How effective are polls in getting change?

This seems all this action follows Site Feedback being moved to the top of the forum and given more prominence.
Moderators, in case you haven't noticed, there are several communities clamouring for change.
I mention this as there has been very few comments within the threads by moderators.
IMO some of these polls show a clear swing in one favour, others, much more divided.
If there is a clear winner, can we be promised of actual change?
Are we likely to see a reaction to the results of these polls?
Normal posters need not reply to this I suppose.

How effective are polls in getting change?

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Not at all.

Did you get bored before you got to the last line?
I would rather this thread gets no replies than it lost in pointless conjecture.

I've been here long enough to know they don't work.

I've been reading the poll thread regarding The Chamber / Tavern, as I moderate those, by I've been ignoring the other threads.

I have not chimed in because I'm more interested in reading what people are thinking, not wishing to influence the discussion either way.

azzaman333 said:

I've been here long enough to know they don't work.

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This. But I'm also naive enough to keep trying.

taillesskangaru said:

This. But I'm also naive enough to keep trying.

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I admire your optimism.

Tsoate said:

Did you get bored before you got to the last line?

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You wrote "normal" posters.

I would rather this thread gets no replies than it lost in pointless conjecture.

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I might have respected your wishes if you'd made this a poll. The world needs more conscious irony.

It really depends on the poll. If the Mafia/NOTW/IOT poll showed a major 'yes' vote from those whom a change would impact upon, then that would very likely be effective in getting change (or at least, would be one of the most effective things that could be done to get change). On the other hand, we're much much more likely to be looking at the recent OT survey than a new OT poll, and even then it's more a matter of merit than numbers.

Thank you very much for replying

Camikaze said:

On the other hand, we're much much more likely to be looking at the recent OT survey than a new OT poll, and even then it's more a matter of merit than numbers.

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I am not aware of this survey, I think it is before my time.
Did the survey ask if people wanted OT re-merged?
What was their answer?
Second to that, what classes as merit if not the unwashed masses desiring it?

The survey did ask roughly that question, and the answers were inconclusive. The stickied thread in OT that you bumped contains the discussion on the matter.

'Merit' means the benefits of the proposal as against the detriments. Making people happy is a benefit, but so is saving moderator time, which has very little to do with how happy posters are. If a hypothetical proposal were to involve the expenditure of more moderator energy, then we'd look at that proposal not just in terms of the number of people supporting it. So when I say that it's more a matter of merit than numbers, I suppose this applies to a potential Mafia/NOTW remerge with Forum Games too. It's just that it makes pretty much no difference for moderators where mafia games take place, so what people actually want is one of the few remaining relevant considerations. Other considerations may be more relevant for other sorts of decisions.

Would something seen as beneficial for posters happiness, not be worth increasing the ranks of moderators for?
If I understand it correctly, OT is now considerably slower/smaller in the past.
Why were moderators sufficient then, but struggling with it now?

Tsoate said:

Why were moderators sufficient then, but struggling with it now?

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Some of the moderators listed for OT are currently inactive, so that makes more work for the rest of them who are still here.

OP should have been in the form of a poll.....

Camikaze said:

The survey did ask roughly that question, and the answers were inconclusive. The stickied thread in OT that you bumped contains the discussion on the matter.

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This isn't true, and Mise demonstrated that a couple times in the subsequent threads.

Valka D'Ur said:

Some of the moderators listed for OT are currently inactive, so that makes more work for the rest of them who are still here.

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Is this some "Old-guys Club"? Why are posters not stripped of their moderatorship if they are not active in their role? Everything seems so.. stale. If someone were to list the mods, what percentage are old wood?

Owen Glyndwr said:

This isn't true, and Mise demonstrated that a couple times in the subsequent threads.

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Demonstrated through some form of ESP, because he wasn't the one that read the answers. Saying that staff's interpretation of answers which only they have read isn't true is probably a worse way of getting change than a poll.

Just to clarify.
So where we can see the answers, it appears to be heading on one direction
But in the one only you can see, you have judged it to be the other?
You have got to see why people might feel this looks a tad fishy?

It seems that the staff's interpretation of the answers to a question that wasn't directly asked carries more weight than all the contradictory evidence.

I suppose there is the conspiracy theory angle too. We tried to advertise the survey heavily so as to get responses from people who normally would not feel like giving an opinion on the subject. So you would expect the survey results to have more people content with the status quo than a site feedback thread, or even a thread discussing the answers to the survey.

The point of the results being 'inconclusive', however, was that although there was indeed a quite substantial number of people wanting change, it wasn't anything in the way of an overwhelming majority, even more so when it's remembered that there are different ways to go about a merge, and different possible results from a merge. Thus we are more interested in the merits of the proposal, the happiness of members being one of the factors, but a factor not leaning all that heavily one way or the other. The discussion following the survey seemed to get caught up on a couple of people insisting the survey results said something that they didn't say, or that they couldn't possibly know they say (and to be fair, this is partially my fault for insisting on clarifying the point at the expense of other discussion), seemingly on the basis that that's what they wanted the answers to say. There wasn't actually all that much discussion of the benefits or detriments of remerging the Chamber and Tavern (which, to state again, is something that both the moderators who were discussing stuff in the relevant thread; Atticus and myself, professed to be vaguely in favour of, which should surely dispel the notion that we doctored the results; we certainly wouldn't have minded the results saying what others seemed to want them to say either).