Add native support for polls

[kolgza]

Pitch

Add an option when creating a post to add a poll. In my opinion, it should have similar functionality to that of SimpleVote, where registered user would be able to vote (from 0 to 20), add candidates to existing elections, and change their score.

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[Nutomic]

I think https://lemmy.ml/c/polls shows that this isnt really necessary as a separate feature.

[dullbananas]

Polls can provide better results if responding is easy because it leads to more responses and reduces the problem of some groups of people caring more about responding to the poll.

When using comments as poll options, responding is hard because you have to go to the comments, wait for the comments page to load, and wait for the upvote to be done before you can return to the posts page.

[BrenoMartinsDeOliveiraVasconcelos]

Polls needs to exist on Lemmy

[Darin755]

Honestly it would be nice to be able to quickly get option from a community. Polls should be easy to setup and should be able to be restricted to a single Lemmy instance.

I know you could use comments but comments have there own issues

[A-Salata]

I think https://lemmy.ml/c/polls shows that this isnt really necessary as a separate feature.

I think existence of c/polls shows there is a need for polling feature and a userbase that would greatly benefit from it.

[snowe2010]

I am working on a polling solution.

Edit: Polling is a huge feature, but it is coming along nicely.

Edit 2: I've got most of the code for creating polls done, I'm working on the UI now. Then I need to work on the actual voting.

[snowe2010]

@8ullyMaguire that's a survey, not a poll, but ignoring that, what exactly are you asking for? For post moderators to be able to modify people's comments?

[Darin755]

This might sound silly but why don't we just add a form style post that has radio buttons. It could be slowly introduced in order to allow for greater compatibility

[snowe2010]

@Darin755 that is what I'm working on.

[AppleSheeple]

Edit: See comment below.

Preferably, there should be no default between single-choice and multi-choice. At the code (and API) level, it should be an enum, not a flag. And at the UI level, there should be two submit buttons to force the user to choose.

[AppleSheeple]

Also, in multiple-choice pulls, min..=max choices allowed should be defined, defaulting to 0..=poll_choices with no defaults, and with the no-choice vote option indicated in the UI for users at submission.

Actually, single-choice can be implemented with 1..=1, which would cancel the (enum) suggestion in my previous comment.

Also, and this is probably needless to say given Lemmy's architecture, current poll results should always be shown to everyone, for voters and non-voters alike. Nothing stupider than other platforms forcing users to vote before they can see the results, with some even introducing a "null vote" to do it. A "null vote" may semantically clash anyway (at least when it comes to users' intuition) with a no-choice vote.

[snowe2010]

Nothing stupider than other platforms forcing users to vote before they can see the results, with some even introducing a "null vote" to do it. A "null vote" may semantically clash anyway (at least when it comes to users' intuition) with a no-choice vote.

agreed. I've already implemented that. incredibly idiotic to require a vote.

[Jaoheah]

Nothing stupider than other platforms forcing users to vote before they can see the results, with some even introducing a "null vote" to do it. A "null vote" may semantically clash anyway (at least when it comes to users' intuition) with a no-choice vote.

agreed. I've already implemented that. incredibly idiotic to require a vote.

Is there a public repo where you are working on the polling feature?

[snowe2010]

@Jaoheah sorry for the delay. I have not pushed to the https://github.com/programming-dot-dev repo yet, but will try to soon.

[Jaoheah]

@Jaoheah sorry for the delay. I have not pushed to the https://github.com/programming-dot-dev repo yet, but will try to soon.

Thanks for your reply. Just reply to this when you have finished the push. Or maybe @Jaoheah me in the commit comment if that would work at pinging me.

(Sorry for the repost. It was showing twice on the mobile github app, and I thought it glitched and posted twice, so I deleted it)

[dullbananas]

Should it be possible to have expiring polls (prevent users from voting after a chosen amount of time) just like R*ddit?

[Jaoheah]

Should it be possible to have expiring polls (prevent users from voting after a chosen amount of time) just like R*ddit?

That should be an option.

[sallyFoster]

@dullbananas Yes that would be great!

@dessalines We were hoping that you were going to add polls on the latest release 😭

[dullbananas]

@snowe2010 Are you still working on this?

[DraconicNEO]

Would be good to make it so if implemented it would be interoperable with Mastodon's polling function, that way if a mastodon user creates a Poll post to a Lemmy community it would just work.

[Nutomic]

Mastodon federates polls in a quite weird way:

"votersCount": 4,
"oneOf":[
    {
        "type":"Note",
        "name":"Adventure",
        "replies":{
            "type":"Collection",
            "totalItems":3
        }
    },
    {
        "type":"Note",
        "name":"Relaxing",
        "replies":{
            "type":"Collection",
            "totalItems":1
        }

So for some reason each vote option is a Note, and the number of votes is represented by an empty collection.

[sallyFoster]

@Nutomic Does that make it impossible to integrate with Lemmy?

[Nutomic]

Its definitely possible, just a bit odd how Mastodon decided to federate it.

[DraconicNEO]

Its definitely possible, just a bit odd how Mastodon decided to federate it.

Do other platforms besides Mastodon do it differently? Just curious since polls from Sharkey, Iceshrimp, Misskey, etc. do also seem to work in Mastodon and vice versa. If they do it better we might be able to do it that way and then it would be easier.

[Nutomic]

If its compatible with Mastodon then it probably federates in the same way. I coudnt find a poll from these platforms but you can check yourself with curl -H "Accept: application/activity+json" https://oslo.town/@matt/112240525284122641 | jq (replace with url from Sharkey etc)

[DraconicNEO]

If its compatible with Mastodon then it probably federates in the same way. I coudnt find a poll from these platforms but you can check yourself with curl -H "Accept: application/activity+json" https://oslo.town/@matt/112240525284122641 | jq (replace with url from Sharkey etc)

I got:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "https://w3id.org/security/v1",
    {
      "Key": "sec:Key",
      "manuallyApprovesFollowers": "as:manuallyApprovesFollowers",
      "sensitive": "as:sensitive",
      "Hashtag": "as:Hashtag",
      "quoteUrl": "as:quoteUrl",
      "fedibird": "http://fedibird.com/ns#",
      "quoteUri": "fedibird:quoteUri",
      "toot": "http://joinmastodon.org/ns#",
      "Emoji": "toot:Emoji",
      "featured": "toot:featured",
      "discoverable": "toot:discoverable",
      "schema": "http://schema.org#",
      "PropertyValue": "schema:PropertyValue",
      "value": "schema:value",
      "misskey": "https://misskey-hub.net/ns#",
      "_misskey_content": "misskey:_misskey_content",
      "_misskey_quote": "misskey:_misskey_quote",
      "_misskey_reaction": "misskey:_misskey_reaction",
      "_misskey_votes": "misskey:_misskey_votes",
      "_misskey_summary": "misskey:_misskey_summary",
      "isCat": "misskey:isCat",
      "firefish": "https://joinfirefish.org/ns#",
      "speakAsCat": "firefish:speakAsCat",
      "sharkey": "https://joinsharkey.org/ns#",
      "backgroundUrl": "sharkey:backgroundUrl",
      "listenbrainz": "sharkey:listenbrainz",
      "vcard": "http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#"
    }
  ],
  "id": "https://fedi.catboy.agency/notes/9rxyaitdtnfn01v1",
  "type": "Question",
  "attributedTo": "https://fedi.catboy.agency/users/9nzdge4pn34t5k21",
  "content": "<p>UwU</p>",
  "published": "2024-04-10T22:33:01.633Z",
  "to": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  ],
  "cc": [
    "https://fedi.catboy.agency/users/9nzdge4pn34t5k21/followers"
  ],
  "inReplyTo": null,
  "attachment": [],
  "sensitive": false,
  "tag": [],
  "endTime": null,
  "oneOf": [
    {
      "type": "Note",
      "name": "Yes",
      "replies": {
        "type": "Collection",
        "totalItems": 0
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "Note",
      "name": "No",
      "replies": {
        "type": "Collection",
        "totalItems": 0
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "Note",
      "name": ">w<",
      "replies": {
        "type": "Collection",
        "totalItems": 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

So it seems very similar, which I guess makes sense like you said since it's compatible with Mastodon votes.

[sallyFoster]

Cool, so do you guys think that this feature could be added on this year?

[DraconicNEO]

Cool, so do you guys think that this feature could be added on this year?

I hope so, though it is a bit complex so it's likely other more important features will take priority before it.

[dessalines]

Yep we're pretty busy, but PRs would be very welcome here.

[SleeplessOne1917]

Depending on how big this change is, it could be worth opening an RFC for this.

[iByteABit256]

Is this still being worked on?

[sallyFoster]

@iByteABit256 Doesnt seem like it.

[SleeplessOne1917]

We have a goal for this for NLnet this year, but no one has started on it yet.

[dullbananas]

Options should be able to have markdown, including images

[DraconicNEO]

Options should be able to have markdown, including images

Would that still be compatible with Mastodon's implementation? Would probably be a good idea to retain that because many people use Lemmy through mastodon, so having them be able to read and respond to the polls here is important, just as much as us being able to respond to theirs if they post into Lemmy communities.

[AppleSheeple]

so having them be able to read and respond to the polls here is important

One should consider the possibility that locking the Mastodon crowd out of polls can be a feature, not a bug. But I wouldn't expect many to agree with me on this.

Now that I think about it, one way to control the risk/effects of potential Mastodon brigades, is to show instance level info about votes in client API/UI.

The same would go for upvotes/downvotes actually.

This info can be made available only for instances with >3 votes to avoid leaking info about personal instances which may tie to a single user.

[codenyte]

Options should be able to have markdown, including images

Would that still be compatible with Mastodon's implementation? Would probably be a good idea to retain that because many people use Lemmy through mastodon, so having them be able to read and respond to the polls here is important, just as much as us being able to respond to theirs if they post into Lemmy communities.

I think it should work similarly to Mastodon glitch-soc's formatting feature:

Unlike Mastodon, glitch-soc supports some formatting in toots.

Formatted toots are displayed as such in the glitch flavor but can be degraded in the vanilla flavor and some mobile apps.

Please be aware that most of the toot formatting will be stripped by mainline Mastodon, which may lead to the meaning of your toots being altered.

https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/features/rich-text/

Formatting could be displayed in Lemmy, Mastodon glitch-soc and other ActivityPub software that supports it, and simply stripped out for Mastodon and services that don't support it.

[DraconicNEO]

Options should be able to have markdown, including images

Would that still be compatible with Mastodon's implementation? Would probably be a good idea to retain that because many people use Lemmy through mastodon, so having them be able to read and respond to the polls here is important, just as much as us being able to respond to theirs if they post into Lemmy communities.

I think it should work similarly to Mastodon glitch-soc's formatting feature:

Unlike Mastodon, glitch-soc supports some formatting in toots. Formatted toots are displayed as such in the glitch flavor but can be degraded in the vanilla flavor and some mobile apps. Please be aware that most of the toot formatting will be stripped by mainline Mastodon, which may lead to the meaning of your toots being altered.

https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/features/rich-text/

Formatting could be displayed in Lemmy, Mastodon glitch-soc and other ActivityPub software that supports it, and simply stripped out for Mastodon and services that don't support it.

That's good to know, so it could be added while still retaining compatibility and the incompatible clients would just remove the bits that don't work for them.