Polls

[Ken]

Kevin will probably hate me for this, but don't worry - that's a private dispute/joke

We have a facility for Polls on these boards.
The one that I have set up here, rather than just a "test poll" actually has a useful purpose - as you can imagine. Obviously, we will repeat it when we have more members, but even now Kevin and I would like to know the answer, as well as the answer to one or two other questions I'll be asking, to help us in our development work.

From your own point of view, I think that you can appreciate how it might be of use in (for example) trying to determine the best date(s) for a re-union.

As set up, the "rules" are simple:-

• Any member can set up a poll
• A poll can run for any number of days (7 days in this example)
• A poll can be set up only as the first post in a new thread
• There can be up to 10 options (we can change that if needs)
• A voter may make any number of choices, up to the maximum chosen by whoever started the poll (in this example, 10 choices, up to 9 selections allowed)
• Only Members (logged in) can vote.
• Strictly one vote per member

Test it for me, if you will?

• Try voting when not logged in
• Tell the truth (please) in your selection(s) when you vote
• Try to have a second vote!
• Try to vote after the poll expiry date

Let's see how we go?

[Kevin]

Sorry Ken, but this is all very wrong.

I don't know quite why, all I can do at this point is make several comments.

If you come to the site as a visitor and do not log in - you do not see the poll itself, you see the ongoing entries to the poll. To my mind this is bad in itself. The entries to a poll should not be accessible (to anyone) till the poll is closed.

Furthermore the poll itself is not visible unless you are logged in. This makes a puzzle of your posting to people who are not logged in. They can't see what you are talking about and the various invites to try things out don't make sense. Overall the impression is that there has been a poll, and these are the results. If you wanted to vote - "too late mate".

I think we have a serious problem if we expect everyone to log in on every visit to the board. I don't at the moment, and might consider it a bit of a nuisance at this stage of development. Non members obviously can't log in anyway, but the board still has to look sensible to them, or they will just ignore everything.

You personally obviously log in at every visit and so haven't seen any of these problems. Most sites work brilliantly for expert users. We have to recognise that we don't have many of them as members at the moment.

It's also my view that, for at least the time being, it's more important for us to impress non logged in visitors than active users. Testing what they see and read is at least as important as logged in members.

Kevin

[Ken]

Hi Kevin -

What can I say except "...but apart from that, how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?"!

You are quite right of course - I've trained myself to log in automatically, and after voting I never saw it again "as others see it".
I'm a bit baffled as to why it's happening.
I'll try one or two things out on the Practice Forum this evening; after all, that's why we have it!
At the moment, all I can think of is that maybe when the originator "shows results" it ends the poll and shows how it went. We'll see. If I can't sort it, we'll call it a disaster

I think it might be a good idea to delete this entire thread, leaving this Forum as what it was meant to be - a sort of "How To". What do you reckon - any objections to scrubbing the thread and thereby tidying up a bit?

[utility-mark]

Hi Kevin
I think that your remarks could have been more tactfully framed.

Most sites work brilliantly for expert users. We have to recognise that we don't have many of them as members at the moment."

It would have been more tactful to write
Most sites work brilliantly for expert users, but we have to recognise that not all of our members are expert users
And strictly speaking this is actually more of a survey, rather than a poll.
Mark

[Ken]

And strictly speaking this is actually more of a survey, rather than a poll.
Mark

That is absolutely correct, and thank you, Mark.
My only excuse is that the facility is called "Polls", but you are quite right - I was using it to try to conduct a survey.

In fact, the "survey", even from a limited number of responses, is cheering me.
If you (all) haven't guessed, I'm not really interested in which browser you use, or which is the most popular. My interest is that that the site can be used by all popular browsers!
Several of these I am able to try for myself, but the recent addition of Safari is extremely welcome. I could now just do with finding an A.O.L. user or two.

I should perhaps have explained (I will next time!) that by "used successfully" I meant "able to use all the facilities, in particular the log-in and the post-editing facitities, including emoticons etc" (there are others, of course). It is our fervent hope that the site is "browser-neutral).

Hence the survey

Another one that I hope to conduct (I need to sort out the problems first!) is what screen resolutions are used. At the moment, we are trying to cater for (almost) everything. It would be cheering if I/we knew that everybody has moved on from 800x600 and that 1024 is the lowest for which we realisttically need to cater. If they haven't, then so be it, but it would be a shame to be spending any amount of time catering for something which is no longer used.

Another obvious one is broadband/dial-up, of course (particularly re. photo-site or large documents)

[Ken]

Sorry Ken, but this is all very wrong.

I don't know quite why, all I can do at this point is make several comments.

OK. Bear with me? There is method in this madness (I think!)....

If you come to the site as a visitor and do not log in - you do not see the poll itself, you see the ongoing entries to the poll. To my mind this is bad in itself. The entries to a poll should not be accessible (to anyone) till the poll is closed.

Not quite? The custom is to allow you to see the results-to-date when you have voted, and to allow you to watch progress threafter?
I suspect that there really is a bug in all this, but knowing the convoluted way in which what passes for a mind in a programmer's parlance works, I can't be too sure!
I've taken another look (see Test Forum 1 under Developer's Chat/Log)

Everything that you say subsequently is correct, provided that we assume that a poll is in public view. We havent touched on it yet, but just assume for the moment that we use Polls only on Members Only boards?
Suddenly, the whole picture changes!
Now your preceeding objection goes away - you can't see the thread unless you are logged in?

Furthermore the poll itself is not visible unless you are logged in. This makes a puzzle of your posting to people who are not logged in. They can't see what you are talking about and the various invites to try things out don't make sense. Overall the impression is that there has been a poll, and these are the results. If you wanted to vote - "too late mate".

You see what I mean?
Assume a Members Only board, and the thread isn't visible unless you are logged in!
It's no puzzle to people not logged in - they are unaware of it.
People who are logged in can see exactly what's going on?

I think we have a serious problem if we expect everyone to log in on every visit to the board. I don't at the moment, and might consider it a bit of a nuisance at this stage of development.

That's fair comment, of course, and something that we need to discuss, but let me just follow my argument through....

Non members obviously can't log in anyway, but the board still has to look sensible to them, or they will just ignore everything.

It does (now) look sensible - they can't see the Private (Members Only) board(s).

You personally obviously log in at every visit and so haven't seen any of these problems. Most sites work brilliantly for expert users. We have to recognise that we don't have many of them as members at the moment.

Yes, I've started to log in every time - auto login, in fact.

It's also my view that, for at least the time being, it's more important for us to impress non logged in visitors than active users. Testing what they see and read is at least as important as logged in members.

OK - but given a Private (Members Only) board, all the questions/objections are answered, and the question then becomes "Do we want a Private Forum, in addition to the ones here?"
I'm not pleading that the system shouldn't work differently, merely that if it were used only on Private Boards, it would work "correctly", and exactly as you describe. Do you agree?

I'd certainly appreciate your own views on a Private, additional, Members Only Forum, and the views of everybody else. We are very few in number at the moment, so we obviously couldn't consider making any "decision" binding for the future, but I'd certainly appreciate thoughts on it.

From my own point of view, three things have occured to me in that respect recently:-

• Discussions about meetings, reunions, etc. are perhaps better not broadcast on the Internet. Things like "..and so our 14 year old grand-daughter will be alone in the house from 7.00pm to midnight..." isn't funny.
• It has crossed my mind that, as we go on, members might feel more inclined to offer suggestions (and indeed criticism) re. the sites "amongst friends" rather than publicly on the Internet.
• I was about to introduce (in this forum) the concept of Private Messaging. It only works if people are logged in - you don't get the pop-up etc, or the ability to read your PMs as a guest. Therefore, it would be nice (in this respect) to have members log-in habitually.

I hesitate to suggest that we have a poll on it but it would perhaps be helpful to hear people's views?

[Kevin]

Hi Mark,

thanks for keeping us in line.

If I had to re-edit my posting, though, I think it should be changed to NONE of our current members is an expert user. That includes specifically myself and Ken.

Although an earlier version of this bulletin board system (BB2) has been around for long enough to become a world standard, this version is BB3. We are probably amongst the first to try to use it for a real working board. Many others are sticking with BB2 until BB3 is fully developed. You are part of the vanguard!!!

Ken - this is actually posted with Safari, which I loaded to try to help Davia earlier. No real problems with it, but it does seem a bit funny as far as page length. Even in Firefox I sometimes think I have loaded a blank page, until I realise that the browser is actually at the bottom of a long page, with only a short posting at the top. The trick is to look for the slider bars. The problem seems to happen more frequently in Safari, which has very thin sliders. It occasionally over corrects by showing a very very short page (ie only half the depth of the header bar). Luckily this shows the thread menu, and the next page selected is normal. I think we should note that Safari for XP is only in beta version itself at the moment.

Kevin