a poll even if not clearly identified as such. In polls, these additional rules must be observed:

* Contestants making comments on that poll may include one of the answer options in the text of their comments, preceding it with the arrow icon. The included answer option is considered that Contestant’s given Opinion regarding that poll’s question.
* Only the last Opinion given by a Contestant on a given poll is considered that Contestant’s Opinion. Previous Opinions for that poll from the same Contestant are ignored.
* At any time that the current date is past the expiration date of a poll, the poll is considered closed. New Opinions cannot be given on poll’s which are closed.
* After a poll is closed, if the poll has at least one opinion, any Contestant can create an official post which counts the number of times each Opinion was given for that particular poll question. This is known as a Tally.
* Only the first correct Tally made for a particular poll is considered to be an actual Tally. A Tally can only be correct if the Opinions for its poll have been correctly counted.

 

Sorry for being verbose, in fact I tried not to make it too complex. Some key issues I tried to avoid with this wording:

* Not putting more work on the shoulders of admins: anyone can tally up.
* Allowing Proposals to have polls. Proposals can include instructions to be executed on certain Tally results. (This only occur after the actual tally is made, and as long as they don’t involve ruleset modification, anyone can complete the instructions)
* Clearly delineates an Opinion by using an icon.
* Polls allow the comunity to give its opinion in the form of a multiple choice, instead o yes/no answers like regular proposals do.

Feedback?

posted by arthexis at 18 May 2009 18:59:01 UTC Comments (5)

Comments

Qwazukee:

18-05-2009 20:39:56 UTC

I think expiration date would be better of as expiration time (especially for polls that have been enacted/failed, or whatever).

ais523:

18-05-2009 20:44:59 UTC

Ugh, fix your “apostrophe’s”.

Influenza:

18-05-2009 21:27:15 UTC

And if the poll is not on a proposal, the expiration date can be set as a few minutes later, the poster can vote an opinion and resolve the poll immediately? Not sure if this could have adverse effects, as a non-proposal poll won’t change the ruleset… still, I’m wary.

smith:

19-05-2009 02:41:59 UTC

for sounds like a workable post framework to me. The immediately expiring poll scenario could be fixed with a minimum poll duration or minimum Tally count.

Kevan: he/him

19-05-2009 11:08:54 UTC

It’d be useful to have a formal framework for bolting polls onto proposals (rather than having to get it right, from scratch, every time you want to say “each player may choose a type of fruit along with their vote”), but I’m not sure we’d ever really need them outside of proposals.

If you just want an informal straw poll that doesn’t update the ruleset or gamestate, you can just announce it, and tally the votes however you like.