Why the 5 options poll limit?

[Tom Mazanec]

I can understand why you don't want 341 polling options, but why just 5? Is six options so unreasonable? How about a limit of 10 for a humble suggestion?

[tusenfem]

I think 5 options for a poll is more then enough, heck every multiple choice has a max of 4 choices.

[slang]

If you have a valid reason for needing more than 5, why not politely request it? You could even do that by reporting your own post here, if you don't want to have your reason out in public, for whatever reason you might have for that.

[Swift]

If you have a valid reason for needing more than 5, why not politely request it? You could even do that by reporting your own post here, if you don't want to have your reason out in public, for whatever reason you might have for that.

Actually he did

And while we're on the topic of alternatives I did not think of, why in the name of Isaac Newton does the forum limit me to 5 choices? If not, I would have listed 1 billion years and never separately, since they are very different alternatives, either of which could be justified. Another forum I often post on (alternatehistory.com) allows up to 20 choices on polls.

I told him if he wanted to discuss this further, not to do so in his S&T thread, but in Feedback. He did as I asked.

I assume that 5 is the default for the forum software. As Fraser generally opposes any changes from the standard configuration, and moderators can not change these kinds of things anyway (nor do I know if it is possible), it would require at least convincing one of the admins to change it, if not Fraser himself.

[antoniseb]

... it would require at least convincing one of the admins to change it, if not Fraser himself.

... and my preference is to just block polls. I don't care for them as a means of communicating ideas about astronomy, but we haven't removed them because... I forget what the positive arguments were.

[slang]

As Fraser generally opposes any changes from the standard configuration [...]

But I think that applies to changes like adding mods (as in modifications, not moderators) or plugins to the forum, so as not to complicate board updates. This would be a configuration change that simply carries over with forum software updates, if I'm not mistaken. Even so, it would still require an admin, as you say.

ETA: never mind.

[pzkpfw]

Yes. No. Beer.

3 is enough.


(Actually, personally I wouldn't mind the site allowing a poll with 10 choices, but think that (depending on the quality & style of the options) it might also put people off voting, in a "TL;DR" way.)

[slang]

FWIW, I was actually thinking about it in OTB and F&G context, not so much the rest of the board.

[Gillianren]

I think 5 options for a poll is more then enough, heck every multiple choice has a max of 4 choices.

Not true; a lot of multiple choice tests that I've taken have had five options. I think the SATs do, but it's been a long time since I took them. Before the addition of the essay test.

[ToSeek]

Five is the vBulletin default. Antoniseb or I as admins can change it. Perhaps we should have a poll asking what the optimum number of poll options are. It would, of course, be limited to five choices.

[djellison]

I'll give you a good reason....

The poll he's talking about has a total of 18 submissions. If you had 10 options, that would average 1.8 per option. It barely represents a significant or useful piece of data as it is. Spread even thinner it would worse than useless. It's barely worth doing as it is.

Indeed - why have a poll about that at all, why not just ask "How long do you think......" and leave it open for discussion?

[Jim]

For the large majority of polls on BAUT, five options is plenty. (I'd extend it to Yes, No, Unsure, Beer.)

For the few we've had where five wasn't enough, that worked to advantage. I'm thinking of the "Best (Descriptive) Movie of All Time" polls we used to have. (I miss them.) First came the nominating thread, then a series of polls to narrow the selections to the Final Five. Much more fun than picking one from a list of 50.