The Problem
It has been brought up a few times recently (roughly in the last year or so) that the workbench entertainment polls can be (and in some cases are) essentially ignored by a judge when determining publication tier, especially if explanation/content in the thread itself is contrary to the poll results. There are even times that the poll may be essentially ignored simply because there is little to no discussion in the forum at all.
Side Note 1: We need to stop equating lack of interest with low entertainment. Just because a movie is sparsely viewed or commented on, doesn't mean that the movie itself is not entertaining to those who do chose to watch it.
Basically this means that a poll vote which is not also explained in the forum thread holds little to no value. This essentially makes the polling a (mostly) futile feature of the site in the first place. If the thread trumps the poll anyway, why not just eliminate the poll and rely solely on thread comments?
The primary problem with this approach is that it allows for ignoring the held opinions of some simply because they chose not to explain their viewpoint via words in the forum thread. It's as if we reward explained opinion more than held opinion; but
all opinions are equally valid.
Side note 2: I'm not trying to say discussion of opinions isn't also valuable. Discussion can absolutely help to understand or even change opinions, but lack of discussion shouldn't be used to diminish the value of someones held opinion.
It is my understanding that the poll is treated this way, at least in part, due to the ambiguity of the results; this ambiguity stemming from the fact that some users answer the question regarding degree of entertainment, while others answer the question as if the movie in question should be published or not.
I'm aware that various suggestions have been made regarding changing the poll question/answers. I'm not going to pretend that I remember all of them, nor do I have time to go searching through the forums for all the various suggestions. That acknowledged, I apologize if the following has been asked/suggested before.
Two Suggestions/Questions
1) Should the poll be outright eliminated given its minimal value that can be relatively easily trumped by comments?
(I do not support this approach!)
2) Would it be possible to make the workbench poll a two-question response that attempts to answer both aspects of how the current question is treated?
Essentially have two questions that need answered to submit a poll vote:
1) Should this movie be published (does it adhere to the rules as you understand them)?
Yes
No
2) If published, in which tier should it be published?
Moons
Vault
I Don't Care
This approach would yield a better understanding of how/why people are voting the way they are on submissions (regardless of whether or not they choose to comment with text in the discussion). This would restore greater value to the the results themselves and the whole endeavor of polling the workbench submissions in the first place.
It would eliminate the ambiguity (as described above) of the current poll:
The first question obviously answers whether or not the viewer feels the movie if valid for publication. The second question establishes the degree of entertainment value in the movie.
Side Note 3: I did not include Star tier in the second question as it's an individually curated (while open to suggestion) tier. I suppose it could be included in the poll, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Implementation (At least for the second suggestion)
If this would indeed be an approach desirable to the community...How difficult would it be to implement this on the site?
I recognize that the coding for the workbench polls would need changed. The
submission list page shouldn't need much change as it could maintain the vote percentages (using much the same calculation as is currently utilized) by the following variable conversions:
(old question answers) = (new question answers)
Yes = Moons
No = Vault
Meh = I Don't Care
This would still offer 3 entertainment level choices in the poll while yielding a general % entertainment value that would theoretically be more accurate than results generated by the current polling method.
What are people's thoughts on this?
Note to site staff/moderators: I realize this may have been better categorized under Site -> Open Forum: Feature Requests, but I made a new topic in hopes of obtaining more attention/feedback. If it absolutely needs moved/merged, please do so.