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Site Specific: Need for a way to poll

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorpapab30
    • CommentTimeJun 6th 2008
     
    Hey all,

    With all the discussions on this and that and what we want and don't want, and who we want and don't want, maybe this would be a good time to go and grab a free online survey tool and link the result pages into Open Designs. The instead of filling up the forums with all of these long posts about a yes/no question we could quickly hit the poll page, check out he latest votes, make our descisions and move on.

    Just a thought for you all to consider.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeJun 6th 2008 edited by Sean on the 06th June 2008 at 14:28:48 EDT
     
    Indeed. This is something being looked into and needed to make voting issues a lot smoother and easier.

    If you have suggestions on a survey script (PHP/MySQL based) or WordPress plugin, chime in so we can check them out.

    Thanks in advance.
  3.  
    If nothing is found, I'd be willing to create and release a WordPress poll plugin (something to release publicly, but the admins here could decide how they want it to work). However, I'm assuming that there's something out there already that is at least decent.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeJun 6th 2008 edited by Sean on the 06th June 2008 at 17:05:15 EDT
     
    @Aaron: That would be awesome if you could create something for us to use. That way it could be tailored to OD specific needs. Contact me off forum to discuss more.
  5.  
    @Sean: I got your message and will talk to you Monday.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeJun 6th 2008
     
    Just to follow up, Aaron and I talked a little bit ago and like he said, come Monday we'll get cranking on this plugin, so stay tuned for more after the weekend.
    •  
      CommentAuthorperthmetro
    • CommentTimeJun 7th 2008
     
    Sean, with all the troubles of multiple IDs within the same member etc. I doubt any poll could be seen as reliable if it is indeed open to one and all. We need a systematic approach whereby we need to be 'authorised' to vote otherwise it will get poisoned - this has been discussed in length elsewhere with certain 'criteria' that qualifies a member to vote.

    Once this issue is resolved then how easy would it be to have a poll set up that doesn't need to be integrated with wordpress. The list of authorised voters could be checked via a simple database.

    In regard to all the members who only watch and don't say a thing, ever, in the forum, then I doubt they'd worry to much about the decisions that are made without them.

    The 'list' can be built up over time and to a decent number - as it is now the 'REAL' community here has enough numbers to make a pretty democratic vote.

    Member A who registers, downloads a few templates then doesn't come back for 12 months isn't really a concern as far as getting "everyone's" vote - I'm sure they'd rather leave the site's decisions to those that care and know what they are voting about.

    I'm a member of lots of forums, but only for the sake of being able to post a question and not necessarily to have a say on how the site should go.

    We need to have a parliament/congress type 'representative' vote, it will be too hard to manage otherwise.

    Maybe have Admins, Moderators and Moderators(voting only)?

    Pete
    •  
      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeJun 7th 2008 edited by Sean on the 07th June 2008 at 00:11:33 EDT
     
    @Pete: Thanks for your comment.

    You bring up some valid points, however, don't worry too much at this point as I have a couple ideas Aaron and I will be discussing to handle some of the duplicate user ID, proxy server and other ways people can possibly game a voting system.

    Of course I won't disclose those ideas publicly since that would just give people a head start on trying to game the system, however I will mention one of my ideas and that's to look at a users sign up date and compare it to the present date and put a weight/point value on a vote from that user, and also looking at how many posts/comments, as well as looking at design uploads for users who contribute designs to OD.

    The voting system won't necessarily be WordPress based, but will work with WordPress. There are ways to use stand alone PHP/MySQL programming with WordPress which will give us more flexibility for future upgrades to OD (backend, forum, etc).

    As mentioned, just hang in a couple days until Aaron and I talk again on Monday once he gets back from his vacation. He was nice enough to take my call while visiting family, so I told him to just hold off until Monday when he gets back.

    As for your other concerns about a "parliament/congress type" voting system, that will be discussed once we get the admin/moderator stuff handled in the coming weeks.
    •  
      CommentAuthorperthmetro
    • CommentTimeJun 7th 2008
     
    sounds good
  10.  
    Sean: I left you a message. Contact me back when you can.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeJun 9th 2008
     
    @aaron: Got your message. I will call you tomorrow morning (Tuesday).
  12.  
    Sean: As long as it's morning, my son bent his arm (yes, bent...it's called a green stick fracture) on vacation, and we see the doctor and surgeon tomorrow at 1pm.
    • CommentAuthorainslie
    • CommentTimeJun 10th 2008 edited by ainslie on the 10th June 2008 at 10:53:34 EDT
     
    Didn't there used to be a poll feature on the forum? What happened to that?

    There are certainly ad-ons for Vanilla.
    •  
      CommentAuthorgnome
    • CommentTimeJun 10th 2008
     
    ainslie: nobody knows.
  15.  
    Just got off the phone with Sean. We're compiling a list of features/functionality that will be in the poll.

    As for using a generic Vanilla add-on, the problem is that this needs to be tailored specifically to OD. Sean has done a lot of work to find and eliminate duplicate accounts, etc, and this needs to implement some of his work. In then end, we'll end up with something far better and more accurate.
  16.  
    Yay progress :)
    • CommentAuthorpapab30
    • CommentTimeJun 12th 2008
     
    Yes I agree. Progress.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSean
    • CommentTimeJun 12th 2008
     
    Indeed. We are moving forward.

    However people do need to keep in mind these things, especially the cleaning up of the duplicate and/or unused accounts is/was very time consuming and even though we don't always post up to the minute status reports, we are always working on things to try and improve the overall user and member experience on OD.

    Aaron is an awesome person and coder, so we'll be able to come up with something really spiffy and functional.

    More to come as we have information to share on our progress.

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