Open ended questions. no voting.

Personally, I'd like it. I kind of worry when making a poll that I'm influencing what people think just by the options that I put down. Without those options, people would be less likely to be influenced by what I think and hopefully give a more honest opinion.

I'm not sure. Could It somewhat dilute the purpose of the website?

The question 'Is it normal?' is the main reason we're here, or at least it's the first motivation behind our visit. Once you start introducing open ended questions it might become like Yahoo Answers or similar.

Perhaps it could work. I'm just wary of it being used as some personal blog by people - ranting on about their personal lives forgetting the point of the site.

I actually like the constraints on each question and poll at the moment - I think it encourages people to consider what it is they're actually asking and why. But I can see how it might work alongside the existing options :)

Personally, I'd love that, though I guess that's what the "other" option is for on some polls. Then again, comments on a topic are already pretty open-ended and sometimes deviate from the original poll choices.

I like the idea. I often find myself rewording a question just to make it fit the guidlines and pass moderation. I would prefer it to be open ended as to avoid this.

Thanks for asking. :)

Yeah.

I think that it is a marvellous idea. For one poll I've created I would have liked it to be that way.

I think its a good idea because I see a lot of questions that cannot be anwsered with just a yes/no or a poll.

I like this idea. Sometimes I'd think of topics/questions that didn't really fall into voting or IIN. So open-ended questions would definitely make this site better.

That would be great! Very impressive.

It's a good idea. It would save people the trouble of having to make a poll with 2 options like "I will comment" or "I have no comment".

I'm certain it would be popular. It might even be too popular. If people started mainly using the open-ended option, this site would lose some of its uniqueness.

I often comment on the story without voting ..so for me and many like me it would not be a big difference..
but for all those who think its makes a difference then no problem.. better idea.. :)

People generally use the "classic" form to do this anyway even though technically it's not supposed to be used that way.

The community seems to accept these kinds of posts, so I think it would be a good idea to promote them with it's own kind of form. Left as is, it does to some extent discourage them. Someone may look at Option A and Option B, realize that such a post doesn't fit either form, and then simply decide not to post at all.

Obviously this is just a personal view, but I already use the classic style of question as open-ended. I virtually never vote and virtually never notice the percentage who voted something normal. For some reason the percentages (and the options to vote) don't appear prominent to me but obviously do to others because people do vote. Given that I use stories in the way you describe and that I enjoy them, I don't see why others wouldn't also feel the same.

While we're considering new question types, though, I noticed one IIN member who likes to ask multi-dimensional questions (i.e. they want you to answer yes or no and also whether you are male or female and, say, a virgin or not) so you end up with eight poll answers to cover all the options as opposed to the three questions separately. I also notice sometimes people creating two polls (one for males, one for females as in the recent shoe size poll). I wonder if there's any chance of multi-question polls where the results are for each combination of answer per question? Or is this too complicated to be worth it for a minority of polls its relevant for?

TheManagement actually made a post! :O

I think it's a good idea, and I would surely use something like that. There have been posts I've submitted that I think having the option to exclude voting options on them would have been nice. I think it would encourage thoughtful discussion too. :)

you should add it i have thought about this 3 months ago it looks like im not the only one who did.

I think this feature would be good for people who ask things like "How did you lose your virginity?" and "What is your morning routine?", to compare stories and such. I don't think its very necessary, though. These questions aren't asked often and what would happen to the voting process for these questions? Voting on questions is what sets this website apart from a message board and it seems to be what attracts and hooks new users. I think IIN has enough activity to be expanded in some way, but how I don't know. Perhaps a database of the users in which others can vote on the individual users' normality as a whole?