Suggestion: Polls (Not "voting"!)

[Tony94]

Recently I posted a "poll type" question in the forums (the post about engine oil type preferred). That kind post draws a lot of response, but perhaps only from people passionate about their position and many will simply avoid reading the post because it's not worth the effort to manually extract the results from dozens of posts. Polls are a solution to the dilemma: More people participate because it is efficient to take the poll and view the summarized results and the participation increases as time goes on without a lot of empty rhetoric posts and associated disk space. A potential downside of poll technology is that it could be used for voting where such practice is undesireable or unwanted. Also, if "beertalk" rather than information is the goal, then polls are not needed.

Personally, if the site just wanted to be threaded discussion, I'd prefer USENET (it's limited in other ways, but for threaded discussion, still argubly best) because web interfaces suck for threaded discussion, IMO (but I'm not alone in that thought). The only real addition via web interface is "stickies" which of course could be handled simply with pdf files.

There are a number of technologies that can work synergistically to produce high quality interactive websites. I've noted three in my posts here now as potentially fundamental: threaded discussion, wikis, polls. (Note that I am a software developer, and while envisioning the future of applications is what I do, the software I currently develop is not in the domain of the web, though something that improves wildly on USENET for power users is definitely not off the radar for me).

[willwren]

Tony, we are not changing the forum software or format away from phpBB any time in the near future. It's what OUR development team prefers.

[Tony94]

Tony, we are not changing the forum software or format away from phpBB any time in the near future. It's what OUR development team prefers.

And the purpose of this suggestion area is.... what then if you don't want suggestions?

[bonnevillain]

They want suggestions, but the answer to every suggestion is not yes. Many of mine have been shot down also. it happens, This forum works great for us as is. PHPbb has many features that we are not taking advantage of currently, but some new things are in the works, and we are constantly improving. We also need to consider user friendliness, this is what everyone is used to.

[Tony94]

They want suggestions, but the answer to every suggestion is not yes. Many of mine have been shot down also. it happens, This forum works great for us as is.

Who is this nebulous "us"?!

PHPbb has many features that we are not taking advantage of currently, but some new things are in the works, and we are constantly improving. .

This site follows technology (understatement of the year). The best sites "create" technology (create the need).

We also need to consider user friendliness, this is what everyone is used to.

Perhaps naivete as to what going from BB to web means in regards to scalability and responsibilty (and other things). I like Wikipedia because it is (as far as I know), public domain.

I don't like "suggestion boxes". It's been a failed concept for... I don't know for how long, yet every neophyte "manager" tries it. "Oh, but it worked, you offered a suggestion!" you say? (Exercise left for the reader).

[bonnevillain]

the nebulous us is everyone who hasn't been agreeing with you, i guess.

you're a web developer and you see things in a different perspective than the management here, I understand that. They are not out to create technology, just to learn about cars. the current system does that fine.

If suggestion boxes don't work, don't use them

[BlackHawk99]

Tony, as it's already been mentioned in several of your Suggestion threads, we're not changing the forum software. What we have here works for us and the majority of our membership at large. There's no net gain to change things which would outweigh the effort involved.

If you don't like our forum then you'll need to hang your hat somewhere that utilizes the technology you prefer.