A few observations about the polls on this site

by Volker Weber

When I set out to create the poll scripts here on vowe's magic flying circus as my Xmas project, I was a little bit wary how this would turn out. So my first poll was to find out whether you liked it or not. I did not need to worry. The polls have turned out to a big hit. Here are a few observations:

I have been getting a few suggestions, like providing a Submit button or a View Results link. Thank you for that, but I have actually designed it this way for a reason. If there is an opportunity to look at results, I sometimes cheat and look at them before voting myself. I don't know why I do that , but it probably influences my choice.

I have made one small adjustment yesterday, after one reader told me he could only see the results by voting again. Here is how it should work: You vote, the site sets a cookie. If there is a cookie, you get to see the results (for one year) instead of the choices. Now I check if I can successfully set a cookie, and if I can't then I present you with the results directly. Which of course means that you don't get to vote if your browser does not accept the cookie.

I know some people don't like to accept cookies, but I find them tasty to preserve state between sessions. Without them you are forced to enter your contact data in the comments all over again. This is my setting in Safari:

safari cookies

Comments

I like "only from sites you navigate to". Is there an equivalent feature in Firefox?

Chris Linfoot, 2007-02-02

My reason for not voting: the company's content filter blocks parts of the javascript, breaking the voting click action.

Jan Van Puyvelde, 2007-02-02

Chris, I am not aware of any such feature in FF.

Volker Weber, 2007-02-02

You may want to read this review of a cookie whitelisting extension to FF.

Volker Weber, 2007-02-02

The UI for this feature has been removed in FF2. You can go to about:config and set network.cookie.cookieBehavior to 1.

Thore Tams, 2007-02-02

I'm just glad that only 5% of your voting/readers are still on Notes R5 or 6.0.x. And that Notes has 75% market share. :-D

Ed Brill, 2007-02-02

I am using CookieSafe to whitelist sites - works very well for me.

Urban Hillebrand, 2007-02-02

I'm using three different browsers (Opera, IE and Firefox) from two different PCs (home and business) to access your blog. Is there any way to avoid to use a poll twice? This would need to see it without participating in it (e.g. set the cookie but don't increase the count with the second, third, ... time I access the blog)!
Please don't tell me only to use a single MAC to access your blog ;-).

Joerg Rafflenbeul, 2007-02-02

You should really use a single Mac. :-)

Volker Weber, 2007-02-02

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I explain difficult concepts in simple ways. For free, and for money. Clue procurement and bullshit detection.

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