So, what’s the main use-case for polls in forums? For me it’s the ability to provide a list of options and to easily see the poll result without manually counting the votes.
In my opinion polls are a very important part of discussions, if they are implemented the right way.
That’s not the case in Discourse (and I don’t know any other forum software that get’s it right either).
Currently many users click on the poll option and that’s it. There’s no way to know who chose what and why?
So, how can we make polls a part of the discussion? Votes should be public.
In order to cast your vote you’d need to post a reply. And such posts would include messages like:
- Voted for Option 1
- Changed his mind and voted for Option 3
- Retracted his vote
Those messages would be auto-generated by the system and not be editable by the user.
Ideally there would be some kind of UI in the composer that allows the user to choose one (or even multiple) options from the available options. Since voting would be part of posting replies all the restrictions for minimal post length etc. would apply too.
Changing the poll options should always be allowed. It would be enough if such actions would generate a post like the staff messages when topics are closed. E.g. there would be posts like “Added Option 7 and Option 8”, “Removed Option 4”
Maybe we could even extend the filter functionality in order to show only posts that include a vote for certain options. Like it is currently possible to show only posts by a certain user inside a topic.