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ritstudentgovernment / petitions

PawPrints petition application for the RIT community.
https://pawprints.rit.edu
MIT License
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Change Policy to disallow double-barreled petitions #12

Closed aaronmaxlevy closed 8 years ago

aaronmaxlevy commented 10 years ago

A double-barreled question refers to a question, usually on a survey, that is really asking two separate questions. This can result in people who agree or disagree with only one of the options who end up making a choice that reflects only half of their opinion. This practice is considered bad form when writing surveys and should be disallowed from PawPrints. A current example of a double-barreled petition would be https://pawprints.rit.edu/petitions/iibsdvJcr7XGHM4Rn ("Re-Create SIS and MyCourses"). Personally, I agree about SIS but disagree about MyCourses, and so that puts me in a difficult position, and also compromises the integrity of the results of that petition, since many people might not agree/disagree with both of the requests of the petition. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barreled_question for more information on the negative implications of double-barreling.

petermikitsh commented 10 years ago

I'll elevate this concern next time PawPrints Committee has a meeting.

ghost commented 10 years ago

For what it's worth, this seems like a good idea, although the problem is to decide what to do when a petition like this is made.

petermikitsh commented 10 years ago

The analytics data suggests that most people doesn't read the petition process guidelines prior to posting a petition, so we would have to craft a creative way to communicate this information to users.

aaronmaxlevy commented 10 years ago

I would just recommend putting more effort into getting users to read the rules before making a petition. Choosing to not read the rules is not an excuse for violating them. If someone were to violate that restriction (going forward), their petition could be removed and they could be notified about the reason why, and told that they should submit separate petitions for their multiple requests.

petermikitsh commented 10 years ago

I'm completely open to ideas that will help inform our users of the site's rules :)