[Official] Forum Features Testing Topic

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1021

You edited the font and size

3 Likes
1022

Ohhhhhhhh i didnt see that

1 Like
1023

Is anyone else having problems with polls - them acting inconsistently?

3 Likes
1024

Yep, there was a lot of discussion about that in previous posts here

Switch views and they should work

4 Likes
1025

thanks - that really helps with making them - but theyā€™re still acting a little strange for me!

3 Likes
1026

Strange, how so?

3 Likes
1027

Yep, I doesnā€™t work. I have to copy+ paste them.

2 Likes
1029

you probably will not need to copy paste anymore because iā€™m writing a long guide to teach how to create polls :eyes: /t

5 Likes
1030

looking forward to it - you were the one who showed me how to make better tables!

The same polls were acting different each time I posted, though maybe it was something I did, Iā€™ll experiment more!

1 Like
1031

The top guide to create polls :bar_chart:

Itā€™s been days the gear button :gear: is broken on most devices. Because this does not seem to wanna self-repair, iā€™m going to write a detailed guide for everyone on the forum having this issue. Laddies and gentlemen, welcome to the top guide to create polls!

Start by adding a basic poll. A basic poll is a single choice poll, is private, does not have autoclose, is a bar (not pie), and does not have groups voting restrictions. Then, all sections down below will be following this basic poll.

[poll]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]
Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

You have the skeleton of your poll here. You can choose to personalize your poll, just like before when the gear button is not broken.

Multiple Choice and Number Rating

Your poll is a single choice poll. Do you want more fancy stuff - Multiple? Rating?Check this section out!

Multiple Choice āœ…

Multiple choice allows the voter to choose multiple options. You can also set the minimum of votes and the maximum of votes, too.

[poll type=multiple min=2 max=3]
* Option 1
* Option 2
* Option 3
[/poll]

ā†’ type=multiple sets the poll to a multiple choice poll.
ā†’ min=2 sets the number of minimum choices you need to choose before voting. You can customize this number by changing 2 to any numbers youā€™d like.
ā†’ max=3 sets the number of maximum choices you need to choose before voting. Just like min, you can customize the number.

:warning: Warning: Make sure your max value is always greater than min.

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2
  • Option 3

0 voters

Number Rating šŸ”¢

Number rating allows the voters to rate something - eg. a project or an art piece.

[poll type=number min=0 max=5 step=1]
[/poll]

ā†’ type=number sets the poll to a Number Rating one.
ā†’ min=0 sets the minimum value the voter can choose. You can customize it by changing the 0 to whatever number you want.
ā†’ max=5 sets the maximum value the voter can choose. Just like min, you can customize the number.

ā†’ step=1 sets the steps your poll will show. For example, if you set step=5, the poll will generate 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, ... as options to vote.
:white_check_mark: This poll argument (step=1) is completely unnecessary if your steps are 1, and can be removed without any problems.

:x: Poll-breaking cases: Never put options (* Option 1) in a number rating poll.
:warning: Warning: Make sure your max value is always greater than min.
:white_check_mark: Pro tip: Never set a poll with a mega number of options. The voters will never be able to distinguish between a 23 and a 24. In edge cases, if you intentionally put a giant number of options (>100 options), your post may be considered as spammy and could be removed. Plus, on computer view, discourse can freeze (>10,000 options) in post preview window.

Result
  • 0
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

0 voters


Adding a title

Titles are fundamental to a poll. It tells the subject of it and your intention.

[poll]
# "Always look at where we will be two more papers down the line."
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

ā†’ # [ā€¦] is your title.

:white_check_mark: Pro tip: Keep your title short! Make sure to target directly what you wanna say from the first word. Try to only write at maximum two sentences, a title is not a paragraph.

Result
ā€œAlways look at where we will be two more papers down the line.ā€
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

Public poll

Public polls are often very necessary. You can, for example, note down the voters who want to join your tag list, or get peopleā€™s opinion on your newest game.

[poll public=true]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

ā†’ public=true sets the poll to public.

:white_check_mark: Pro tip: Wanna get opinion from the community? Setting your poll to public seems to be a very tempting choice, but keeping it private often makes the voters more honest!

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

Autoclose Autoclose are useful when you need to close a poll after a certain specific amount of time. However, this is not at all easy to do without discourse's automatic poll creator, and i recommend you to follow these steps one-by-one carefully.
  1. Get the time you need to autoclose and input the value in this website: time.lol
  2. Copy the ISO 8601 time.
  3. Put the autoclose time in the poll by replacing TIME with your ISO 8601 input.
[poll close=TIME]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]
4. You're done!

:warning: Warning: Itā€™s hard to copy time on time.lol if your settings makes it change each seconds. For instance, if you input ā€œTomorrowā€, the time will change each seconds. Put ā€œTomorrow at 4:00 pm ESTā€ for example to make the time fix (does not change each seconds).

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

Pie

Pie are mostly used in nominate your project.

[poll chartType=pie]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

ā†’ chartType=pie sets the poll to a pie instead of a bar.

:warning: Warning: public=true is not compatible with pie polls.

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

Show result

A basic poll shows the results of the poll whenever you want by clicking :eye: Show Result [1]. However, you can control when people can see the vote by using this attribute:

[poll results=on_vote]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

ā†’ results=on_vote sets the pollā€™s results only visible when someone votes. You can also set it to results=on_close to make the results visible when you close it.

:white_check_mark: Pro tip: results=on_closeā€™s best friend is an autoclose!

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

Limit poll to a tag list

You can limit your poll to a tag list. This trick is not often used, people usually only use it to get more people in a tag list. However, i personally think this creates a bad impression on you, and i donā€™t recommend doing that. Although, this does not stop me sharing this trick to yā€™all :D

[poll groups=Rectangle]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

ā†’ groups=Rectangle limits the poll to the members of @Rectangle, my tag list.

:white_check_mark: Pro tip: Wanna limit the poll to multiple tag lists? Separate them with a comma (without space!!) and here we are! groups=Rectangle,OMTL

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

I havenā€™t mentioned it, but you can combine attributes. For example,

[poll public=true results=on_close]
# This is a combined poll!
* Indeed
* This
* Is!
[/poll]
gives a public poll with a title which the results will be shown once closed.

Troubleshooting

"There are multiple polls without a name. Use the 'name' attribute to uniquely identify your polls." error message

You have more than one poll in your post. Thereā€™s an easy fix for this - adding a name attribute:

[poll name=poll1]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

[poll name=poll2]
* Option 1
* Option 2
[/poll]

ā†’ name=poll1 sets a name to the poll in order to avoid a discourse error message.

:white_check_mark: Pro tip: No need to give a fancy name, like Justin_and_a_cute_spider [2], to the poll. No one else will be able to see it!

Result
  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

  • Option 1
  • Option 2

0 voters

Pie does not show who voted

Pie polls do not have the ability to show who voted. Switch to Bar if you want it to be public.

Suggestions are welcome! The more we have, the more we can help people in the section!

Thank you very much for taking time to read all of this, i hope you learn something new today and you now know how to write a poll without the gear button, and without copy pasting older polls!

I will tag @polygons and @omtl to get as much people reading and understanding the process to create a poll. Thank you again, and have a nice nice day!

yes, there are at least 10 hidden polls in this post, go find 'em!

  • All hail to the mighty discourse poll :pray:

0 voters

  1. or maybe the eye is on the other side, i donā€™t knowā€¦ ā†©ļøŽ

  2. /lh /nay /nm ā†©ļøŽ

23 Likes
1032

Very well written!
speed

(To be honest, I was expecting this to be its own topic based on what you said, but it is a very definitive guide! It might be worth linking this somwhere)

10 Likes
1033

Super cool!

3 Likes
1034
Hi
  • Hello
  • Hi

0 voters

3 Likes
1035

wow that was a fast reply - did you see my test post in the discobot pm? :sweat_smile:

i thought about starting a new topic, but this gear bug is only temporary so i posted here. but iā€™m fine with a new topic too, if you think this tutorial is worthy! :D

thank you :))

5 Likes
1036

We canā€™t see PMs that we arenā€™t in ā€“ but I was ready for the notification because of your timestamp

I guess thatā€™s true, but thereā€™s some helpful tips that apply even after using the poll builder in the gear menu. Itā€™s possible that the poll builder button dropped support for older iOS safari versions, plus I think asking about polls is frequent enough for this to be FAQ (that is, if you add a section of how to create a poll with that menu too)

Discourse limits you to 20

Unless you do it the advanced way I think I have a post somewhere in the old text tricks topic where I have custom options in a number rating poll, but it uses a different structure (probably not worth adding to your post)

4 Likes
1037

okay, so if i add that section youā€™ll be able to move the post into a new topic? :smiley: iā€™ll go start writing rn and tag you when iā€™ll finish - tysm!

yes but i donā€™t think itā€™ll limit if you write it without the poll creator

lemme test

never mind :sweat_smile: the preview on computer view confused me and i assumed wrongly we can put more options lol

but whatā€™s true is that if you set a mega number of options and if you have the preview on discourse will freeze (at least for me)

5 Likes
1038

Iā€™ll check with the team, but I personally think it would be a helpful topic to have in FAQ if there isnā€™t one already

Edit: thereā€™s one here, but itā€™s nowhere as comprehensive

6 Likes
1039

i need to bookmark this
super in-depth and will be very helpful until the feature is fixed

i saw this:

did you mention that polls can only have up to 20 options?

3 Likes
1040

yea sorry, ae pointed out that we can only put at max 20 options - the preview on computer view confused me :sweat_smile: and thanks! :D

4 Likes
1041

ah, i missed that
yeah its weird that it waits until youre ready to reply to tell you your post is invalid, but i guess it kinda makes sense because thats how other things work (blocked words)

4 Likes