[Read this BEFORE posting] Opinion Poll Posting Rules - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Polls on politics, news, current affairs and history.
#507565
Please take a moment to review the revised guidelines, as outlined below, before you begin creating polls or making posts within this subforum. Additional questions about the content of this subforum or its rules can be sent to Lightman, Moderator of this sub-forum, via PM.

It might look like a lot at a glance, but the bulk is simply given to be as descriptive as possible; staff will often refer individuals to this sticky when they ask routine questions.

Poll Topics
The Opinion Polls Forum is an on-topic subforum. Therefore, polls that are posted herein should be kept within the general context of the following topics:

Politics/Ideologies
Current Affairs/Issues/Ethics
News
History


Gorkiy Park, Sports, or Conspiracy Theory type polls (or posts) will be deleted without notice.

Poll Options
When creating a poll within this subforum you must attempt to provide poll options that are reasonably clear of bias, so that people are not herded into choosing one point of view. The best way to do this is to provide a variety of options for people to choose from. You should also take note of how you are phrasing the options that you specify. For instance; instead of wording an option as "George W Bush is an evil, stupid bastard," you might try something like "George W Bush is a terrible leader."

One-sided polls will be deleted without notice.

Please attempt to avoid confusing language in questions and options such as double negatives.

The "Other" Option
No matter how well you think that you have thought out a scenario, there is a good chance that you will have missed one or more perspectives regarding the subject matter. For this reason, it is imperative that you provide an "Other (please elaborate)" option - so that people can vote and elaborate when their views are not otherwise reflected by the poll. This is especially salient where conditional voting is concerned, and it furthermore includes individuals who wish to disgree with the premise of the poll itself, or who do not fit the voting criteria for some reason.

Polls that lack an "Other" option may be deleted without notice. I sometimes make exceptions if I feel that the poll is especially conductive to debate, or if it is your first time making this mistake. Generally speaking, however, I am not going to bother fixing dozens of polls for this reason.

Poll Content
The Forum Rules apply just as much to polls as they do to individual posts. Therefore, I will not tolerate any racism, sexism, hate speech, spam, or other such trash. Furthermore, politicsforum.org is a debate forum that is intended for mature discussion. Childish polls that are not conductive to adult debate are also disallowed.

Polls that are immature, nonconductive to debate, or violate the Forum Rules will be deleted without notice.

When One-Lined Posts Are OK
According to the Newbie Guide, one-lined posts are not tolerated on the Politics Forum. Strictly speaking, though, a person does not even need to post to a poll thread to participate therein - a simple click to vote does it. Therefore, I have no problem with users who are interested enough to announce who or what they have voted for with a simple one-lined post, if they do not feel like going into greater detail at the time. In fact, I encourage it over simply voting and not posting at all. However, my previous leniency on this matter has also led to an increasing trend of one-lined, even one-word posts which have nothing to do with announcing a vote. The practice has had the general effect of destroying the value of debate in the subforum and, whilst such is fine in Gorkiy Park, it is unacceptable in on topic subforums such as this one - as the Newbie Guide points out.

Thus, all one or two lined posts that are not an announcement of what a person voted for will most likely be deleted without notice.

Miscellaneous
* Double posts will be deleted without notice. Use the edit button.
* Posts that contain whining about moderation will be deleted without notice.
* Excessive/Gimmick text-formatting (such as oversized red letters at the beginning of each post, or typing an entire post in bold/color) will be stripped; repeated instances of which will result in the deletion of the entire post, without notice.
* Mind the length of your poll question/options. If they are long enough to destroy the thread margins, then they are probably long enough to be deleted without notice.

If you observe the guidelines as articulated above, you shouldn't have any problem posting polls in this subforum. Once again: if you have any further questions, or violations to report (that we might have missed), feel free to send Moderator Lightman a PM.

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