Mike's profile - activity

I think that's true. But it's not simply self expression. For example, what i'm really after is -- for example -- to see how many Sage users adopt Fedora 14 when it comes out :-)

I'm not sure what a flair pin is, but that sound right.

After the discussion in the previous "poll" question, I have realized that what I am really hoping for is a way to find out, roughly, what fraction of the user community uses a particular OS, tool, or something like that. For example who is an emacs user. Who is still running Fedora 3 :-) These things change over time. I may eventually upgrade to a new OS, and so on.

I think what would make this possible, and perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to implement, would be user defined and selected badges. So, if I think it would be good to know which editors people use, I could define the badges I think would be appropriate "uses vi", "uses emacs" or whatever. Then I post a "question" asking that people select one of these badges. Actually maybe I should post the question first, to see whether or not there is any support for this particular badge!

If the appropriate badge has not been create yet ("uses teco") then the person who needs it can create it. Whenever a person wants to, they can add or remove user defined badges on their profile. Then all that is necessary is to have a way to search for and/or count users who have the given badge.

Perhaps a user would have to have a certain number of points to create such a badge. Or perhaps a user could only suggest it and the administrator would have to make it happen, perhaps after gathering comments. I don't know.

-Mike

After reading the comments and thinking about it some more, I realize that a "poll" is not really what I'm looking for. But it is still probably a desirable feature. So as not to "mix up" what I'm suggesting with a true poll, I'm going to open a new question: User defined/selected badges.

I guess that's right. I mean, unless nobody chooses one, and it turns out not to be deemed a valid choice or something.

(2) For similar reasons, maybe a poll can continue to be edited. For example it originally allows for 3 choices, but based on peoples comments, it turns out that there are more choices. I realize what I'm describing is not *really* a notrmal "poll" but I don't know what to call it.

Couple of comments (1) Maybe a poll could be "permanent", for example: Who is using platform x,y,z (People change platforms over time). And "voters" could continue to change their vote (in this situation it's not really a "vote")

I'm not sure how a "workflow" in askbot is described. I suppose that a person should have some experience (points) before starting a poll. Now I just realized that askbot is not really meant for ongoing "discussions" so where is the place to have discussions about askbot design?

A number of times, on various forums and mailing lists, I've seen someone try to take a "poll" on a certain question. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But it's always seemed to me a bit awkward. Maybe this is not the type of thing that askbot is meant to address (after all, it's not called "pollbot") but then again, there's a user community available (and it does appear as more of a "community" due to the karma and related features) so I wonder if this might be a good feature to add.

What I had in mind is that one could create a poll (rather than a question) and it would hang around getting responses from whoever cared to respond. Specifically, I was thinking that the questions could be "multi-valued" rather than just yes or no. For example, on the Sage askbot, I would love to have a way to ask "how many people use the following operating systems" (and then give a list - which hopefully could be edited since I'll miss some the first time.)

People could respond -- and they could also change their responses later! Thus giving a lot more flexibility and "longevity" then trying to poll people over a mailing list.

Is the "search" facility only for use in questions? Or can it be used for other things? For example, in my "profile" I have set my location to Portland Oregon. Suppose that someone wanted to look for other users in Portland. Is there some way to search on this location field?