Starting a poll

[scoundrel]

You can only attach a poll when you start a thread. Only a moderator can attach a poll to an existing thread and I assure you all that this is not a 2 minute job so if you need me to do that you will have to have a very compelling reason and you will have to ask me very nicely indeed and even then I will probably say "Sorry, but no."

If you have looked at Dubsalutes guide to starting a thread then you are already familiar with the procedure for starting an ordinary thread. The initial steps are exactly the same. You must first enter a title for your new thread in the Title box and some sort of message in the message box. This however is when you need to do extra things if you want to attach a poll to your new thread.

First you need to scroll down the page, below the message box.

When you scroll downwards, your page will look like this.




Here you will see that there are a number of additional options to choose, which are on default settings.

One of these options is "Post a Poll": there is a blank tick box which you need to tick to make the poll option active.

How many poll options?

There is also a box called "Number of poll options" with a preset value of 4: you may enter any number from 2 to 10: 10 being the maximum range of poll choices. You want a straight yes/no poll? Thats 2 options. You want to offer choices of answer: thats 2 to 10 choices.

What next?

Click "Submit thread." A new screen called "Post a poll" will appear.



There is a space for the poll question. There are 2 to 10 spaces for answers, depending on the number of options you chose earlier. There is a "Poll timeout" box; here you choose how many days your poll can run for and when it will close. There are miscellaneous options:

Allow multiple choice: more than one answer can be chosen.

Make votes public: this shows who voted and what they voted for. I strongly deprecate this option and would exclude it if I had the access rights to do so. I reserve the right to delete any poll in my area of jurisdiction which compromises the privacy of voters, but I accept this is not automatically against the rules and I will not delete a poll thread for this reason if I am satisfied that it is doing no-one any harm.

Once you have made your choices, you should of course preview your poll. When you are satisfied, you may then click "Submit new poll", the buttons for preview and submit are at the bottom of the Post a poll" screen. Your first post in the thread will appear as usual with the title and message you entered, and the poll will appear above it.

I suggest you try this here on the Test Forum in the Helps and Guides section first.

Good luck, my brother and sister members.

[palo5]

Thankyou, scoundrel

Are there time limits setting the poll?

[Sam Spade]

Originally Posted by palo5

Thankyou, scoundrel

Are there time limits setting the poll?

Do you mean how long will the poll stay open for voting?

When you start a poll you have a small box in which you enter the number of days you want the poll to remain open, if you want it to remain open indefinitely you leave it at 0.