Wikipedia talk:Straw polls

message: # Straw polls should not have opening and closing times as votes do.
# A deadline for the survey should be considered so as to resolve the issue in a timely manner.
This seems a bit contradictory to me. --[[User2602:306:3B45:B650:DD27:8015:F031:66B2 (talk) 15:47, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Opening and closing times

message: Why did this policy suddenly become an essay? 
Upped to guideline, will switch to policy if no-one disagrees within 7 days. --Kim Bruning 09:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Alright. Hmm, so where do I find the guidelines to make a proper non-binding opinion poll (aka survey) now? I need them today :-). The Survey Guidelines redirect to here. :-/  --Kim Bruning 10:57, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * It goes roughly like this: (1) list options; (2) get people to !vote; (3) argue over results; (4) argue over what the questions were; (5) argue over quorum; (6) argue over the arguing. I am told that surveys like this typically don't provide very much useful data, and that the outcome is going to be biased towards whatever the writer wants to see. >Radiant< 11:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  True, but some kinds of survey can possibly be useful. At any rate, some people feel a burning need for polls. It would be nice to actually describe the safest (for some definition of safe) way to do them, if people must really do them.  --Kim Bruning 11:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: *Like I said, if one would describe the safest (or arguably, least unsafe) way of doing that, people would assume it was always safe, and feel justified in their burning need, and the next thing you know is we have people vote on facts again. >Radiant< 11:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  well, that's what we have now too. Usually it helps to be able to point to something solid. :-/ *scratches head* --Kim Bruning 18:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  what happened here? 

message: Ok, I've decided to take it upon myself to head up getting this page back into shape as a descriptive explanation for how Wikipedia conducts straw polls. It is incorrect to utilize this page as a soapbox for anti-polling as has been previously done. This is not the page to do that. I encourage fellow editors to help formulate this descriptive page to be in accord with what occurs everyday on Wikipedia so that it can thereby become a rule of thumb for folks who may be inexperienced on forming polls.  12:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, I'd love to write something about people challenging each other's opinions. And we've never really covered the concept of rough consensus before. Feeling up to it? --Kim Bruning 13:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a good idea... but first this should be returned to being a guideline... as you've previously said there needs to be something solid for people to look to when they are going to go about gauging some aspect of a discussion.  13:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hm, interesting... you want a neutral guideline, but at the same time you only want to cover the side of the situation that matches your POV, calling the issues you disagree with "soapboxing"  , and hiding the parts of Wikihistory that don't match with your opinion, such as Quickpolls. Needless to say that's not going to work. The best solution would probably be to redirect this page to WP:PNSD, which already covers everything you're trying to cover here. >Radiant< 13:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you're wrong.. this isn't the page to talk about "anti-polling" this is the page to describe current practice on Wikipedia. Unfortunately it appears that editors were a bit confused about this previously and I've decided to clear the air. As the page matures it will of course be logical to include a short history of polling on Wikipedia but now's not the time... what needs to be done now is to make an illustrative guide on what to do when an editor wants to formulate a straw poll regarding a given issue.  13:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: *Precisely what I said, you want to write a POV essay that covers the issue only from your angle.  The most appropriate spot for POV essays is your userspace. >Radiant< 13:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: This isn't "pro-polling" nor is it "anti-polling" this is describing current Wikipedia project practices. Was that not understood?  14:35, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: *You're well aware that you are deliberatly omitting the important caveats. >Radiant< 14:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Sorry, since when is describing current practice inappropriate outside of user space?  14:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand that's how you describe it.  I just don't agree that it's describing current practice.  --Minderbinder 14:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So you disagree that polling occurs on an hourly basis on Wikipedia?  14:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: *Ah, we get the false dichotomy now, and the fallacy of many questions. What's next? >Radiant< 14:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *No false dichotomy, just like User:Kim Bruning was pointing out above... there needs to be a solid place for editors to use as a guideline when formulating any one of numerous polls that are conducted on an hourly basis here.  14:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: **Ah yes, the proof by assertion is next. Unless you're referring to xFD/FAC/RFA, there's no way that we conduct numerous polls on an hourly basis. If you are referring to xFD/FAC/RFA, we have plenty of suggestion pages on that already. >Radiant< 14:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Well getting this page back to its former guideline recognition is probably going to be a bit like pulling teeth much like WP:!VOTE has been... but that's fine, a healthy debate is good. Given the level of dissent on that page it is a safe bet that there will be plenty of support for a descriptive guideline (particular given recent developments).  15:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On a site with a million articles, I doubt there's much that doesn't happen on an hourly basis, including vandalism, misspellings, etc.  Polling certainly happens, but it often is a mess and makes things worse.  Polling can help in some cases, but I think a page talking about how to do polling should be clear about the potential problems so that editors can try to avoid them, or be able to make an informed decision whether polling is even worth it.  --Minderbinder 15:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, all that we need to bear in mind is the mantra this page is descriptive, not prescriptive. That's what makes a good guideline. Minderbinder, have you looked at current version and seen something that wasn't descriptive in the text?  15:48, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: *Well, yes, your deliberate omission of the facts that don't support your point of view. Half a truth is a whole lie. >Radiant< 15:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (edit conflict) I don't see description of the problems that often happen with polling.  It's not really descriptive if it selectively omits part of the description.  --Minderbinder 15:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  Radiant: That information MUST be added sooner or later, as that is the requirement for a descriptive guideline. If you can provide such information, well, that's all the better. :-) --Kim Bruning 15:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I'd agree with that.  Let's see how this comes along when the notes at the bottom get integrated.  --Minderbinder 15:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reworking this back to guideline designation

message: Think of this as writing an NPOV encyclopedia article about "Polling on wikipedia". We can do NPOV, some of Reliable Sources, we can't quite cover Original Research or conflict of interest, since this is about our own practices, but we can try to get as close as possible. That's the basic idea. 
If you think that this is a novel concept, think again: this is how all the old policy pages on wikipedia got written. :-)
Worst case this page doesn't make it to policy status, but we might still learn a lot. Care to give it a try?  
--Kim Bruning 16:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, and descriptive... again the mantra needs to be: no soapboxing either pro or con on the idea of polling. At this point I don't see a need for this page to ever become policy but there is most certainly a need for a guideline.  16:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: While I understand the position that guidelines on Wikipedia are supposed to be "descriptive", I see at least two issues with that in this case; first, What if there are multiple practices in use on Wikipedia, depending on which people are the most active in a particular article or group of articles (or policy or group of policies)?   This appears to be the case in terms of polling.  There are some people who like to run around telling people who start polls that "voting is evil", but they can't be everywhere, and often the people who start the polls just ignore them.  How do you "describe" common practice when there are multiple, competing practices with no commonality?  Second, wouldn't it be more helpful to the users and especially newer users, to have a page that says when polls should (and shouldn't) be used, and how to do them, even if formulating that advice requires some adjustments to, or clarification of, current practice?  And it is clear that this will be required if my first point is correct, as the disparate practices will have to be harmonized.  It seems to me that on something as basic (or in Jimbo's recent words, "constitutional") as the fundamental decision-making process on Wikipedia, some "prescription" is going to have to take place.   6SJ7 17:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV/ invitation

message: This page is becoming pretty pointless. We already have a page that accurately describes how and when to poll on Wikipedia, and that's WP:PNSD. If we fill in this page with all the situations and the caveats, that's exactly what we'll end up with. If we leave out what Netscott calls "soapboxing" and what the rest of us call "warnings about when not to use polls", we end up with a POV essay. Either way we're not writing anything here that hasn't been written before. >Radiant< 16:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That hasn't been written before, indeed... and it was a guideline before as well. When folks are going around saying "voting is evil" there's no mistaking that for what it is, soapboxing. As I explained on your talk page... polling is not evil it is just a tool. Better to educate editors descriptively about how to use that tool beneficially than keep our heads in the sand like ostriches foolishly and see editors misuse it through ignorance.  16:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: When people go around saying "wikipedia is not a democracy" is that soapboxing as well?  --Minderbinder 16:22, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, you might as well add that Wikipedia is NOT a government when you say that. The simple fact to the matter is that it is not uncommon to find organizations that are not democracies but that do employ polling.  16:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Different story, I think. At any rate, polling is... tricky... to get right, at least. Can we agree on that? --Kim Bruning 17:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  That and I haven't seen some of the "points to be integrated" elsewhere, at least not explicitly. Please provide links or diffs if you can point them out? (I'd love to have them to whack people over the head with, when they're being clueless again. ;-) ) --Kim Bruning 17:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pointless

message: There is confusion here. This page is going to be for guidelines on how to conduct a poll, not whether polling is evil or not. Polling happens on Wikipedia and editors need a guideline on how to do that. The anti-polling or pro-polling viewpoints should be left to other pages (which obviously this page will reference).  08:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Obviously there is a need for a guideline. I am going to be reviewing the history of the development of this page to try to better understand how its utilization as a guideline became derailed and then see if what caused it to become derailed can be properly addressed.  09:12, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: **There is certainly need for a guideline, and that's why we have a guideline: WP:PNSD. One might argue that there is also need for a policy, and indeed we already have one: WP:DEMO. >Radiant< 09:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *No, there is reason this page was a guideline (which even you yourself tagged it as such) that is not covered by "polling is not a substitute for discussion" which lets face it PNSD is just a POV fork of its original page meta:Polling is evil.  09:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: **False. PNSD was expanded to cover that, which is why PNSD is a guideline and there is no need fo this page. m:polling is evil is a POV page, yes, that's why PNSD was rewritten from scratch, doesn't even remotely resemble VIE, and is a neutral guideline. >Radiant< 09:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I suggest we move the how-to-do-a-poll parts of PNSD to this page, and leave the explicit "we do consensus" at pnsd. --Kim Bruning 11:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *That's an interesting suggestion, but the result would be that the people who read this page remain unaware that "we do consensus". >Radiant< 11:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *WP:PNSD is not a guideline, regardless of whether there is a tag on it that says it is.  Part of the reason the tag is still there is that someone got one of their admin friends to threaten to block me if I removed the guideline tag again, and then someone protected the page (although I wasn't going to remove it again anyway, because of the threat).   6SJ7 15:34, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Polling guidelilne vs. polling pulpit

message: Given their obviously poor track record, what makes you think we should be "continuing to have key polls" in the first place? >Radiant< 15:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can we hold that question for a while? It might sort itself out automatically, as we edit further. ^^;; --Kim Bruning 15:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a name for the type of logical fallacy engaged in by Radiant above, where one states an unproven assertion ("their obviously poor track record") as the premise for a question in an effort to avoid any discussion about whether the assertion is correct or not, but I forget what it is.  I just call it a "When did you stop beating your wife" question.  There also is a second rhetorical trick in there, that of putting the word "obviously" in front of an assertion to try to distract attention away from the fact that the assertion is not only not obvious, but is in fact disputed.  Please note, I am not saying that polling has a good track record; what I believe is that, in highly controversial articles, discussion and polling have equally poor track records, so there is no justification for singling out polling.  6SJ7 15:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Just for my own curiosity, what other major polls of the ATT scale have there been before that didn't work out? Wikipedia:Attribution/Poll, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Usability/Main Page/Final archive, and the 3rr polls (can't find the link now). - Denny (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well in order for a poll to "work out" all it has to do is establish what the state of affairs are about a given issue in terms of what views folks hold on the issue. So pretty much the only way a poll wouldn't "work out" is if it was canceled or otherwise wasn't valid in some way (ie: a poll about whether a given logically constructed statement was true or not.... obviously the statement is going to be true or not regardless of the poll). There is now an incomplete list of policy and guideline related polls in the see also section of this page that you might like to review.  20:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sounds like you have a solid grasp on what a poll is. --Kim Bruning 00:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: See this thing here. It's called NPOV.
See this other thing. It's called a straw poll.
When you put them together, there's this big grinding noise.
Don't make the grinding noise. A kitten is killed by the grinder every time you have a poll. Because they're evil. And evil makes kittens suffer. Grace Note 23:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ayup. Straw Polls on article content equals wikiality.  I think we covered that in points to be included. Perhaps you'd like to edit the page so that that point is in fact integrated with the main text? --Kim Bruning 00:40, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Funny enough per WP:TPG I'm half-tempted to remove this talk. This talk page is for improving this project page. The "… is evil" mantra is getting tiring already. That is what is known as soapboxing. Straw polls are used daily on Wikipedia. It is time to stop denying this and to properly address it with guidelines on how to best go about employing them correctly.  01:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just ask folks to be constructive already. :-/ --Kim Bruning 01:57, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh.  I thought Grace Note was supporting polling by satirizing its opponents.  No?  As for wikiality, it is defined as truth by agreement.  It is the so-called "consensus" process that produces wikiality, not polling.  Of course, polling should be used with great caution on content pages.  We shouldn't be voting on what the facts are.  But it can be used for other things.  6SJ7 02:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

text: *"Straw polls are used daily on Wikipedia." unless you refer to RFA/xFD/FAC, please provide evidence of this assertion? All you have so far is evidence that we've had a couple dozen polls over the past five years. What you're doing is known as soapboxing, not to mention proof by assertion, and putting up straw men. >Radiant< 08:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *What made you think that I wasn't including those?  16:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *(Why don't we all indent the same way? - colons or stars?, make a decision)  I think there are more polls over content than Radiant suggests.  I've personally seen polls on BC/AD vs BCE/CE, whether to use the word "death" when defining Abortion, whether an infobox should place the Iraq War in a campaign called the "Global War on Terrorism", whether to include images in the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy article, and at least one or two more.  I'm only one person, so I imagine there have been quite a lot more.  I do a lot of Wikipedia:requested moves, and at least 80% of those involve a poll, which isn't directly about article content, but it's close.  When you decide which language's name to use for a river or city, or whether an event in a war is an "incident" or a "massacre" or a "tragedy" or a "battle", you're deciding content.  Should we be doing it differently? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  So then we should stamp out polls entirely. I'm not sure I want to go that far though. Sometimes they are useful at least. A well designed poll might go along lines of "Ok, I agree with mot folks" and "I still have issues I'd like to discuss" .. hmmm... --Kim Bruning 17:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (e/c)Well by that logic Guy, what are we doing using polls so extensively on XfDs, RfA, ArbCom elections, Wikipedia:Attribution/Poll.. etc? This view is very simplistic... all a poll does is guage what the state of a consensus on a given issue is. Again, rather than deny this and continue to push for a blanket all "polling is evil" mantra let guidelines be formed that at least will enhance the opportunities that such a poll will have some benefit? This given the absolute certitude that polling is going to continue to play a big roll in the day in, day out functioning of the project.  17:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Putting some effort towards mitigating the pain at the least, might be worth a couple of hours. :-) --Kim Bruning 18:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just no 

message: Yes I see several now, you're right, but the overlap is not 100%. This means we're going to have to do an actual refactor, sooner or later (preferably sooner). *sigh*. No time, no time ^^:; --Kim Bruning 16:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundencies 

message: There is a lot of confusion about the dispute here and on WP:PNSD, so let's look at what it's about.
Now the issue isn't that polling happens; nobody is denying that.
The issue isn't whether we should give suggestions on how to poll; nobody is denying that either.
Note how WP:PNSD already gives a screenful of such suggestions. Are these imperfect? Nobody is denying that either. But we can fix them.
Then why would we split them off to some other page? The answer is very simple. The people promoting this are largely the same people who object to the very idea of discouraging voting, and want PNSD deprecated. So they are trying to replace a page that discourages and explains voting, by a page that only explains voting but does not discourage anything.
But as we clearly know from article space, a disagreement over a page is not resolved by splitting the page into two "forks". First, this results in two contradictory pages, and second, this gives us two pages with disagreement on them. Rather than resolving the issue, this approach perpetuates it.
So instead such issues are resolved through careful discussion on the talk page. You have suggestions for improving PNSD? Make them. That's how the wiki process works. >Radiant< 07:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The actual issue 

message: Hey, we totally lost the definitions!?  Restored. 
Definately needs some editing still...
--Kim Bruning 12:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definitions section gone missing 

message: The MfD was withdrawn, so please remove the  tag.
(Is it time to unprotect the page yet?)
Cheers, CWC 17:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I unprotected the page, as discussion has died down in a few places.  CMummert · talk 14:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request removal of mfd tag 

message: I have deleted the  headnote that was posted by a a now inactive editor.  The headnote was added in 2007  here and removed  here. --Tenmei (talk) 15:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Opinion headnote

message: At the Definitions: Polling and Voting section of the page, there are the phrases "door gods" and "Pepsi". These phrases should be "particular points" and "time"
Prodirus (talk) 04:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: . --ThomasO1989 (talk) 04:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism edit request 

message: "[...], although there are very rare experiments." Did the writer mean "exceptions"? (Also, whatever the case may be, is "very rare" accurate?) --82.136.210.153 (talk) 03:03, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rare experiments