poll
 

edited for content :D

The member edited his post before i could get to it but it seems a reasonable question so here's his post again (i got from an email to me)

Dear Randy,

Is it against the rules of FT to take a poll?

The reason why I ask, over in the cx forum the moderator made a comment that I found rather questionable. He made it sound like it was a fact and every one would agree with him 100%. I posted a thread asking people if they would do what he said he would do in the same situation.
(Trade a working J seat for a broken F seat lax-hkg)
2 people responded that they would NOT do what he said he would do and agreed with me.

He then went ahead and closed my thread saying polls do not belong on ft.

We have a poll on the front page of ft.

I think that this was his was of avoiding embarrassment and closed the thread before others could post their votes and make him look as ridiculous as the comment that he made was.

If this is not moderator abuse then I don’t know what is?


(I will answer in another post)

Let's see if i can answer your question.

Let me offer up some facts:
We actually purposely disabled the polling feature for this bulletin board when we first started with the idea that it could get a little messy if there were not controls on the NUMBER of polls being put up since certain members could get carried away.

Now, in 2005 at a moderator conference, the moderators themselves brought up polling as a topic to me and urged - actually lobbied - to allow polls on FlyerTalk. So while you did not know the behind the scenes of this, it really is is the moderators that lobby for even more benefits for members.

It was decided that polls would be allowed but that the mods would post them - there is a polling feature built in this system that allows members to actually choose from a number of answers, just like a real poll.

I think what might have been the problem was the way you went around this. What should have happnedd is that you contact a volunteer and let them know you were thinking of a poll and lay out the poll topic and its various answers. The volunteer would then have contacted a senior volunteer who has the ability to facilitate the actual poll and it would have been posted. We're not trying in any way to stifle the interest of any member, but can you imagine if the 30-80,000 visitors daily to FlyerTalk were allowed to post anything they wanted anywhere they wanted? We're just asking for a little regimen to these types of things and everyone benefits.

It does appear you thought it was personal. Really, it was more of breakdown in the way the poll was introduced. Let's try it again using the volunteers instead of avoiding them and see what your poll results are like.

Now, having said all this, not every poll will likely to be approved. Some will be for topics in the wrong forum and others might seem a bit overboard but i', sure that our volunteers will give their best cooperation when you ask them for help. Remember, they are members too.

Hope this helps and thanks for the question.