Interesting idea but maybe a bit too complicated?
How about everyone being able to create polls and you could simply have some mods (or poll managers) select one up to three for a current poll rotation on the homepage? Just bypass that unnecessary step of having specific teams come up with ideas.
Comment has been collapsed.
not to be a negative nancy, but what's the point of it? do we really need polls on homepage? Is this really the best allocation of resources to be working on it r/n and appointing ppl to some weird new roles instead of, idk, maybe appointing more support staff and dealing with the issues users keep complaining about?
OK, I read deeper into that, and with each pass I get only more doubts and questions...
What's the point of those "teams"? Can only one team be involved with one poll or can they cooperate between teams? If they can't - why?! If they can - then what's the point of even splitting them into those teams? If both Poll Managers and Poll Contributors are able to create discussions what's even the difference between these roles? Besides the whole teams thing which I already stated seems ridiculous.
Where do you even want to put those polls? Right smack-dab in the middle of the frontpage where all the GAs that most users come here for anyway sit? So you'll have more stuff obstructing the GAs? I'm sure nobody'd get mad about that... Put them anywhere else? Then only people who already care and are active around the forums will see, bother, and interact w/ them. But we already have fully functioning polls in discussions! Any anyone can make 'em no fancy role required!
At first I thought those might be sorta meaningfull - like related to site functionality and whatnot, but then I read this:
it can be gaming, off-topic, trending topics, etc
so it's exactly like we have now! so why moderate it with two usergroups?!
Comment has been collapsed.
They have employed more support staff just recently. https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/qv1cB/new-support-users
Comment has been collapsed.
ye, I know. That's good, but is that enough? From what I heard support has so much work anything less than a dozen full time employees won't even make a dent. and those are volounteers, afaik...
Comment has been collapsed.
The longer ticket waits tend to require the higher level moderators and by employing these junior moderators, i am assuming that the lower ones will be promoted so there will be more higher level moderators to deal with those long standing tickets. Unfortunately, some tickets i think require cg to intervene so i don't know how long those ones will take. Hopefully, cg will delegate some tasks to the active mods to deal with. Time will tell!
Comment has been collapsed.
require cg to intervene
That's what I'm talking about. If cg has too much work dealing with mundane stuff (ie tickets) why not spend resources on appointing and training more qualified staff and delegate the daily tasks to them instead of wasting time on making some triple-layer complex polling system on top of the polling system we already have?!
Comment has been collapsed.
How about we look at it this way and if we have poll managers and contributors, we could create a poll about what things need improving on steamgifts and we can all vote on it!
Comment has been collapsed.
well, we could just start a discussion and make a poll ourselves already. no need for special roles and such...
and while I though the polls might be about improving sg, I read deeper into the og post and it seems that polls are supposed to be about:
gaming, off-topic, trending topics, etc.
ie. pointless spam yay!
Comment has been collapsed.
Off-topic and trending topics... Surely that can only end well in our polarised fun world.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hey Devirk, fair points, let me touch on them a bit and add some perspective.
what's the point of it? do we really need polls on homepage?
I mentioned in the post the point is to increase engagement with users in the community. It's not needed for the site to function. However, if I strip out all aspects of the site that are not required, we would be left with a sterile community that isn't a very fun place to visit.
Is this really the best allocation of resources to be working on it r/n and appointing ppl to some weird new roles instead of, idk, maybe appointing more support staff and dealing with the issues users keep complaining about?
All of these features already existed to set this up. I had to write about a dozen lines of code to pull it together. You are right though, we need more support staff. We added 7 new support members over the weekend and we're looking to add more next month.
What's the point of those "teams"? Can only one team be involved with one poll or can they cooperate between teams? If they can't - why?! If they can - then what's the point of even splitting them into those teams? If both Poll Managers and Poll Contributors are able to create discussions what's even the difference between these roles? Besides the whole teams thing which I already stated seems ridiculous.
Poll Managers and Poll Contributors are all part of a single team. They both have the same permissions, but Poll Managers have a page on user profiles to modify a user to the Poll Contributor role. Using that feature they can manage the team by adding and removing members as needed.
Where do you even want to put those polls? Right smack-dab in the middle of the frontpage where all the GAs that most users come here for anyway sit? So you'll have more stuff obstructing the GAs? I'm sure nobody'd get mad about that... Put them anywhere else? Then only people who already care and are active around the forums will see, bother, and interact w/ them. But we already have fully functioning polls in discussions! Any anyone can make 'em no fancy role required!
We've had the ability to add polls to the homepage for 7 or 8 years. During that time I've had a button on all user discussions that I can click to feature the poll on the homepage. The featured polls appear on the homepage below the list of giveaways. I've very, very rarely used the function because most user polls are not written as standalone questions and answers, so without the relevant discussion they don't make sense on their own, and therefore cannot be displayed on the homepage. I also setup a poll system in the past for creating "Community Voted" giveaways. I filled a database table with Steam keys, and every day the site would select three random keys, add them into a poll on the homepage, and the following day it would choose the highest voted key and create a giveaway. This went on and off over the course of 8 months. Then I've created homepage polls asking the community about various site changes.
I mentioned in another comment here those previous homepage polls would receive about 5,000 to 10,000 votes, so a high number of users did see and interact with them.
To summarize you're suggesting this is a waste of time and no one will see or use it, which is a reasonable argument. However, this took half a day to setup and based on our previous usage of polls on the homepage, it's a feature that will likely be used by thousands of users a day. At the same time it can hopefully encourage some of those users to join the corresponding discussion and explore more aspects of the community. That should provide a little more context on why I think this is worthwhile.
Comment has been collapsed.
will these polls have any point or effect this site in some way?
Comment has been collapsed.
If other people are interested in this for some reason, that's fine, but I personally have no interest in this feature. It seems like it would just add clutter that isn't very useful. I would most likely just end up just removing it from the page by adding it to my adblocker.
Maybe it could be beneficial if you think it would actually get more users to go to the discussions section, but I'm not sure if it would have that effect. I feel like there are 2 types of users, the ones who just want to click enter as fast as possible on as many giveaways as they can and then leave the site so they can win free stuff and the ones who want to read the discussions and interact with the community. I don't think adding a poll will get the first type of user to start interacting in the discussions, I think they will just ignore it because they will see it as clutter on the page that is not a giveaway they can enter. They will probably get used to it being there and not even bother reading the poll question.
Comment has been collapsed.
and the ones who want to read the discussions and interact with the community. I don't think adding a poll will get the first type of user to start interacting in the discussions, I think they will just ignore it
This. I belong to the second group and while I enjoy polls, even humorous pointless ones, that come with threads, I am not sure it's worth the effort to create community polls that won't necessarily create much interaction.
If the idea is to try and compensate for decreased activity in the discussion section, I don't know if that would do much. Maybe it's worth a try, who knows?
Comment has been collapsed.
Agreed. What's the point of having polls outside of discussions?
Comment has been collapsed.
The overall goal is to try and introduce additional content into the site for the community to engage with and discuss.
From what is written in the OP (engage with and discuss), it sounds like every poll might have a discussion page created for it. Maybe they will create a new category of discussions for featured polls and there will be a link from the main page poll to that polls discussion page.
I still don't really like it, but I don't care either way because I can just remove it if I don't want to see it.
Edit: CG responded here confirming that there will be a corresponding discussion thread for each poll.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hi AllTracTurbo, the polls would all have a corresponding discussion. The team creates a forum post with a poll (exactly the same as any other discussion) and the homepage automatically grabs the latest poll to display and links to that discussion.
You might be surprised how many people would take part. We've had polls on the homepage before and they would typically receive 5,000 to 10,000 votes. That engages a lot of users, and it encourages them to follow through to discussions where they can further interact with the community. As you said, there are users that just visit the site, quickly enter giveaways, and leave. If we can convert some of those users be more involved, I think it's a win for everyone. We have the stats page where we can track discussion activity, so we'll be able to see if it has any effect. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but I don't see much harm in giving it a try.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's true. I don't think there is any reason to not try it if you think it might be beneficial. It shouldn't affect my experience on the site in any way, so I don't mind if it is there or not.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm all for it. Because it's not much, but it's always nice to have some nice conversation.
Still, "Poll Managers" sounds a little bit complicated.
Comment has been collapsed.
Reminds me of the procedures in the Austro-Hungarian KuK monarchy: create as many useless titles and functions as possible to make everyone feel important. 🎀
Comment has been collapsed.
That's cool. Polls are, at the very least, a bit of dumb fun. I like dumb fun! And there's also a chance for really interesting conversation, too.
Comment has been collapsed.
=͟͟͞͞( っ'Θ')╮ =͟͟͞͞🍰
Happy cakeday♪
It might be surprisingly healthy to at least pick up from the joke of a vote in the discussion.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, I just read the other answers, so, the idea is to bait giveaway frogs into engaging in discussions via community polls featured on the homepage. I mean, sounds good.
If that's the case, I'd want to be a Poll Manager and my first poll would be:
Should Konrad be unbanned?
With the options being:
- FreeKonrad
- He already is, but don't tell sg.
- Yes, but actually no.
- Who?
Comment has been collapsed.
Don't be like Musk, unbanning harassers and hate speakers as "freedom of speech" to have them never open twitter again anyway 😂
Comment has been collapsed.
HI, if you have free time, could you explain (in several words) jokes about Konrad, I saw he's been popped up several times, but found nothing on him
Comment has been collapsed.
You can gain some insight from this thread.
Google can also provide more if you search for "konrads6".
Comment has been collapsed.
Poll Management sounds like something I might could give a try, if you wanna give that a shot.
That said, personally I really don't want more front-page clutter to deal with (the holiday box event section is already bothersome when it pops up each year, even despite the event itself being quite appreciable), and poll options can get very bulky very quickly. The poll'd definitely be best put at the very bottom of the page, or perhaps be only limited to the prompt itself- and, regardless of implementation, there should probably be a disable toggle provided in settings for those users who are simply lacking interest in the feature entirely.
Comment has been collapsed.
I like it.
These usually bring up quit a random topics and spark up fun discussions. As Vasharal used to do now and then and just ask random questions. Those used to be quit fun and everyone who took part could share their experiences and recall events from their lives that usually wouldn't come up in 99% of the regular discussions.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmmm, first things first.
This new functionality is being
Within the scope of adhering to the existing guidelines, we will not close or inhibit the use of the "voting" function by "discussion".
It would be better to clarify that this is the case.
Simply as a "this month" or "this week" subject, "Which game are you most interested in right now?" then a "discussion" would be set up for a period of about a week to gather opinions, based on which "votes" would be solicited, and "the vote button" would probably be displayed in a prominent place on the site.
Perhaps that is what CG has in mind.
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussions/community-polls
Categories have been added, but so far there seem to be no submissions.
[Probably not intended to do this, so excluded.]
If that's the way it's going to be, no one will be worried, and that's fine...
In the case of updating the community guidelines, some people may be concerned that the moderators or managers may arbitrarily edit the voting items when they create them, or that the CG (administrator) should make the decision.
If you are not involved in the "Announcements" or "Bugs/Suggestions", you may have to ask yourself whether you will have more time to pay attention to them or not.
I feel it is a little unnecessary if I think that I have to spend more time to pay attention to them as essential viewing items.
Therefore, it would be better to exclude "establishment of guidelines" and "changes in SG specifications" from the "range of topics to be covered," as well as "matters related to politics, religion, and ideology" from the beginning.
(Separate them out as topics that should be posted in bugs/suggestions)
Even if you think it is a normal conversation, there are some things that are not allowed in some countries or regions.
(If people respect and use freedom of speech and expression, they will not say anything, and I hope they do...)
Note also that if voting is by "number of people", the "large population of the country" will clarify the event that the results are "skewed" by the "large population of the country".
This can be a contributing factor to results that do not match reality.
(It may be appropriate to tally the votes in each country and then reflect them in the total number of votes cast.)
It is likely that the final voting results will be displayed in the flags of the different countries...🙄
For now, there is no !big problem regarding "voting" in "discussions", since it is a topic of "jokes" and "personal preferences", but please be aware that in the future, when it comes to "evaluating the world game in the community", inducements and troublesome things will be pushed in from "PR purposes".
!(There have been some temporarily strange numbers in the Russia/Ukraine case, and I have my doubts.)
Comment has been collapsed.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand i think it's a pretty good idea having a team only thinking ideas and making polls in order to see what we users think. Eventually they'd come up with something interesting.
On the other hand, and i do think you had thoroughly thought about it before, is that from my point of view a poll is a poll, just to have a slight impression of what people could think. What i mean is that it's important to see whether we really are in favour or against it, however i take more into consideration good argumentent replies than polls themselves providing better feedback.
All in all, despite my mixed feelings, i'll be glad to see where this carries us.
I apologize for my English level, and i do really hope that what i wrote could be understood the way i intended it.
Comment has been collapsed.
How about a poll to see if users want more polls or want polls created by admins? I don't see where users have been requesting this.
How many user polls have strongly suggested actual changes/improvements that never get made? Would resources be better served by directing efforts towards actual improvements vs window dressing polls that have no consequence?
Comment has been collapsed.
Happy cakeday!
Agree with your comment btw. No one that I know of was asking for such a feature and the resources/time spent on it could've been directed towards something more useful. To me, it's just one more piece of clutter on the main page.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ok, after reading this a couple of times I think I got the general idea of it, this whole thing is meant to create polls that can be self contained enough to be featured on the main page because most current polls lack the necesary context to make sense if taken on their own without their corresponding discussion.
Because giving everybody the power to create this type of polls would be too chaotic to even begin to filter them for the main page it makes sense to create a new user category, that would be the Poll Manager, so far so good.
Now, could someone please explain me what's the point of having Poll Contributors as a category instead of it just being an informal role that anyone can do whenever they feel like it? Just let anyone give it a try, if anyone starts trolling too much just hand them a couple of days of suspension.
Comment has been collapsed.
Another good option could be to add a polls tag on discussions, let anyone do polls there and feature in the homepage the most active one, that way, there'd always be at least a good poll being featured and no one (or their groups?) would have to brainstorm to make the next and such.
Comment has been collapsed.
That'd lead to forum spam, and while the overall comment count created by polls may be higher through that approach, the cohesion and productivity of the forums would be compromised, and not only would non-poll threads be buried and weakened in their contributions, but poll threads themselves would be. Even without accounting for the fact that spam could easily get far, far, far, far, far out of hand, flooding the forums to the point of making them unusable, there's still the fact that even small amounts of spam would do more harm than could, and be contrary to the aims of the concept cg is pursuing.
Put more simply, being able to flag a discussion as featured wouldn't necessarily do any harm, but setting it so that a specific discussion type is guaranteed to be flagged as featured will lead to an excess of that discussion type, which'd overwhelm the forums. You can argue that that could be resolved by putting them into their own forum and marking the forum hidden as a default, but not only is that a rather clunky and contrary approach, it'd still spread out user attentions needlessly.
The point here is to stimulate activity as it relates to interactions, not activity as it relates to simple output flow. Basically, to make the forums healthier and more interesting, rather than just louder.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's just one of many possible outcomes; Also, the polls I referred to wouldn't flood discussions, if anything they might dry them, it's why I said that a tag, to go to them, could be here, not that they should be mixed with discussions per se. (And they already are, but those cannot be featured for now).
And well, in the end, the idea of these polls is for them to be active, if this activity will flow trough other discussions or not, it's uncertain, that is to say, polls will have more activity for the simple reason of being the only type of discussion featured, except not everybody can make one (that will be featured) for now.
Comment has been collapsed.
Based on the functionality present on other sites, it'd be to minimize input. The managers need to filter and select polls to feature, and they'd want to pull from a list of polls that is both long enough to give decent variety, but also short enough to still be managable. If you allow anyone to submit a poll for review, there's no way to even begin to get through them, and there'd actually be less of a chance for active members to get their polls featured, in the long run.
Conversely, those who'd spam polls or who'd whimsically only make a single poll will certainly be left out but, given that a certain minimum quality should be expected for public polls, and that ideas can easily be transferred between users, there's no clear loss and clear benefit to that design.
TL;DR, as with most site rule compromises, it's primarily down to a matter of keeping workload managable for staff.
Comment has been collapsed.
I honestly never even considered the possibility of there being too many polls, must admit I was working under the assumption there would barely be enough polls to keep the ball rolling, so any extra step would just cause potential contributors to not bother. So yeah, if I look at it from that angle it does makes sense, let's hope you're right and there's actually enough contributors after the initial enthusiasm fizzles away. I do have the lingering suspicion that the only reason why these early polls are gaining so much traction is the novel factor of seeing CG casually starting conversation tho, it's kinda rare these days to see him hanging around here in the forum for something other than announcements.
Comment has been collapsed.
Polls have always been popular on SG, and I've myself made tons of threads based around them, in the past. If there's some bigger motivation to produce them again, I'm sure we'll see a decent pick up in their creation. Add in that you can't ever underestimate how enticing it is to some to have their efforts be "featured", and the fact that you also can't ever underestimate the amount of potential bad agents, and.. yeah, it could get bad, fast. Nevermind that just the 10-20 you'd already expect from basic daily submissions would already be a problematically high number to be included into other discussion types.
Don't disagree with you about the "it's only getting a ton of attention at the moment right now because all things by cg always do", though, as that's a pretty straightforward conclusion to come to. Doesn't necessarily mean that the polls aren't a good idea, though, as they may still have good long term benefits to community participation and health (if managed well, and presented with a far better UI than they currently have).
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, I know there's lots of polls being created at a pretty consistent rate, but I got too hung up on the part that most weren't able to featured on their own because they didn't make enough sense without the context of the thread they were created for. It's not so rare for polls in here to be used in conjuction with the rest of the thread in such a way that they can't be separated from it, think almost every thread with a poll related to buying stuff, or a poll that's there just for comedic effect. So I was so focused on this perceived scarcity that I failed to consider a flood of spammy polls being created and the selection process getting too unwieldy for the probably handful of moderators that will be in charge of this.
About if this whole thing is a good idea to hook more users into participating in the discussions or not, I really hope it is, but I have no clue if it's gonna work. Time will tell I guess. I for one will probably engage with them from the discussions tab instead of the main page since I usually completely ignore the stuff shown under the giveaways in there, I much rather have the full view instead of that tiny compressed version of the real thing.
Comment has been collapsed.
I will admit that in 6+ years of using this site, I have never, ever said "geez I wish SteamGifts had more community polls."
But hey, if it's easy to implement, there's probably no real downside.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's a big block between the end of the GAs and the useful at -a-glance discussions block but I wouldn't say it's a "real downside".
Just pointless clutter.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah yes now i see why/how polls on the front page, can be annoying.
Comment has been collapsed.
Can you share a screenshot? I even can't understand what should be treated as front page and I can't see current poll "Why Half-Life is the best FPS from the 90s" anywhere else beside discussion section.
Comment has been collapsed.
Found it :D I rarely see bottom of the page -_- (mainly because my "start page" on SG is giveaways/search?type=new + I use ESGST and need to have all available giveaways already loaded (72 right now) to see the bottom of the page)
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah am not using any scripts, i think it's too big/close to the next page screen, if it was lower perhaps, then it might be more out of the way atleast.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't mind it, but I can see why it might be too big for SG community members who might not want to take part in these. Adding the ability to collapse the poll section might not be a bad idea.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah but an automated one then, but how do you implement that?
Better is all the way at the bottom, if you are not interested in the discussion list, and then the poll, you can skip them.
Comment has been collapsed.
The easiest way would be to have a setting on the account page, where users can set the homepage poll to be visible, collapsed, or hidden. If it's collapsed, it would just show the question and users would need to click a button to display the answers.
Comment has been collapsed.
You'll also want to add maybe 30~40% more to the upper margin, and- for the sake of those of us with visual impairments that don't do well with conflicting visual structures being placed so close together- a horizontal divider line below the poll (that, or a larger bottom margin, but that'd probably not look very good).
Comment has been collapsed.
As a feedback: I would be happy if these polls might have effect on the SG. Like an example:
Act 1
Community poll manager and his honorable minions are creating poll "Should there be a separate moderator role for a "Add Game to List" tickets moderation? If yes, what rules they should follow?"
Regular users voting hardly positive under the question and making a blasting useful discussion.
Act 2
Community poll manager and his honorable minions along with other team members, while taking into account that so many people voted for the idea, extracting good suggestions for a guideline from the discussion under previous poll (and sprinkling it with own ideas and experience) are making new poll with guidelines posted and question "Do you think having such a role with such guidelines is a good idea that will make SG a better place?".
Act 3
A new role for a support members is ready with right-away available guidelines on how to do their voluntary work. And if someone is unhappy, well - go blame the majority of community who voted for that :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Sounds cool but don't forget that, sadly, the (big) majority on sg are black sheeps that could, if they get active in the discussions, vote anything that favor cheating in one or more ways.
Comment has been collapsed.
"Should there be a separate moderator role for a "Add Game to List" tickets moderation? If yes, what rules they should follow?"
That's fundamentally what the Bundler role covered. It seems to have been retired after Shobo left. I'd been pushing for taking it up for a while, until I gave up on it, and there's been no other word on it, so it's to the point where it's something to run by cg to get a clear official statement of intent on, rather than by the community.
Staff members pushing their own ideals has never worked out well in the past (what with those pushed ideals typically being to sabotage the functioning of the site and/or harass general users). It'd certainly be possible for others to push ideas to poll contributors, who could then try and format a workable poll, which could then be vetted by poll managers. That is to say, rather than acting as pushers for ideas themselves, poll staff should be acting as vetters for ideas that they're getting lots of outside feedback on, to determine which ones are most suitable for being featured.
Likewise, as Masafor noted, it'd only work as an initial gathering of opinion, and wouldn't have any workable numbers behind it. Polls on SG are pretty infamous for being manipulated, to the point where outside polls are typically used by site users for anything important.
Comment has been collapsed.
Maybe this is interesting for some, but not for me. :)
Would be cool if it would not be displayed on the main page it you have unsubscriped the discussion category.
Comment has been collapsed.
If with those polls the goal is to get people to start posting (regularly) on the forum... I'm not quite sure this will work. Most users are only here for the gibs, heck very few seem to actually read giveaways' description so I doubt adding polls on the main page will make much difference. But hey, who knows? We'll see.
Personally, I think that only makes the main page looks more cluttered.
Comment has been collapsed.
would there be possible to have an option in settings to hide or minimize the polls?
or maybe move them below discussions?
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't mind the poll, but I agree with moving it down. Whenever I get to the bottom, I was able to see latest discussions and at least read through it. Now that doesn't happen and just discourages me from doing so.
Comment has been collapsed.
yeah, same, i liked to check the discussions but it just makes it a bit bothering to reach to the discussions
Comment has been collapsed.
Looks nice; thank you! The answers will be interesting.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hi SG,
We added a couple of new roles to the site the other week as a way for users to write polls for our homepage. The overall goal is to try and introduce additional content into the site for the community to engage with and discuss. Community polls seemed like a good place to start since most of the infrastructure already exists on SG.
The new roles are...
We also have two new discussion categories...
Community Polls
This category is visible to everyone, but only Poll Managers and Poll Contributors are able to create discussions here. Everyone is allowed to comment. Our homepage is setup to automatically feature the latest open poll that has been created in the past 3 days to this category. It will also link to the corresponding discussion.
Community Polls (Ideas)
This category is visible to users with the Poll Manager and Poll Contributor role (along with the support team) as a place for them to brainstorm and schedule upcoming community polls.
How It Works
If you're interested in joining either role then drop a comment below. We'll choose a few Poll Managers and they can use this discussion to find interested users in building the initial team. I have no idea how well this will work, but I know there are a lot of creative people here and I think it could be fun to have users more involved in content creation for the homepage!
Comment has been collapsed.