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Would Lemmy Benefit from Implementing Polls? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Sunny@slrpnk.net to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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A popular way of dealing with discussions, and familiar to most people, I assume. As far as I see it, adding a poll system to Lemmy is a good way to enhance user engagement. I'm not really aware if this has been a topic before or not, tried looking it up but didn't see much juice on the topic, so thought I'd spark it up.

Personally would like to see polls, but I'm sure there are people who don't want it too. Let me know your thoughts 🌻

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[-] cralder@lemmy.world 93 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Its a good idea, but how would that work with federation? There is already an issue with the number of upvotes on a post differing between instances. Would polls have the same problem or no?

Edit: now that I think about it, polls are already a thing on Mastodon but I don't know if they have these issues or not.

[-] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 29 points 11 months ago

Depends entirely on how it's implemented. But almost certainly yes

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It would work the exact same way, i.e. every instance would have its own idea of the results, depending on what instances are (de)federated with.

Differences in vote counts among instances is not an issue; it is by design.

[-] Almrond@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

It would be really neat to see the differences between instances that take part in the polls, I think it would work fine.

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[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 10 points 11 months ago

Very good question, I have no idea how it could be implemented. I guess the question would have to be passed onto the developers of Lemmy. I'm sure they have already thought about it, but as you say probably difficult to implement due to federation.

[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago

Should be an option to allow/disallow non-instance users to vote. That'd be really useful here in sh.itjust.works for the Agora.

[-] catharso@discuss.tchncs.de 57 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

[ ] Yes

[ ] No

[x] Maybe

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 22 points 11 months ago

I don't knooow

Can you repeat the question

[-] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 11 months ago

You're not the boss of me now!

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[-] lowleveldata@programming.dev 5 points 11 months ago

/c/commentswithsound@lemmy.world

[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 11 months ago

Shit, it might be time for a MitM rewatch to see if it’s still aged like a fine wine.

[-] Legend@lemmy.sdf.org 53 points 11 months ago

I want to see lemmy grow and be a really feature rich platform with no lack in features so yes i would love to see encrypted pm, polls etc.

[-] kbal@fedia.io 48 points 11 months ago

Most of the fediverse already has polls, and can post things to lemmy groups. So yeah it would be nice to be able to see them properly.

[-] ericjmorey@discuss.online 12 points 11 months ago

What's a Lemmy group?

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 29 points 11 months ago

Lemmy and other Fediverse applications use the ActivityPub protocol under the hood. The ActivityPub protocol has something called "groups", which Lemmy uses as communities. So groups and communities are the same thing essentially but other software (like Mastodon) calls groups something else and not necessarily communities. But I'm not an expert.

[-] ericjmorey@discuss.online 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Thanks for clearing that up!

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

If it's a community, OK. If it's something else, I definately want to know that too.

[-] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

It's a community

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[-] kbal@fedia.io 5 points 11 months ago

There's a very long history of calling things like lemmy communities "groups". In my case I'm old and the habit comes from Usenet.

[-] ericjmorey@discuss.online 4 points 11 months ago

My first exposure to that interchangable use in the Lemmy lexicon. Now I Know!

[-] Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de 35 points 11 months ago

If we want polls we must join-lemmy.org/donate

[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 34 points 11 months ago

I'd like to see that happen, especially if it comes with the following options to restrict the poll:

by time
by instance
by existing users at the time of the poll's creation
single choice, multiple choices, ranked choice

[-] DieguiTux8623@feddit.it 23 points 11 months ago

Personally, I would be in favor of having polls because I frequently involve people in taking decisions.

But my use case is quite peculiar because (1) I need to know people's opinion to take actions based on it, they would not be just informative polls (2) this group of people use Lemmy as their main interaction medium, no other platform is involved.

I've resorted to strawpoll in the past or in having comments with multiple options and relying on the most upvoted comment but these solutions have downsides.