Would Lemmy Benefit from Implementing Polls?
from Sunny@slrpnk.net to fediverse@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 10:01
https://slrpnk.net/post/9276790

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 🌻

#fediverse

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catharso@discuss.tchncs.de on 06 May 2024 10:06 next collapse

[ ] Yes

[ ] No

[x] Maybe

Blaze@reddthat.com on 06 May 2024 10:58 collapse

I don’t knooow

Can you repeat the question

lowleveldata@programming.dev on 06 May 2024 11:13 next collapse

/c/commentswithsound@lemmy.world

0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 May 2024 11:41 next collapse

You’re not the boss of me now!

Legend@lemmy.sdf.org on 06 May 2024 15:52 collapse

He was before ? Also are you looking for a boss replacement ?

Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 06 May 2024 22:39 collapse

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

technomad@slrpnk.net on 06 May 2024 10:12 next collapse

Yes. I think it would be helpful.

DieguiTux8623@feddit.it on 06 May 2024 10:14 next collapse

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.

Blaze@reddthat.com on 06 May 2024 10:58 collapse

Thank you for your work on Raccoon btw

Legend@lemmy.sdf.org on 06 May 2024 15:56 collapse

Yeah really good app . Shame its not on the fdroid official repo tho .

Carighan@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 10:15 next collapse

[x] Blurgenfurl

cralder@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 10:15 next collapse

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 on 06 May 2024 10:54 next collapse

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

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 06 May 2024 10:57 next collapse

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 on 06 May 2024 11:41 next collapse

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.

SorteKanin@feddit.dk on 06 May 2024 12:44 collapse

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 on 07 May 2024 15:34 collapse

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

SorteKanin@feddit.dk on 07 May 2024 15:44 collapse

You would just view the poll on the instance you’re curious about and it would show the result from its perspective.

solrize@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 10:34 next collapse

I’m kind of against this unless people’s responses are kept private for real (i.e. not stored on the server). Otherwise it’s just more kompromat piling up.

Carighan@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 10:41 next collapse

If you’re the Consort, that’s an important part of your endgame scoring! (Stationfall board game 😛)

smeg@feddit.uk on 06 May 2024 11:50 collapse

How do you store who has voted and what the results of the poll are without storing results on a server? Ultimately it’s just the same sort of data as who upvoted and downvoted what, right?

RobotToaster@mander.xyz on 06 May 2024 12:14 next collapse

One way encryption, same way passwords are stored.

smeg@feddit.uk on 06 May 2024 12:21 collapse

Would that work to obfuscate up/downvotes in general?

RobotToaster@mander.xyz on 06 May 2024 14:50 collapse

Potentially, but any amount of obfuscation opens up the system to abuse.

If you trust the server hosting the community to handle all encryption, it’s trivial for the admin to disable.

If you trust the server sending the vote, then it’s trivial for a server admin to game the system and send hundreds of votes.

solrize@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 18:06 collapse

It’s better than nothing if you record that account X voted in poll Y without recording how they voted. Just keep count of the # of votes for each option. After the poll closes, delete the list of voters for that poll. It might be possible to do something fancier to get more privacy.

lemmyreader@lemmy.ml on 06 May 2024 10:38 next collapse

I’d welcome polls implementation on Lemmy but maybe this is difficult with federation ? I wouldn’t mind instance only polls.

hash0772@sh.itjust.works on 06 May 2024 11:13 collapse

Polls are already available on Mastodon (with federation) without any issues. This could probably be implemented on Lemmy too, without any problems.

Microw@lemm.ee on 06 May 2024 11:52 collapse

Is it a proper Activitypub feature or a Mastodon hack?

Legend@lemmy.sdf.org on 06 May 2024 15:54 next collapse

Either way the point is it is possible and as someone aldready said all we have to do is donate to give devs a little more motivation .

andrew_s@piefed.social on 07 May 2024 00:00 collapse
nutsack@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 10:59 next collapse

can filter out image posts please i hate memes

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 06 May 2024 11:03 next collapse

You could just block the communities and instances…?

nutsack@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 17:20 collapse

There are communities with a mix of good content and meme spam

smeg@feddit.uk on 06 May 2024 11:50 next collapse

Some clients let you do that

nutsack@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 17:21 collapse

I have yet to find one. The domain filter trick used to work on Reddit because the images had a different domain name that they would be hosted on. That’s not true for Lemmy

smeg@feddit.uk on 06 May 2024 17:39 collapse

I’m using Summit, it can toggle off links, texts, pictures, and video posts

nutsack@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 21:48 collapse

holy shitnuts my man than you

TrickDacy@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 12:02 collapse

So you hate 99% of Lemmy then. Maybe stop using it?

glimse@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 12:26 collapse

Lemmy is not 99% memes. I have most meme communities blocked and I never run out of posts on my feed

TrickDacy@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 12:30 next collapse

It’s a huge percentage images. Which is what OP specifically mentioned wanting to turn off.

Assman@sh.itjust.works on 06 May 2024 14:20 collapse

“I blocked all the memes and now there’s no memes”

…okay

glimse@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 14:53 collapse

“I read what you wrote as a standalone comment instead of as a reply so I ignored all context”

…okay

If the person I replied to was correct in saying that 99% of Lemmy is memes and I have memes blocked, that would mean I am only seeing 1% of posts when I browse. I am saying that if that was true, I would run out of posts quite quickly and that has not been my experience at all. I’d wager it’s much closer to 50% memes than 99%

Jakdracula@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 11:25 next collapse

Let’s take a poll and find out!

mp3@lemmy.ca on 06 May 2024 11:37 next collapse

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
h3ndrik@feddit.de on 06 May 2024 11:50 next collapse

Sure? Maybe also small Wikis for some communities.

glimse@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 11:57 next collapse

I do not want to see polls added unless it’s only moderators and admins who can post them. If Lemmy is anything like reddit (it is), the vast majority of them will be useless clutter…people posting polls as “content.”

It encourages clicking a button over leaving a reply. We’ll get a thousand “Do you think [thing] or [other thing]” posts with very little engagement.

RobotToaster@mander.xyz on 06 May 2024 12:16 next collapse

Open polls are one of the few good things about Facebook.

kbal@fedia.io on 06 May 2024 12:29 next collapse

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 on 06 May 2024 14:34 collapse

What’s a Lemmy group?

warmaster@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 14:50 next collapse

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

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee on 06 May 2024 15:12 next collapse

It’s a community

ericjmorey@discuss.online on 06 May 2024 15:48 collapse

That was exactly my thought when asking. But it seems it’s the former.

SorteKanin@feddit.dk on 06 May 2024 15:01 next collapse

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 on 06 May 2024 15:23 collapse

Thanks for clearing that up!

kbal@fedia.io on 06 May 2024 16:22 collapse

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 on 06 May 2024 17:49 collapse

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

Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de on 06 May 2024 15:09 next collapse

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

Legend@lemmy.sdf.org on 06 May 2024 15:58 next collapse

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.

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 06 May 2024 16:06 next collapse

Benefit of

You mean ‘Benefit from’, here, right?

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 06 May 2024 16:26 collapse

yeah… not my mother tongue sorry.

Tag365@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 17:04 next collapse

Looks like it might be cool to have.

Andonyx@lemmy.world on 06 May 2024 23:05 collapse

Why is Javascript on Twitter?

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 07 May 2024 07:03 collapse

This wasn’t taken from Twitter.

Andonyx@lemmy.world on 07 May 2024 14:45 collapse

That was a lame joke about the check mark. 😔

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 07 May 2024 15:35 collapse

Oh, that was a bit difficult to catch hehe 🙃