Poll FAQ

I do a lot of polls on my account at Mastodon. I get the same questions or requests multiple times, so I made this FAQ to make it easier to reply.

Q: Why do you do so many polls?

A: I like to think about topics big and small, from the things we wear and eat to our plans for life.

It helps me a lot to see how much I differ from other people in the way I do things or the way I think about things.

I often ask questions like this to friends and family in person.

Asking online lets me ask a lot of people at once and get some rough quantitative ideas.

Q: What are you going to do with this data?

A: Mostly nothing. After the poll closes, I usually review the results, think about them, and then make a post giving my own answer, as well as addressing any topics that came up in the comments.

I don’t do any quantitative tabulation, publishing, or anything like that.

That said, it’s possible to find the results of the poll using the Mastodon API, so if you don’t want people to know your answer, don’t provide it.

Q: Can you clarify the question?

Q: What do you mean by X?

Q: Define X.

A: I usually will not do this.

I try to use English idioms as clearly as possible.

Sometimes the questions I ask apply in multiple scenarios or in different ways. Over-specifying the terms would leave out some of these connotations and make it harder for people to connect with the poll.

It’s also really upsetting for people if I change or refine the definition of a poll after they’ve responded.

If you need to, add your personal definition in a reply, and then use it for your poll response. These conversations about the definitions are one of the best parts of doing these polls, so I really encourage doing that kind of introspection out loud.

Q: How do I follow you without seeing all these polls?

A: If you need to, you can filter out the EvanPoll hashtag. I try to be careful to tag every poll.

Q: This poll is not scientific!

A: No, it’s not intended to be scientific. I am not collecting data for publication nor trying to prove any points.

Q: Where is the option for “neutral”?

A: Mastodon only gives me 4 potential answers for polls.

Rather than having 3 options (Yes, Neutral, No), I use all 4 options, but give strong and weak versions of each answer (Strong Yes, Weak Yes, Weak No, Strong No).

The cost is there’s no true neutral. Try to pick a Weak Yes or No. If you really can’t, leave a reply. Or just don’t answer the question.

Q: Where is the option for “never”?

A: When asking about frequencies of seeing or doing something, i will usually give four options: X or more frequent, Y, Z, N or less frequent.

If you never do that thing, pick the “N or less frequent”. Never is less frequent than yearly or monthly or whatever.

If it’s important to you that you point out that you never do this thing, leave a reply.

I occasionally add “never” if it’s interesting to me, but it usually isn’t. First, because people don’t really mean “never”, as in they have never done it before and never will again. They usually mean “I have chosen to avoid this behaviour entirely”, and the timeframe may be as short as a month, or as long as a human lifetime.

Those choices are often important to people and their identities, but they’re not usually as interesting to me as getting an idea of the actual frequency. So, rather than asking if you have forsworn some behaviour, I ask the frequency of the behaviour.

Q: What does “Strong No” or “Qualified Yes” mean?

A: “Strong” means you emphatically agree with few or no reservations.

“Qualified” means you have reservations. It’s the “Yes, but…” option. If you’re not sure you entirely agree, choose “qualified”.

Note that this is a secondary definition of “qualified” and has nothing to do with your skills or abilities.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/qualified

Q: Why do you have four choices on a yes-or-no question?

A: I often ask yes-or-no questions with four answers: strong yes, qualified yes, qualified no, strong no. As mentioned above, “qualified” means “sort of, with reservations, not entirely”.

You might not think it’s possible for these questions to have “kinda yes” or “kinda no” answers. I really like leaving space open for vagueness, incompleteness, or uncertainty. I’m a fan of fuzzy logic, a logic format that handles this kind of vagueness.

If you’re upset that I have multiple answers to a question that you are sure only requires two answers, I invite you to look at the results and the replies. You’ll usually see a lot of people who respond with qualified yes/no, and often in the comments there will be an explanation of why they responded that way.

If you’re still sure that exactly two answers are required, please accept that you and I think in different ways, in the grand and wonderful space of neurological diversity.

If you need an exactly binary answer, you can always just sum up the “strong” and “qualified” answers on each side of the question. Or, you could do your own poll. Let me know so I can boost it!

Q: This question is vague!

A: This is usually intentional.

I want to know about how people feel, think and behave.

The most interesting questions in those areas are often used with very high level language.

That language is usually vague.

This can be frustrating for some people, who get uncomfortable with vague questions.

I’m sorry if that’s the case for you. You’re more than welcome to do something with your time besides answering vague polls!

Q: Your next poll should be…

A: I am not a wedding DJ and I do not take requests.

If you have an idea for a poll, post it.I often boost polls I find interesting, so make sure to tag it as a poll, and if I follow you I might boost.

Q: I can’t believe you said this terrible thing!

A: I sometimes make polls by writing out a statement and then asking if you agree or disagree.

This can be infuriating if people strongly disagree.

I’ve gotten better about putting the statements in quotes so it’s clear that it’s not me saying them. Sometimes I do agree, though!

I will usually say how I’d answer the poll after it’s over. That’s a good time to tell me I’m wrong.

Q: It depends.

A: I sometimes make polls that ask a question like, “Which do you like better, dogs or cats?” or “What type of shoes do you wear in the house?”

People will often leave comments like, “It depends. If a cat has just committed tax fraud, I prefer a dog.” Or “It depends. If the house is flooded, I wear wading boots.”

It should be obvious that answers would change if there was more information about the situation. However, in this case, there is not more information about the situation. I am looking for your answer to the question absent other information. In probability theory, this is called a prior.

Try to come up with an answer for the general case. If you need some help, consider all the different dependent cases (there’s a flood, the floor is lava, you are wearing a clown costume, …) and then consider how probable each of them is. Often, there’s a base case, and just a few outliers. Pick the answer for the base case.

Often I’ll have an option like “Qualified Yes” or “Often”. In this case, if “it depends”, but most often or by default the answer is yes, choose that option. If “it depends” but by default the answer is no, choose “Qualified No” or “Rarely”.

If that’s not how your mind works, feel free to skip the question.

Q: This question is meaningless because X.

Q: This question is impossible to answer because Y.

A: I try not to ask meaningless, impossible questions. The reason I posted the poll is because I’m interested in the topic and want to discuss it.

I usually try to gauge by the number of responses and comments whether a question “works”. If I get hundreds or thousands of responses, I feel like the question is answerable by at least some people — not pure gibberish.

I think the reason this question might seem impossible or meaningless to you is that we’ve got different understandings of what the question is asking. Maybe there’s a term or idiom I’m using that you’re not familiar with — or maybe it has a connotation you know that I am not familar with.

Another possible reason is that I sometimes post very specific polls for a very small audience: Montrealers, ActivityPub developers, CoSocial members. They might not make sense to you because they use terms or refer to topics you don’t know.

I also make polls that ask for answers or opinions without full information, and you might think “it depends“. Answering questions without full information is frustrating and illogical, but it’s not “impossible”. It’s a normal part of the human condition; sometimes we need to think in the general case. People do this kind of thinking every day.

I sometimes ask questions with a deliberate framing that is out of the ordinary — changing the Overton window on a topic. This may make it feel like I am asking the “wrong question”. It’s OK to call me out on it.

It’s also possible that you and I lie on different parts of the fascinating, multi-dimensional spectrum of neurological diversity. As a species we are still discovering how varied the human thought process can be. I might just have a very different mind from you, and the way I think about a topic might seem bizarre or unfathomable.

I like hearing about different ways to think about the polls I ask, so please feel free to explain why you think a question is impossible or meaningless.

Q: Why are you asking this question?

A: I get ideas for poll questions from all kinds of places — things I read, memories that bubble up unexpectedly, song lyrics, conversations with friends.

I won’t usually explain where the idea from the poll came from, because I don’t want people to respond to the origin, but to the question as stated.

You can safely assume that my poll questions are not gotcha questions based on context you’re not aware of. There is not a hidden agenda.

So if I ask how you feel about heart attacks, and you reply that you feel negative about them, I will not accuse you of being a secret supporter of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died of a heart attack in 2006.

I don’t use polls for making decisions about my work with ActivityPub, but I do sometimes use them to see if I’m way out of touch with public opinion on Social Web topics. I don’t consider them binding, though.

I will sometimes give the origin of the poll in my closing comments after the poll is finished. If you’re curious and you’d like to know more, that’s a good time to ask.

Q: Why are you asking what people “should” do? I would never tell anyone what to do!

A: I often ask questions about social and technical behaviour. “How often should someone talk to their parents?” “Should people use cloud backup for their files?” “After what hour of the evening should people avoid making personal phone calls?”

People sometimes object to the use of the word “should”; they associate it with arbitrary morality and authoritarian control. I don’t think that’s the case with these questions. I’m not prepared or able to impose rules that force everyone to use cloud backup, based on your imperial command.

Here, “should” means the extent to which actions are good for the actor mentally and physically, considerate to people around them, beneficial for the environment, or otherwise have positive outcomes.

Very few rules are universal; people are unable to talk to their parents after they pass away. People who work the night shift have to call their families during their lunch break at 2AM. In making “should” decisions, feel free to imagine a hypothetical “normal” actor if you can.

If you think the action is always preferable with very few exceptions, say “strong yes”. If it’s usually preferable with a lot of exceptions, “qualified yes”. If it’s usually a bad idea, with a lot of exceptions, “qualified no”. If it’s almost always a bad idea, except in a small number of cases, choose “strong no”.

If saying what’s good for others and the world feels uncomfortable to you, feel free to skip the question.

Q: Why don’t you have X as an option?
Q: Where’s the option for X?
Q: You forgot X.

A: My Mastodon site limits my choices for polls to 4 options. That means that when I post a poll, I am going to limit the options to four or fewer. That can be frustrating if none of the four options is optimal for you.

I sometimes ask, “Of these options, which is your favourite?” or “Of these choices, which do you prefer?” That’s an English idiom meaning to pick the best of your limited options out of this list. It doesn’t mean that I think your absolute favourite is on the list.

I try my best to get a lot of options into my polls, and to have good coverage. But sometimes I just have four options, out of what might be a continuous spectrum or a category with thousands of options.

I think it’s fun to have polls on this kind of topic even if I can’t cover all possible options. If that doesn’t seem fun to you, please feel from to skip the poll.

If you have a favourite or preferred option that isn’t on my list, please feel free to reply with the option. If you don’t like the options or you think the choices are too reductionist, I get that. Feel free to skip the poll.