Poll system for Meta and possibly main site posts?

I think polls have a place where there isn’t much discussion to have on a topic, or where the poll is a part of a bigger discussion post and only asks about something clear and specific.

I get SE’s decision to not turn whole meta-discussions into polls via voting on answers containing a simple one-liner option, because that removes the discussion. Polls and discussions are different things used for different purposes, though. Polls can exist inside discussions and be a useful tool when applied appropriately.

It doesn’t have to be a whole post-type on par with “question” and “answer” system, but be an element of a post, like a code block but the one which you cannot edit once you’ve started the poll and there are already votes.

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No. Polls should be a last resort. The system should not encourage making polls.

If there’s a debate over an issue, it should be discussed first, to find what all the options are (and not just what the poll setter thought about), and to figure out if there’s a compromise that’s acceptable to everyone.

Polls should be exceptional and we should not expend development resources to support them. In addition we should we make them a natural thing.

SE meta sites already suffer from too many meta threads that should be discussions but are presented as polls (typically with the asker posting a “yes” answer, a “no” answer, and asking for votes). Let’s not encourage even more of that.

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