Writing poll questions

One of the little tasks that has fallen into my lap is writing the daily Web poll questions we do on our (awful) Web site.

It's been interesting to get a handle on what will attract a lot of responses – any kind of question involving our two SEC teams, or NASCAR – and what doesn't work as well. Which is pretty much anything else.

Anybody want to kick this topic around a little?

 

I'm laughing soooo hard at you, right now!

On the topic, I got nothing.

 

Simple yes or no questions are fairly boring. Even if those are the main answers, try to find a way to spice up yes or no with a second no possibility. Such as:

Will the Roger Clemens signing bring the Yankees a World Series title?
Yes
No, they were already going to win it
No, they still won't win

Something like that I've found to be a little more engaging in my various turns as web site poll writer.

 

Hey, it's a journalism topic.

On the news side, we used to have a bad habit of asking questions like "Are you going to the (fill-in-the-blank event) this weekend?" This would be some event where a lot of coverage was planned, and the poll respondents would overwhelmingly vote no.

The local TV station had a tough poll question last week: Are you afraid of tornadoes?

 

After Spring Football: How optimistic are you about X's upcoming football season

They'll win the conference
They'll have a winning record
Reaching .500 would be nice
When does midnight madness start?

 

This thread is worthless without a poll ...

 

Given the schools HH's paper covers, I'm guessing the best the fans can hope for is .500 records. But it ain't going to happen.

 

You are correct, sir. But that doesn't diminish the fan interest much ... if at all.

 

I really don't think that's such a bad question. Living in the heart of tornado alley, I'm not afraid of tornadoes. I don't want one to hit my house, but I know how to take precautions and I've had countless tornado warnings in my county and I haven't died from one yet.
It's just a part of life.
Are people in California scared of earthquakes? Are people on the east coast scared of hurricanes?
I think it's just something you get used to.

 

So you could put it out there to see how pie-eyed the optimists are.

 

'Round here, it's a bit like polling the bears to see if they poop in the woods.
I think the responses were about 90 percent "Yes."

 

So on Monday, in honor of the TSN blog entry about the BCS coaches, I asked which of the three D-I coaches in this state is the best. (One of them, at Southern Miss, isn't a BCS coach.)

We usually get 200 responses in a day for a good question.

I predicted we'd get 400 over two days for this one.

We closed it tonight with 800-plus.

And the Southern Miss coach had a majority of the vote.