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:Polling is not a substitute for discussion - Misplaced Pages

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Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

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Polls are evil. m:Don't vote on everything, and if you can help it, don't vote on anything.

Or, rather, polling isn't evil in itself, but when you try to distill an essay's worth of thought into a single phrase, that's the sort of oversimplified, divisive statement that happens. A bit like trying to distill an essay's worth of thought into a single "yea" or "nay".

Polling discourages consensus

Having the option of settling a dispute by taking a poll, instead of the careful consideration, dissection and eventual synthesis of each side's arguments, actually undermines the progress in dispute resolution that Wiki has allowed. Misplaced Pages is not a democracy. This is a strength, not a failing. en:Dialectics is one of the most important things that make Wiki special, and while taking a poll is very often a lot easier than helping each other find a mutually agreeable position, it's almost never better.

Polling encourages the community to remain divided by avoiding that discourse; participants don't interact with the other voters, but merely choose camps. Establishing consensus requires expressing that opinion in terms other than a choice between discrete option and expanding the reasoning behind it, addressing the points that others have left, until all come to a mutually agreeable solution. No one can address objections that aren't stated, points that aren't made.

Yes, establishing consensus is a lot harder than taking a poll. So are most things worth doing.

Polling encourages groupthink

Seeing a list of participants in a poll encourages people to add their names. It's easy to just add your name, especially if one side is clearly "winning". Polling factionalizes users who might not even have been that strongly opposed—or that strongly in agreement. Discussion toward consensus requires participants to state their reasoning, and to read and understand the reasoning of others, to see where the situation is headed; polls give a falsely simplified picture. Not to mention that it's difficult to place yourself on the opposite side of users you respect, or on the same side as users you don't.

When the vote is strongly unbalanced, those on the "losing" side feel marginalized, and those on the "winning" side will sometimes feel as though the results of the poll give them license to do as they wish without taking into account the views of the minority, though nothing has been resolved.

Polling isn't fair, either

  • Mathematics of voting: all systems are broken. see voting system.
  • Bringing in outsiders—who is the community?
  • What segment of the community participates? Do only those who believe in voting vote?
  • When do polls end?
  • Who frames the questions?
  • How do we publicize polls (especially if there are a lot of them)?

Polls are misleading and encourage confusion

As stated above, polling isn't in itself evil. Polls can be useful for a quick gauge of opinion. The problem is that people take the results of a poll as a mandate to do something based on the numbers that turn out—which it is not. It is explicitly stated that Misplaced Pages is not a democracy—the saying that "what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right" applies.

Yet the existence of polls often implies to editors—particularly new ones—that the result of the vote is what matters, which is why processes such as English Misplaced Pages's Articles for Deletion are so prone to abuse by sockpuppets. The belief that the result of the poll, and not the commentary that springs from it, is going to decide the fate of the work, is what leads to polls that develop into more and more complex beasts, holding every possible option, leading to no longer two opposing camps but a dozen and pages that look like nothing but a mess to anyone who hasn't been embroiled in the debate. Voters feel misled at the end of a poll if the numerically superior option is not the one acted upon. "But it won the poll!" they claim, and not realizing that a poll is no substitute for consensus, are understandably upset, feeling that their voices have not been heard.

Examples

See also