[Theforum] an example voting/polling application

[rudy937]

let's take a quick tour through a popular polling/voting
system to see if there's anything we can learn

Yahoo! Polls
http://polls.yahoo.com/

notice that

 ~ you can cycle through the current polls (right sidebar)

 ~ you can vote without being logged in
    (this is, imho, an important feature evolt needs to
        have for certain polls)

 ~ you can view results so far without voting

poll categories are organized into a directory structure
under "supercategories" (virtual groupings of categories)


Yahoo! Polls > Sports Archives
http://polls.yahoo.com/public/oldarchives/sp

categories are listed linearly (look ma, no dropdown!)
with a count of the number of polls in each category

only one current poll shown


Yahoo! Polls > Sports Archives > NFL Football > Results
http://polls.yahoo.com/public/navigate/sp/2716682/0

poll summaries, with View links (this part is neat) which,
when clicked, replaces current poll in sidebar with selected poll

to see how this works, let's go a couple pages in and
pick the poll about the AFC East winner...

http://polls.yahoo.com/public/navigate/sp/2716682/20?viewPoll=2716682/p-sp-1
047&ord=3

the indianapolis dolts -- as if!!

notice how the View link is replaced by an arrow pointing to the sidebar



conclusions: here are some of the data elements needed
to support what we've seen so far --


 POLL
  iscurrent      y/n (or done by dates?)
  category       foreign key
  question/name  Who will win the AFC East in 2001?
  start date     Fri, 27 Jul 2001
  end date       Tue, 31 Jul 2001
  total votes    35642

 POLL OPTION
  question/name  Patriots
  votes          2563
  pct of total   7


i hope this was helpful

it's always nice to see somebody else's system in action
when designing your own


rudy