Poll Suggestions

Polls that appear on the front page lack context, as in it doesn't show where the poll's actual location is. For polls that say something similar to "What idea do you like better?: <poll>", after explaining each idea beforehand on the post the poll is located on, someone reading the poll on the front page would lack the explanation of the choices and presumably be confused. The following solution is suggested. Have polls carry the location in which they were made. This solution fixes the issue by making context under normal circumstances easily discovered.

Also, please fix this because it's weird and screws up previews (opening bracket,p,o,l,l,closing bracket): [poll]

Polls that appear on the front page lack context, as in it doesn't show where the poll's actual location is. For polls that say something similar to "What idea do you like better?: <poll>", after explaining each idea beforehand on the post the poll is located on, someone reading the poll on the front page would lack the explanation of the choices and presumably be confused. The following solution is suggested. Have polls carry the location in which they were made. This solution fixes the issue by making context under normal circumstances easily discovered.

Recommended multiple times. It's just too hard to do with the way polls work.

I cannot fix the dangling bbcode. This is a user error; not only is it silly to try to figure out what incorrect bbcode is SUPPOSED to do, I don't have control over the bbcode library. I'm not going to redesign yet another library (like I did with the websockets) in order to obtain this extremely small functionality. As for polls having links, this has been discussed many times. Maybe you weren't there for any of them; it's not a problem. The main issue is: how do I know the link for a new poll? The poll is generated BEFORE the post is. When you complete the poll using the bbcode tools, it is created at that moment, not when you post. Thus, the only link I can really give is to the thread and perhaps the page on the thread, but that's not useful at all since some people have different amounts of posts per page. The solution is either to allow users to edit their polls afterwards to add a link back, or to permanently tie polls to posts, making them regenerate every time someone edits the post (just like wikia). This also means you can't put polls on comments or pages, and makes it harder to put the polls on the front page. The OTHER solution that I might do is a learning algorithm. The polls that get generated can log where they're accessed from rather than where they're generated. Then something can try to figure out which of the links is the real one. Or perhaps I can simply link back ANY place that the poll is located (but this can be abused). Edit: If you want to display the word [poll] without it generating bbcode, all you have to do is invalidate the tag. You can do this by inserting a blank bbcode within the tag, like so: [[b][/b]poll]

Understood. I saw people discussing polls lacking context; I didn't know the issue had already been discussed with you. I noticed that it's created before the post: "making context under normal circumstances easily discovered." Under normal circumstances, I think most people would keep the poll in its original location. I don't think many, if any, are aware that you can /embed/ someone else's polls in your post. I actually was trying to find ways to exploit this before posting the thread. I failed. ...An oversight(?): Isn't someone able to just create tons of polls without including them in any posts, therefore spamming the front page's poll section? Anyway, consider how complicated and how each solution seemed to have negative effects, I think it is best to just leave it as is. Thanks for the information.

 

I wonder if I represented people who were complaining about the issue in a proper way. I hope I did.

 

What the heck!? My spoiler is hidden. I didn't know I could exploit this whitespace character in other ways. How exciting. It's not a glitch, is it? ((Hey, you found some hidden thing on SmileBASIC Source!))

I think that just linking to the thread/page would be enough. This is a problem that needs to be fixed; polls take up more space than anything else on the front page, but are often useless because you don't have any context.

I think that just linking to the thread/page would be enough. This is a problem that needs to be fixed; polls take up more space than anything else on the front page, but are often useless because you don't have any context.

I see you didn't read my post. That's OK, I'll summarize it here. People have different settings for posts per page. The page number is meaningless, since the post might not even be on that page for a different person. Linking a 14 page thread and forcing people to search through it is also not good. Eventually, I'll do the "detect where it is displayed" thing.

I think that just linking to the thread/page would be enough. This is a problem that needs to be fixed; polls take up more space than anything else on the front page, but are often useless because you don't have any context.

I see you didn't read my post. That's OK, I'll summarize it here. People have different settings for posts per page. The page number is meaningless, since the post might not even be on that page for a different person. Linking a 14 page thread and forcing people to search through it is also not good. Eventually, I'll do the "detect where it is displayed" thing.

(I meant thread / program page. (I think polls can be on program pages))

Oh, sorry about that. Mmmm sure, but I'd rather try to get the link exactly right. I'll try the automatic link detection thing when I get the chance.

This is kinda implemented now. New polls will all be linked, but old polls may be slow to link. I'm not sure how this system will work. edit: OOOOHHH Now I see what you mean by dangling polls breaking things. Yeah let me fix that.

Please tell me if I miss something.--snipped--

You should look at the thread before posting. This is not where polls go (even though the title is misleading). The last post was a year ago and we were talking about fixing polls.

[poll=p266][/poll]