my opinion on polls

[Lance]

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this was going to be my response to a new 'best ships/teams' poll, but i've put it here because it's a general topic.

it's been asked before many times. particularly on the old forum which is now listed on the wipeoutzone main page as 'forum archive'. however, since the old board is now inactive and we have many new members who have never seen it, we've had a lot of new polls started by them lately. i suggest to newcomers that they check out the topic/thread titles on both this new forum and the old one and read the threads of any poll that covers the ::racing:: topic they want to start a new poll in. polls about any subject such as current favourite music or anime are of course always fresh, so you needn't worry about checking back more than a couple months worth of posts when you want to start one. on the other hand, topics such as favourite ship/team/game etc. have been done a lot, so it would be good if we don't have them more frequently than about once every six months, depending on how fast the pilots' association gets new members.

as evidence of my newcomer fanaticism: when i first joined the wipeout pilots association last year, i went through the old forum and read every post back to the oldest ones still existing at the time. call me crazy, but i did learn a bunch.

i invite you all to post your opinions on this subject [polls, not my insanity. ;) ]
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[Piranha Advancements]

These kinda polls will always resurface.People will still answer I guess.Let them have their fun,I say.

[Vasudeva]

One can only learn by making mistakes, I guess :cry:

My main problem is time, actually. I don't have ISDN or cable connection, so I don't have time to read all previous threads and postings. However, point taken - I already thought asking the obvious was kind of redundant :oops:

V

[Lance]

i probably didn't make it clear [i should be more carelful in my writing], but i didn't suggest that anyone should read everything before posting, just read the threads where there was already a poll on the subject you were thinking of creating one for. though i admit that just searching for those could take awhile. i sometimes forget that most people don't have as much time as i do to spend online. [and i really need it with a 56k dial-up modem!]

yes, time is an important consideration. i was partly thinking of how much of the time of the forum veterans would be consumed by reading something they've seen before. but we do also need to consider the needs of the newcomers. maybe i was having a fit of selfishness because as a moderator it is my responsibility to read absolutely every post; so maybe i was in the midst of an attack of twitchy impatient boredom and felt impelled to remark. but that's why i invited comment, to get other opinions so i can make sure i don't just edit the forums to suit my own preferences. the forums belong to all of us.

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[AmishRobot]

I can understand your frustration (just stepped down to dialup from DSL, and boy does it hurt!), but the simple existence of polls lend themselves to abuse or misuse, and a new member simply may not know better. A rehashed poll will likely just be ingored by veterans; let's just hope they don't think it's because we're being jerks.

Being a fanatic like yourself, I went back and read most of the old posts after joining, but we can't expect everyone to do that - especially the old ezboard forum.

My suggestion is that if it's a topic that's been done on this board, refer to the original and lock the new thread - otherwise, let it go. I don't want to sound rude at all, but part of the job of being a mod is reading everything. I know you don't want to read rehashed subjects, but it kinda goes with the territory. (sorry, that sounds a lot more harsh than it should.) I guess it's up to you, infox, and Wamdue to decide when a topic has reached that "done to death" stage.

These forums have been growing quite a bit lately, and are likely to grow a lot more when fusion is released in the US. (a search for "wipeout" on Google shows this site on the second page of results, quite a feat for such a general term!) Perhaps at some point Rob should consider assigning mods to specific forums.