Poll: That Random Poll Option

[Vern5]

The POLL: I decided to streamline the whole process. Everyone seems to enjoy random poll options.

So I made every option a random option.

The IDEA: Too many polls seem to have that one random poll option. The whole point of even organizing a poll is to test a popular opinion and have a numerical result rather than never-ending pages of text explaining someone's highly complex opinion. That one random option just throws everyone off because people (at least on this forum) seem to be like magpies that pursue things that are funny rather than shiny.

For example, there's that Poll about Women liking/not liking Assholes. The highest ranked option was the one that had nothing to do with the question. Doesn't that kind of thing skew the data and render the entire Poll as waste of time from the beginning? And why are people so attracted to the random poll options in the first place? Maybe its not the same with every poll but it happens often enough for it to be noticeable.

 

[Dags90]

I don't think it really throws off the data. First off, we're talking about voluntary public internet polls, not exactly great for gathering real data to begin with.

They're useful as a measure which shows how many people just don't care about the question being asked. It collects all the people who "don't care", "don't know", and "don't like any of the options" into one place. The polls would be a waste without the joke option, it just wouldn't be as obvious. It gives people who just like clicking buttons a button to click.

So threads where the best poll option is "Really tasty bacon" and aren't about breakfast meats show that the poll is an especially poor representation of the forum's actual opinion.

Personally, I enjoy voting for the "incomprehensible" option. Is there a poll option pro internet censorship? I'll vote for that.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The random options is a useful tool to measure how interesting a question is. If the question is interesting to most, you tend to get a low response on the random answer. If it is not, you get lots of random answers.

 

[Arakasi]

I don't like the random poll options.
It really does seem to skew the data (not that I'm claiming that the data is reliable anyway) but it could potentially cause people who would have normally voted a particular way to vote for the 'random' poll option.

For example (silly example) say that more Republicans like Bacon than Democrats.
The poll may be skewed to represent a Republican minority due to the Republicans voting for bacon instead of the Republican poll option.

Though that is not to say that a 3rd poll option isn't sometimes nessecary, the 'Other (explain)' poll option is a good one, as it actually represents something and doesn't mess with the other poll options.