Creating Polls
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rif last edited byI think polls are a great way to determine the overall consensus of users.
Wish we could do them here.
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blackbird71 last edited byOne problem with polls in forums is that they only provide a cross-section of those motivated to respond on the topic as worded, a cross-section which is further skewed by representing only those people who participate in the forum in the first place. Unfortunately, as a measure of what "most" users really want or how they use their systems, such polls are usually well off target. If one can somehow take all of that into account when constructing or interpreting a forum poll, they may have some usefulness in terms of only providing a very rough idea regarding their topic.
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rif last edited by
@blackbird71 said in Creating Polls:
One problem with polls in forums is that they only provide a cross-section of those motivated to respond on the topic as worded, a cross-section which is further skewed by representing only those people who participate in the forum in the first place. Unfortunately, as a measure of what "most" users really want or how they use their systems, such polls are usually well off target.
I agree. And most all of the users of this forum I would consider some form of advanced user of Opera so they
wouldn't probably be the "Typical" user so it would be skewed that way. But still.................Truthfully, I really only want a poll here to ask the one question, "Do you want to by able to sync your speeddial?"
I've never seen any post where someone was against this and have seen multiple times where someone has voiced
that they wanted the feature. -
blackbird71 last edited by blackbird71
@rif said in Creating Polls:
@blackbird71 said in Creating Polls:
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Truthfully, I really only want a poll here to ask the one question, "Do you want to by able to sync your speeddial?"I've never seen any post where someone was against this and have seen multiple times where someone has voiced that they wanted the feature.
The polls I've seen that are usually the most informative and relevent are when users are asked to vote which of numerous alternatives they prefer or use (eg: which antivirus programs, extensions, specific settings, etc). What happens with a single-question 'feature' poll like you describe is that those users strongly in favor (and who are aware of the poll) will vote yes, those strongly opposed will vote no, and the vast bulk of users won't even be aware of the poll and won't respond at all... the net result being that the poll won't really show the true popularity of the proposed feature among users, but instead will merely reflects a breakdown of those few who are strongly interested (or at least, interested enough to respond and who happen to even be aware of the forum poll).
As a purely hypothetical example (but reflecting real-world response levels I've seen both in polls and up/down-voted forum textual topics): if there were 1000 Opera users, perhaps only 50 actually view these forums consistently and would be aware of the poll; of those 50, perhaps only 10 will care enough about a topic to respond in any way to the poll you've suggested. Suppose the breakdown of those 10 poll responses is 6 in favor, 2 opposed, and 2 neutral or non-committal. Compared with the 1000 total users (or even the 50 who see the poll), a response of 6 vs. 2 is statistically insignificant, particularly in determining how best to expend browser design resources. Consequently, it's understandable that not a lot of effort or expense ends up being put into developing poll capability in most browser (or other technical support) forums.
FWIW, in the feature-request forum topics here and elsewhere, I've observed that most of the time, there are usually very few if any really negative responses to any feature requests since most users either don't care or have no real objection to adding particular new features, whether or not they'll conceivably use them - as long as a proposed feature doesn't detract from what a user already has. Hence such 'polls' will always carry a large favorable response vs. a small or zero negative response - but that hardly can guide real-world development.
Hence, and in that very vein, my personal response to your question would be, sure, I might want to sync my speeddial... as long as it doesn't take away from existing features or sync performance. But then, I'd also like the browser to have built-in browser data file backup/restore features as well. Etc, etc.
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rif last edited by
@blackbird71 said in Creating Polls:
Damn, and I'm a numbers guy and you threw them into my face! LOL
Yeah, to be truthful I've run some polls elsewhere and then questioned
the results for some of the same reasons you mentioned.@blackbird71 said in Creating Polls:
But then, I'd also like the browser to have built-in browser data file backup/restore features as well. Etc, etc.I do hope I could search here and find where you made that suggestion! haha
BTW, I use https://freefilesync.org for all my backups!
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blackbird71 last edited by
@rif said in Creating Polls:
@blackbird71 said in Creating Polls:
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BTW, I use https://freefilesync.org for all my backups!I use Hekasoft (any time I make a signficant change to any of my browsers' settings or data) to manually back up the relevant personal data/settings to an external hard drive. Having observed in various software/product forums the user problem reports that occasionally occur when file-difference-based sync has been used as a 'backup' and has malfunctioned at awkward moments, I just don't trust that technology to be sufficiently foolproof in principle for solid backup. This is especially true if one is using sync to correlate data between multiple systems. In my experience, there is 'sync' and there is 'backup' - and they aren't the same thing (even though many users indeed use sync as a kind of 'backup').
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A Former User last edited by
Right, something breaks, automatic "synch-backup" makes it break everywhere - nice.
As to polls. I see here we are the wisest people in the world:) so our polls will represent the essence of wisdom in the Universe:D
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rif last edited by
@blackbird71 said in Creating Polls:
I use Hekasoft (any time I make a signficant change to any of my browsers' settings or data) to manually back up the relevant personal data/settings to an external hard drive.
Had to look this one up. Looks like a good program. I don't use Freefilesync as a "Syncing" backup for Opera, rather I just make a mirror backup of the 4 copies of Opera (Three of 56.xxx and one of 12.18). But with Opera's syncing capability I've never had to restore a version of 56.xxx or its predecessors. I have 12.18 (Used for email only) installed on my e: drive including the profile and when I need to "Restore" it I can just copy it or the backup to a new computer. Works great for me. I usually backup at least every other day.
The program does look interesting in that you can use it to backup all your browsers (I have IE, Edge, FF also).
Where Freefilesync shines for me is I keep everything important to me in d:\My Documents and I sync between my laptop and desktop. Works great.
On another note, I'm sending you a PM here with a weird Opera 12.18 problem.
