Hi

I voted "no"
because it will fill the forum with people who don’t really know the case at all, or very little, which result in a LOT of time consuming posts with misinformation,

I respect your honest answer, but aren’t you assuming that any future people who join the forum don’t know the first thing about the Zodiac case. The idea of joining a forum is not only to contribute, but also to learn about the case as they go along, from existing members. If this thought process was adopted from the inception of this forum, there would be very few members, maybe there should be an entrance exam. After how many forum members have joined do you adopt this policy. Three years ago I had never heard of the Zodiac, which means I would have been excluded. I know what your thinking, not a bad idea!
Saturday 11th April 2015: From this date forward new members wanting to join this forum are to be excluded, because they are not as clever as existing members.

Hi

I voted "no"

Not because the idea is bad, actually the idea in itself is great, however IMHO I don’t think this forum needs lot of more traffic/more members
because it will fill the forum with people who don’t really know the case at all, or very little, which result in a LOT of time consuming posts with misinformation, lots of questions about basic knowledge about the case that they in fact should find out for them selves by reading about the case, and IMHO that is really frustrating.

And now we are at it, I am SOOOOOOO frustrated that SOOOOOOO much great information on the old forum is STILL not avaible here on this "new" one. And the info moved from the old forum to this "new", they are in these mile long posts and I’m not even sure that they are searchable, or are they?

Sorry to be so negative but I had to get it of my chest

Foreigner does have some valid points. However, we were all ‘newbies’ to the case at one point. I think having a forum like this where people can learn the case, ask questions, etc, as opposed to being force fed false info via a Gary Stewart book for example, is better.

I say we try the poll thing for a bit, just to see how it works. While it may generate more traffic or members here,I don’t see a Thousand new people signing up here and flooding this place.

I also try and do a good job on Twitter advertising this site to people that are interested in True Crime, Unsolved Mysteries, and Cold Cases.so that we can get more like-minded people here.

I think polls have their places on certain forums and I can’t think of any reasons why having that function would be a bad thing. I also fail to see where it would add much of anything – especially to this case. It certainly won’t separate fact from theory which is far and away the Achilles heal in this case. So few real facts that stand alone amongst the overwhelming confusion of theory, wild goose chases and unsubstantiated opinion. (of which I am guilty of too)

I think polls have their places on certain forums and I can’t think of any reasons why having that function would be a bad thing. I also fail to see where it would add much of anything – especially to this case. It certainly won’t separate fact from theory which is far and away the Achilles heal in this case. So few real facts that stand alone amongst the overwhelming confusion of theory, wild goose chases and unsubstantiated opinion. (of which I am guilty of too)

I would pretty much be of the same opinion regarding polls. I think they are a ‘nice’ feature to have as a slight aside to a lot of the heavy research that comes with this case.

It has made me smile already though. The irony that we’re engaging in a poll as to whether or not, in part, to have polls.

Yeh, it was a good ruse eh. Shall we have a poll to decide whether to carry on with this poll.

I’m not opposed to the idea – and I do think spreading the word, generating interest, call it what you will, is basically a good thing.

I can certainly see where Theforeigner is coming from too, though – but like morf says, it’s not likely that any measure taken will lead to any sort of invasion. Those who are new to the case and eager to learn more are actually a valuable resource more than a nuisance, I think – adding new perspectives, perhaps stimulating old heads to come up with something fresh just by asking questions.

We’ve seen some very vocal and not very diplomatic new members lately – but that is an entirely different thing for my money. That sort will always be attracted to boards like this one – and they’re not in the “honest noob” category to begin with.

As for polls as such, I guess I’m a bit unsure about their value, given the nature of the board and the case. I’m not sure what it tells us that 57% of X members believe Z lived in Vallejo, for instance – most of the core questions of the case are disputed, often heavily so, we know this already.

But that is the actual value of polls as such – I’m not opposed at all to UKS’s idea; as a means to generate interest polls can clearly have a function.

The problem I see is limiting the choices to ten answers/ ten members. In that case, I forsee a lot of people voting for option 11, to disagree with all of the above, simply because their own opinion is not one of the above, even if they do agree with the other choices.

I think a better option would be to ask the first ten members to pick the questions, not the answers. Then go through an existing thread about that subject or that asked those questions and compile the "top" answers from there, based on the criteria of your choice.

Another idea that people do on a board I’m a member of is to ask a question and then give two answers. People have a limited time to choose which answer they agree with. Afterwards another person adds one more answer, and people again choose between the previous "winning" answer and the new one. So it goes on by elimination until the final "best" answer is chosen.

Just do it.. See what happens.