Please make a "Poll Forum" or something. The "DVD Talk" forum is overrun with completely moronic polls. Just on the first two pages:

Which movie would you like to see the "all-nude" version of?
Movies You've Once Seen And You Hope To God To Never See Again!!!
Best performance by a dog in an action film?
Worst performance in a great movie?
Movies with High Repeat Viewing
All-time great closing lines
Most TRAGIC Movie ?
Favourite 'Indie' Film
Favourite NICK NOLTE Movie ?
Name one (or two) actors you like that no one else seems to
Corniest sports movie ever?
Who are some actors that are naturally funny?
Who's the next BIG Star ?
Directors who are also decent actors.
Best "DRUG" film?
Best Music/Musical Score used in a film?

This isn't "DVD talk", it's "poll talk"!

you forgot this one:

More really lame polls!

started by you...

don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you're contributing to the littering of the forum.

Perhaps you didn't understand that that post was meant to be sarcastic?

[Edited by Chumley1 on 03-17-01 at 11:28 AM]

Best performance by a dog in an action film?
 

Chumley, that one was mine. If you would have gone into that thread you would have noticed me saying that I was mocking people who start pointless polls in there by doing one of my own.

By the way, I think a movie polls forum should be put up (polls in the other forum should stay there). It will help clean out the dvdtalk forum. If a General Movie forum would be put up it would get crowded like the dvdtalk forum eventually (not a good thing).

[Edited by aob505 on 03-17-01 at 12:16 PM]

Oh, I understand quite well your attempt at sarcasm. I'm also not defending the polls, although I have no problem just moving my eyes down past them. My point is still:

don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you're contributing to the littering of the forum


which you did with your non-DVD related thread, sarcastic or not.

Something certainly needs to be done. Their are too many poll threads, and most of the threads are about movies rather than dvd's. I know that's the description of the forum, but it's lame. We need the DVD Talk forum for DVD's a General Movie Discussion forum, and a Poll forum. As it is now, I rarely read that forum any more. It's too cluttered. The narrowly defined forums like At The Movies, TV Talk, and Video Game Talk are great. Being narrow allows the threads to stay on topic, and keeps the forums from getting too cluttered. They're the only things that keep me coming here. The other forums are cluttered, full of crap posts, and are just generally going to sh!t.

[Edited by joshhinkle on 03-17-01 at 07:23 PM]

Re: Best performance by a dog in an action film?
 

Oh, heh... didn't mean to implicate you or anything. I see I'm not the only one who is totally annoyed by the abundance of polls. I can't even look at the forum anymore, there's too much garbage to wade through. Like joshhinkle says, the focus of the forum should be SPECIFICALLY DVDs, not movies in general.

Another suggestion
 

Please whine and moan in as many threads as possible in an attempt to get your point across.

[Edited by TaTTooD on 03-18-01 at 04:56 AM]

I see I'm not the only one who is totally annoyed by the abundance of polls. I can't even look at the forum anymore, there's too much garbage to wade through[/B][/QUOTE]

I like the poll threads. -ptth-

Most threads might legitimately be called a poll thread, because you are "polling" the DVD Members for responses. This is done even in an issue oriented thread.

I'm afraid if we had a poll forum, the majority of the threads in DVD Talk Forum and the Other Forum would have to be moved to that new forum.

I agree. Plus, It is easy to move a thread because of content, however, having to decide what is a "poll" or not is more difficult for the reasons classicman gave.

I think polls are pretty easy to recognize just from the titles posted above.

If the mods can't tell that these are polls, then maybe we need more intelligent mods. ;)

Agreed. And what about all those deceiving posts labeled "POLL:XXXXXXXXXXXXX"? Those are tough to decipher whether they're polls or not, too. -wink-

joshhinkle, what about threads that are just questions (as are most threads in DVDTalk or Other)? What makes them not polls also? I find your description arbitrary.

While it may be black and white to you, there are some people who see a little more complexity to the issue. I am amongst this group.

As for not being smart, I must have had my University fooled when they conferred my Doctoral degree on me.;)

Do you not believe that most of the issue oriented (what some would call serious threads) on the Other Forum would be considered "polls?" I do!

I believe it would take a Solomon to moderate the forum(s) if we had a "poll forum." People (at least some) would be upset.

The last time I checked none of our illustrious and esteemed moderators possessed the wisdom of Solomon. :)

If you don't like the job a moderator is doing, take it up with Geoff. He welcomes feedback from all members.:)

What you seem to fail to realize is a great number of threads are not labelled "Poll" and the concern lies in those threads not the obvious ones.

It doesn't seem to be a problem on the Home Theater Forum, which has more forums and almost exactly the same number of users.

The last time I visited that forum it did not have a rough-and-tumble Other Forum. I believe there is (or was) a big difference betwen the Home Theater Forum and DVD Talk.

I just made a cursory scan of the first page of the Other Forum. IMO, 34 of the threads are poll oreiented threads. I didn't count how many threads were on the first page.

I think the moderators do a fine job. Apparently the -wink- wasn't enough to signify my post was a joke? I apologize, then.

I just did the same, and counted 14 threads I would consider to be polls, albeit, I went solely by the titles of the threads and didn't open any of them up.

Just letting you know your options.

And my :) should have let you know I wasn't angry, just like your -wink- suggested you were joking.

[QUOTE]<small>Originally posted by classicman2

Quote:

---

The last time I checked none of our illustrious and esteemed moderators possessed the wisdom of Solomon. :)</small>

---

-ptth- Yup! Gotta chop those babies in half! Yessirree!

I was referring more to the polls in the forums aside from Other... Regardless, I've found myself vastly preferring the HTF lately -- the discussion there is much less volatile and much, much more intelligent.

I gotta agree with that. Just a couple months ago, about 85-90% of my forum reading was done here instead of there , but that number has gone down in the past 2 months or so.

As I have said, I haven't visited the site in quite sometime. My problem with it when I did visit it in the past was that many of the reviews the folks made about movies were taken directly from some critic. In fact some seemed to be word for word. The guy in Chicago (not Ebert -whose name escapes me) was particulary popular - I guess because he's quite wordy. :)

Asking "when is x movie coming out" is not a poll. The poll threads are crap like "whats your favorite..." "Best..." etc. etc. Questions are fine, pointless polls are not, especially not in the quantity we have gotten lately. We need DVD Talk, General Move Talk, and a poll area. Narrow forums are better. Look how easy it is to surf through the threads in At The Movies, Video Game Talk and TV Talk.

Those are discussions, not stupid questions that can be answered with a couple of words or a short list. There is a big difference between and serious debate thread, and something like, "whats your favorite ice cream."

The poll forum wouldn't need much moderation, it would just be a bunch of crappy polls, all the mods would have to do is move the poll thread into it. People would eventually catch on.

joshhinkle, at this point our discussion diverges. At times you criticize polls across the board, and at other times you restrict your criticism for the Talk forum. I think there is a more tenable argument in Talk than in Other.

The talk forum is my main concern, the numerous polls in other are annoying, but that forum has pretty much became useless anymore anyway. The sports threads are the only thing that keep me checking there, and the occasional (rare) intelligent political debate. In other words, I don't care what happens to it.

DVD Talk needs to be remedied though. It should be centered around DVD's. Movies should be discussed in a movie forum, and polls in a seperate forum. Maybe there could be a "Movie Polls" forum and we could leave the crappy banal polls in the other forum with the rest of the crappy banal threads in there.

So what is your opinion of the Other forum?;)

It used to be full of thoughtful conversations and threads and I loved it. Now its full of polls, pad threads, and stupid conversation threads. I don't come online to have conversations and build "friendships." I do that in real life. ;) I come online to find information and have fun debating stuff.

I must say I agree. I used to enjoy the relatively intelligent conversation that took place. As much as I like having light give-and-take and fun repartee, that's virtually all there is any more. (If you even get that in the seemingly endless string of mindless polls.) I'm still around, but spend more and more time in AVS and HTF.

"Polling for responses"? Please don't be an idiot by clouding the issue. I think we can all tell the difference between a poll and a legitimate question. Just having a place where people would know they could go to post polls would greatly clean up the problem. I don't think a lot of moderation would be needed once people figure out that there is a specific forum for polls.

I don't mind occasional polls. I even participate in a few myself. But the Talk forum is SO overrun with absolutely insipid CRAP that it's no longer worth visiting.

Simple (I think) solution to that problem (if a Polls forum is ever created): have Geoff and all the moderators meet and decide (with input from the membership) exactly what is or is not a poll. Essentially, make an "official" DVDTalk definition of what a poll is. Geoff could add it to the Terms of Service (or whatever it's called) that everyone is supposed to read when they register and add it as the announcement at the top of the forums. That way, the members (and mods) know exactly what a poll is and there could be no whining from a member if a mod moves their thread to the Polls forum and the member didn't think it was a poll.

Cease the name calling, and tell us:

What is definition of a poll? Don't cop out with the lame answer that "everyone knows what it is." You englighten us with your definition.

Classicman, I will kindly point you to the post directly above yours for MY idea of how we can get around that touchy area.

My definition of a poll, is a question that is just asked to get short replies or lists. Obviously a single question like "When is x movie coming out" is not a poll. Or any other simple question like this,once it is answered the thread is done. These type of questions have merit and were asked for a reason as they are designed to obtain information. Polls are stuff like: "Best/Worst Movie, Best Worst actor, Whats your favorite ________, etc." These have no use for the Talk forum. In reality there nothing more than pad posts. People post their answer or list, and don't even read the other posts in most cases. Asking an opinion on something that leads to a discussion is a poll, but those aren't really a problem. They lead to thoughtful debates and are unfortunately few and far between. It's stuff like "Best movie to watch while intoxicated" that is cluttering the Talk forum while not adding anything of value. Threads like that can be answered with nothing more than a couple movie titles, and don't have any conversational value. Just a bunch of people posting movie titles.

:rolleyes: Fine, I'll humor you.

I think it's very simple. A poll is an attempt to get a large sample of public opinion. There's very little discussion (or none at all), just a bunch of people throwing their opinions into the ring. Example: "What's your favorite Nick Nolte movie?"

A non-poll question (the kind that I imagine you are suggesting could be construed as "polling for responses") is a legitimate attempt to gain information. Example: "Is [such-and-such] out of print?"

The only gray area would be a question like "Is [such-and-such] worth buying?" It's asking for opinions, but presumably there would be some serious in-depth discussion, thus falling outside the parameters of a poll as described above.

But be totally honest, don't you know a poll when you see one? Don't say "no" if you're just going to do it to be contrary.

Heh, josh is thinking exactly like me.

Another thing: I think most people would have enough sense to understand what a "Poll Forum" means, and use it appropriately without getting bogged down in the semantics of "what defines a poll?"

I think we have an impasse on what consitutes a poll.

I personally believe, rather than a separate polls forum, we should expand and rename the current "At The Movies Forum" to include a discussion of all movies - both past, present, and future.