I propose that Scoop be updated so that users can submit polls without an accompanying story.
In the particular vision I have of this feature, there would be four major interface changes involved:
"New Naked Poll" link in personal hotlist
This should be self-explanatory. A link to the standard poll form found at the bottom of every new story or diary page, with the important difference that the poll input stands alone.
A Separate Naked Poll Queue
This would be necessary to stop the flood of new polls from overwhelming the regular edit and voting queues. Also, a Naked Poll would not have the depth of a story, and should not be governed by the same relatively clunky rules.
The new queue would likely require its own page; the Naked Poll Queue. Polls would never actually leave this queue, unless they were deemed too trollish or useless by the users. Some might say that this would generate reams of useless troll polls.
I say that it probably would, but they'd get shot down so quickly that most people wouldn't care. It doesn't take long to look at a poll that asks "How big are Tex's balls?" and click -1.
(I personally would like to see buttons used in k5 voting instead of drop-down menus, with customizable messages such as "-1. Die, neoliberal scum!", "+0, I'm too drunk to care!" and "+1. Kiss me.", but that's material for another article.)
A new Box: "Latest Polls"
A simple addition, I hope, that would make it easy to keep up with the number of polls that would be submitted by K5 users, without cluttering the main page or pushing stories down too fast. Users could also pick and choose which polls to actually vote in based on what they were interested in.
As a side benefit, there would no longer be any excuse for leaving the same poll up on the Front Page for a billion years (and counting.)
New Voting Options
The Naked Poll Queue is not a normal moderation queue, since polls do not need editorial input quite as much as stories. Therefore, the new polls would only have two voting options, excluding the actual multiple-choices themselves; +1, and -1. A negative rating of the usual 20 would dump the poll from the list, and a positive rating of 50 would ensure that the poll gained "protected status", and could not be removed from the list by normal means. The "protected" limit would need to be lower than for stories, since polls would be voted on more quickly. In any case, the exact mechanism would be for implementors to decide.
The Naked Poll would, IMO, be an important benefit to Scoop. Instead of an author or reader trying to guess the true position of the community on an issue from their responses to an only slightly relevant poll, they could discern the subtleties of opinion that we all try to shoehorn into one answer that is never wholly satisfying.
By submitting specific polls for each facet of a topic, an author could base his conceptions on much more solid, detailed information before writing an article based on that topic, generating higher-quality stories for all. A potential downside to this, however, is that articles may become more like politicians; vacuous empty shells dancing to the tug of a million strings of public opinion.
Would we get articles that pander to the masses more effectively than they can now, or would authors stop writing about those bloody boring (your own most hated topic) and start paying more attention to (your life's dreams and obsessions which all sane people share)?
I believe that Scoop sites would become faster-paced and more intellectually nimble, gaining an advanced capability for full exploration of contentious issues and ideas. If nothing more, potential authors would be presented with many more seeds for articles, and our currently lethargic queue would be revitalised as a result.
Many Scoop users would be dismayed if their beloved site were to change its basic layout. However, to remain the most important battle machine in the quest to ferret out new ideas, entertain us endlessly, and foment flame wars between sides of ever-changing strength, Scoop must sometimes add new weapons of debate to its gleaming array.
The Naked Poll would be a lively steel blade, slicing opinion more precisely and shaping ideas to the bare bones. Above all, of course, it would allow us to discover exactly how wrong everyone else is.
