There are some ways to make polls more useful when designing them.



If I may make a suggestion, to elicit a genuine response, pollers could (and probably should) word poll questions neutrally, such as this :



How do you feel about Endless Space?



I feel it was worth it

I feel it was a waste of money



rather than this





Do you feel you wasted your money buying Endless Space?



Yes

No



The above question will generate a greater than average negative response.



Are you starting to get bored with Endless Space?



Getting bored and will scale back my time in the game.

Still not bored and still playing in the game at maximum time available.



This should be :



How do you feel about Endless Space presently?



I am as excited as I was when I bought it and am playing it as much as possible

I am excited and still playing hard

I am less excited than I was but I still play

I am bored and only occasionally play

I am bored out of my mind and am playing something else



If this is not done, then the poll ends up little more than push polling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll) which, while entertaining, it not very useful to the developers in assisting game development.



A similar, quite reasonable way to tackle this is this approach:



Endless Space is a waste of money



1. Strongly Disagree

2. Disagree

3. Unsure

4. Agree

5. Strongly Agree



A different scaling system that is useful for different questions are ones such as this :



1. Not at all

2. Rarely

3. Sometimes

4. Often

5. Always



The above can be tricky due to people different meanings of 'often', and can be further refined by adding specifics, but it at least allows a scale of responses. A better response is to be specific (e.g. ‘1-2 times, 3-5 etc..).



Feel free to contribute more tips, or things that annoy you about polls, or why you don't vote in some polls.