Subscribe to polls

[rosefox]

Title:
Subscribe to polls

Area:
Polling

Summary:
Allow people to subscribe to polls and receive notification of poll votes.

Description:
I'd like to be able to subscribe to poll votes the way I subscribe to entry comments. Currently, poll notification has very little data:

Hi rosefox,

[username] has replied to poll #xxxxxx ("This is a poll").

You can:

* View the poll's status
* Discuss the poll

In addition, you can only subscribe to your own polls. I would like to be able to subscribe to other people's polls and see much more information: which questions were answered and how, plus a snapshot of the poll as it currently stands. There could also be a separate option to subscribe to receiving a snapshot of the poll every 24 hours, for those who want updates but don't want to see every single vote in high-traffic polls.

The trickiest part would be making sure that subscribers only see information they would see if they looked at the poll page. For example, if the poll is set to "Detailed results only visible to poll owner", a subscriber should get a notification that says:

In [link]poll #xxxxxx[/link] ("This is a poll"), owned by rosefox, a vote was cast:

Have you ever committed a felony?
[X] Yes
[X] But I didn't mean it

whereas in a public poll, a subscriber should get a notification that says:

In [link]poll #xxxxxx[/link] ("This is a poll"), owned by rosefox, [username] voted:

Do you think Dreamwidth is awesome?
(X) Yes!

Likewise, people shouldn't be able to subscribe to answers on polls they aren't allowed to see. If someone is in the group of people who are allowed to see a poll and is then removed from that group, they should no longer receive notifications.

I suggest this mostly because I want to see the votes come in on my suggestion posts!

EDIT: Updated for clarity and more detail.

EDIT EDIT: inarticulate points out that being able to subscribe to specific votes on a poll would make it much easier to group together the answers from a single person even if you don't know who that person is. So maybe on "results only visible to owner" polls, there should only be the option for an update every 24 hours, and people who want more granularity than that will be stuck refreshing the page until the numbers change.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Or if the security is set to anything OTHER than 100% public (all can vote/all can see), add an "enable subscriptions for this poll" checkbox to the poll settings so the poll owner can opt in to subscribability.

Poll #3464 Subscribe to polls

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
18 (43.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (17.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (7.3%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (29.3%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.4%)

Comments

[denise]

Just noting that there is a poll vote notification ("Someone votes in a poll I posted"); I let this through because of the snapshot of poll results sectino of the suggestion.

[rosefox]

Can you subscribe to other people's polls, or just your own?

If I had that option enabled, would it show me votes in polls attached to entries I posted to dw_suggestions, even though I didn't create those polls (and indeed am unable to create polls due to having a free account)?

[rosefox]

Actually, never mind--since I can't create polls, the subscription option is disabled for me, so even though these are technically "my" polls (on entries with my name at the top that I can edit) I can't subscribe to them.

[denise]

Free accounts can create polls in paid communities here, and for that very reason! (To allow Suggestions to work, I mean.)

I don't think it shows the snapshot of poll results, but I'm pretty sure it does show the votes that were cast. (I've never used that notification myself.) You can only subscribe to your own polls.

[cesy]

I use it, and it just tells you they voted, not what their vote was, even if the poll had detailed results viewable.

[rosefox]

I can't actually subscribe to my own polls in paid communities, though, due to freeaccountness.

[denise]

Yeah, I should file a bug to fix that. *g*

[cesy]

You can already see the votes come in on your own suggestion posts, so long as you have a paid account. I hadn't realised that notification option didn't exist for free accounts. We should probably add it.

However, I like the idea of being able to subscribe to other people's polls, so long as you've got permission to view them.

[inarticulate]

I'm pretty wary of the "detailed results only viewable to poll owner" method of subscribing you suggest, because, as in your example, it shows a clear link between the answers by respondent-- which the respondents would not necessarily be expecting to share with anyone but the poll creator as the poll system is set up now. In that case, I'd say poll snapshots would be better unless there's a clear security/viewing reshuffle for polls and people are aware where their information is going.

[rosefox]

Maybe my example wasn't clear: "someone voted" is the same text every time, without a person's name attached to it.

EDIT: Updated to make the example clearer and change the anonymous vote text to "a vote was cast".

[inarticulate]

No, it was clear-- my point was that there is still a link that does not currently exist between a specific person (though anonymous) and all of their answers.

[rosefox]

Oh! I see what you're saying. So you know that one person has e.g. said they've made out with six of your friends, even if you don't know who that one person is. That's an excellent point. Thank you!

[inarticulate]

Yeah, that's why I'm not opposed to it if there's a security reshuffle-- i.e. a security group is created where that behavior is the norm, because people taking the poll will be aware, whereas adding this to the current security system I'm a bit more wary of.

But poll snapshots I would love in all forms, heh.

[rosefox]

Allowing the poll owner to disable subscriptions on a given poll might also help. Or to enable them, really, given the general policy of preferring opt-in over opt-out.

[pseudomonas]

Even with snapshots it'd be pretty easy to infer the answers.

[inarticulate]

I don't think that's necessarily true, from my experience following some larger polls with more sensitive information. 24 hours can mean a lot of people.

Or, ah, going back and checking, I think I misread that section a bit. Yeah, if you're receiving a poll snapshot for each vote, that would have the same effect. I was thinking of the timed snapshots when I said that, sorry.

[rosefox]

Once every 24 hours would presumably be somewhat confounding? Or maybe allow poll owners to disable the subscription option?

[pseudomonas]

For the first 24 hours, certainly. Thereafter, less so. I think, if implemented, "allowed to subscribe" should go with "allowed to see detailed results"

[coraa]

I would love it if the poll creator could subscribe and get both "X has answered the poll, and here's what they said," and a "Here's the poll's status" roundup emails every 24 hours or whatever, whereas non-creators could only get the latter.

[kyrielle]

This, plus the poll creator should have the ability to allow or not allow those roundup emails to non-creators, when they create the poll.

Tickyboxes!

[pauamma]

Have you ever committed a felony?
[X] Yes
[X] But I didn't mean it

If I don't have access to the detailed results for a poll, I may be unable to determine that a single user checked both boxes. So there might be a slight breach of privacy associated with this. But I think the edits might take care of that concern (perhaps together with a warning message similar to "poster is logging commenters' IP addresses").