- The poll does not filter respondents nor offer any form of verification and protection against trolling it.
Its something you have to deal with on polls. Even if we do ingame, people can multikey or convince newer players who don't know the game to vote another way. Which is another point, having it ingame can lead to people being peer pressured after a particularly salty round. Longer polls tend to have less potential trolling since the time investment needed to make a difference on the averages without making it painfully obvious that its a bad response is larger. That's why it is shared. More responses from actual people = bigger time investment for trolls. Though acceptably, google forms is more susceptible to this because of how shite it is.
Every poll method has its upsides and downsides.
Tying it ingame and making it run by staff is also bad as well since you potentially lose the anonimity which is a massive issue when you are trying to measure things like staff performance and relations. You mine as well not put those questions on there because the results are going to be skewed as shit. Even if it says its anonymous in code, there isn't a way to check whats actually running on the server. Its not like we can just leave index.html and have the apache file browser open so that you can even download whats running on the server. If its open-source and there is no way to verify that the section of the code running is the same as whats on the open source repo, it mine as well not be open source. If we are planning to make it ingame with the "anonymous" moniker. put a SHA256hash.txt next to it and an option to view the SHA ingame
The only true solution to these issues would be to run it on an open source server, with code on github. Purposely leave a security flaw by having the Apache/Ngix file browser enabled. Allow users to download the code both on the github and whats running on the server. And to have some sort of cookie and/or valid byond account checker. Then have extensive testing so some retard cant do le funny "OR 1=1" it and SQL inject it to BTFO all the results.
Even then it is still susceptible to trolling, and like I said before, its something you deal with. Share it with as many people as possible so they have to put more effort to throw off the averages, and cross your fingers. Nothing is impervious to trolling, hacking, breaking or sinking - the guys who made the titanic after it sank (probably)
- The poll dangerously misidentifies a fraction of the Discord population as representative. Combined with the above, it fails basic validity checks.
Point? This is meant to be shared. Its not like I put this in the amogus metacord only or had it in the MP cord only for their opinions. This is why we share polls to as wide of an audience as possible so we get diverse opinions instead of putting it in the middle of an argument in #community-feedback to prove a point by polling everyone who is viewing the channel (staff loses since they are outnumbered by default 99% of the time when this happens). Look above for the validity checks one.
- The poll is designed with multiple disqualifying methodological flaws. The questions and especially answers are leading or memes. Instead of using simple Likert scales, it labels the answers. It has an ill-informed gender identity question.
Yeah some of them are well unprofessional to say the least. Memes help with engagement a lot and so does some of the unprofessionalism. A 4 page+ poll is boring as shit to do with little engagement. The gender identify one has been fixed not long after concerns were raised. in my defense, i as a straight person don't deal with gender issues much, so I don't really understand it wholly as a result. My bad
- The poll uses Google docs/forms which is an insecure way that potentially exposes the identity of people taking it to a third party.
Unless you live under a rock or are a gigachad who only uses talios/ duckduckgo combo, google knows more about you than CM can ever store on their server. Furthermore, some of the more privacy-sensitive poll answers are really broad on purpose to protect against this, like using geolocations instead of countries, and ranges instead of specific ages. Sure google forms is worse in terms of actually making your own polling site that is open-sourced, but its arguably better than other third parties since their privacy policies can vary in walls of cryptic legalese.
- Some of the qualitative (open-ended) answers have been posted verbatim without informing the users they will be done as such. These can contain identifiable information that can lead to grudging and harassment.
*It was implied that the results would be public. Though it should have been explicit. My fault*. Hiding the results would make the poll more closed and less intresting, to say the least. In retrospect, I should have EXPLICITLY said that it will be public and put a disclaimer before the open ended ones. My bad (x3)
A bad poll can ruin the point you may be trying to make. This is an extremely bad poll.
I'm not really making a point here., I simply put a bunch of general community opinions into one. The only one I was really interested in was the features vs balance one since I am a big features guy (real contributor hours). A bad poll would be one that is put in the heat of an argument like I said earlier or shared only to specific people, not specific nor long enough. In my opinion it does justice for this issue and is pretty decent in terms of proper polls. I intended to combine memey unprofessionalism with serious questions. There is a reason why the last section is the most memey (though I had put some questions there that I forgot). But hey thats my opinion of my own poll and how I intended it to be. Take it as you like it.
edit: Yeah, I know its flawed in some ways, but I accept them. No one's perfect and its impossible to run "the perfect" poll without rolling up to everyone's addresses and giving them a form to fill out
edit2: Another thing I forgot to mention is that I put some opinions being shared around as some of the answers for the linear/scale questions. Like putting "oppressive powerhungry morons" for admin questions since I though that was an "extreme" view of staff or "the non free approach to moderation" for the metacords one since I thought it was interesting enough to put. In hindsight, those are really bad and should be reserverd for the intentionally memey ones only. ( my bad)
/end