Back to one of my pet peeves.
News channels and their polls.
1.They never tell you how many people voted.
2.They only give you a choice of Yes or No.
And these two issues, combined, get on my nerves. And I would like to believe, get on the nerves of a lot of people.
For example, I surely want to know how many people think, say, a minister should resign. NOT a figure in per cent without an idea of the polling population, which might be only 10 viewers. Similarly, I would respect people who weren’t sure, not force them to say yes or no.
Today, providence gave me an opportunity to underline my point. As I was surfing, I came across a poll on a blog, powered by magikwidget. I went there, signed in and got the right to try out 25 widgets, absolutely FREE!
Here’s the first use I make of these widgets. A poll that will tell anyone how many people voted, and a poll that factors in people who have an opinion other than Yes and No
Since the traffic on my blog is not too hot, and since I post fairly regularly, I’ll cheat a bit with this one, and keep changing the date stamp so that the story stays on top for a few days.
News channels and their polls.
1.They never tell you how many people voted.
2.They only give you a choice of Yes or No.
And these two issues, combined, get on my nerves. And I would like to believe, get on the nerves of a lot of people.
For example, I surely want to know how many people think, say, a minister should resign. NOT a figure in per cent without an idea of the polling population, which might be only 10 viewers. Similarly, I would respect people who weren’t sure, not force them to say yes or no.
Today, providence gave me an opportunity to underline my point. As I was surfing, I came across a poll on a blog, powered by magikwidget. I went there, signed in and got the right to try out 25 widgets, absolutely FREE!
Here’s the first use I make of these widgets. A poll that will tell anyone how many people voted, and a poll that factors in people who have an opinion other than Yes and No
Since the traffic on my blog is not too hot, and since I post fairly regularly, I’ll cheat a bit with this one, and keep changing the date stamp so that the story stays on top for a few days.
Not allowed to vote? Magikwidget tells you why:
Chances are you have already voted in your poll. Security features built-in to MajikWidget polls will remember that your IP address has voted and will not allow you to vote more than once in a single poll. Therefore, it defaults to the poll results when it recognizes your visit as a previous voter.
This causes issues with some corporate environments where many different people have the same IP address. Our developers are working on ways to combine other methods with the IP address method to address this specific issue.
2 comments:
I voted "Don't Know/ Can't Say" with ref to the content of polls and the questions they ask.
But there is one aspect about which I do feel they are irrepsonsible. Something you enlightened me about, as a matter of fact. Which is how much a viewer pays for each SMS vote. And how much of that goes to the TV channel. Do put up a poll about that as well.
Do you know that you pay Rs 6 each time you vote in a TV channel's SMS poll?
• Yes
• No
• Who cares? I'm rich.
Bet you didn't know that the TV channel gets to keep 2/3rds of that sum. What do you think about them never telling you that?
• The B******s!
• Bloody Thieves
• Charlatans
p.s. I'm reasonably sure I misremember the exact sum and the percentage. But I think I'm close.
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