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123mop t1_ir1pl3h wrote

Not sure what purpose this is trying to fulfill. It's not really gathering any useful data, since the responses are just whoever is sent the website and decides to respond. It's essentially a useless survey group as it doesn't represent anything meaningful.

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Calculonx t1_ir36bwy wrote

Not supposed to be scientific (I think), I see it more like Wii everybody votes channel where you can just vote for fun and see what other people think.

Maybe would be interesting if users had basic demographics linked to their votes to see how it skews.

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bowelcrusher OP t1_ir3epwo wrote

I did add some voluntary demographics :) Every design choice ends up being a tradeoff between getting useful info and asking for too much personal info

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reddituser4202 t1_ir3nvhm wrote

It’s a cool website honestly, I enjoy the concept a lot. Obviously I’m forced to view the results through the lens of “this is what people on reddit think” but it was cool to see a bit of variation regardless. I think you could take it to the next level by importing a much larger dataset of responses to similar questions and using that as a baseline. Then, the user can answer the questions and look at the demographics to see how they compare, but without actually incorporating their response unless it is desired. If they want their response recorded, just overlay that onto the baseline (which would let you keep the data separate if you also wanted to include a feature that compares responses directly from the website to those of more traditional polling methods). This way you don’t have to collect personal information for somebody to view the results, but they have the option to willfully hand it over.

But of course, that would be a giant time commitment to implement. Visualizing demographics is a very important concept though

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bajo2292 t1_ir4k9gl wrote

I''d go just by 3 basic clicks / drop downs.... gender, age, state / country.

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bowelcrusher OP t1_ir7zu3c wrote

Thanks for the suggestion. State/country adds a big chunk of complexity to the code!

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bajo2292 t1_ir8w0ah wrote

I mean if you go for education as well, more power to you :)

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ClimbinDdRT t1_ir2qxra wrote

Hi. Could you explain this to me please? Like, if it’s a random person survey and assuming the randoms are telling the truth about how they feel, why wouldn’t it be useful somehow?

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DoesHeSmellikeaBitch t1_ir2rn0f wrote

I believe the concern is that the sample of respondents is not random, and indeed, not really representative of any particular population. Thus, the data reflects the bias not of the population of that specific area alone but also the channels via which this program is disseminated.

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DetBabyLegs t1_ir34uhb wrote

Also self reported data is often flawed in and of itself

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ClimbinDdRT t1_ir2ry8r wrote

Oh for sure. I get that. My own bias showed even though I tried not to.

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fart-o-clock t1_ir3kkvl wrote

> My own bias showed even though I tried not to

Maybe so, but that’s not the entirety of the issue here.

The other main problems are sampling bias (ie, the survey is sent to folks who are not representative of the broader population), and non-response bias (ie, the types of people who elect to respond to such a survey are not representative of the broader population).

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thedeadliestmau5 t1_ir2soku wrote

Bots, Brigading, Poorly structured questions, Typical public survey manipulations Also the slide to vote if not done correctly could present false positives for selecting your vote

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bowelcrusher OP t1_ir34go1 wrote

Thanks for the list - I tried to make it trickier for bots by using invisible captcha. I couldn't find any real solutions for the rest

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Midget_Stories t1_ir36pyt wrote

At this point it's a survey of reddit opinions. Everyone knows reddit opinions aren't representative of normal people.

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123mop t1_ir49lqf wrote

The key is that it's not random at all. Sort of like if you posted a survey on your facebook page, or asked college students at a sports game. There are several layers of bias, and the end result is that you don't really learn anything.

In the first case, you learn what 'your friends' 'who use facebook' and 'who will open the survey and fill it out' think. That's at least 3 layers of selection bias.

In the second case you learn what 'college students' 'at that university' 'who would go to a sports game' and also 'be willing to respond to the survey' think. Also at least 3 layers of selection bias.

If you asked "are sports entertaining?" In your survey, it's pretty obvious the group at the sporting event would have substantial deviation compared to the general population. But those kinds of group deviations can be more subtle or less blatantly predictable as well.

In this case, if this is the only place he's posted this, the survey group is going to be primarily 'redditors' 'with r/internetisbeautiful as a sub' 'who found this interesting enough to click it and fill it out' and so on down the line with a variety of other layers of selection bias. Even if the only flayer of selection was 'redditors' you would find a tremendous deviation from the general population in a wide variety of things.

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Terkala t1_ir35zmh wrote

Sites like this get shared among super liberal places like reddit. But can you imagine grandmothers on Facebook using it? No.

So you get skewed distributions of things. It only represents those people that take the survey, and by the nature of the site those people will all strongly think the same.

Also the questions aren't useful. Should abortion be legal? Simply a yes/no doesn't give any meaningful information. The debate is basically down to 'if it should be legal, when should it be legal'. The current left wing stance is that it should be legal up to 1second before labor happens. The right wing stance is 'sometimes legal, often before heartbeat'.

But according to that poll site everyone supports abortion.

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DastardlyBoosh t1_ir38pst wrote

>The debate is basically down to 'if it should be legal, when should it be legal'. The current left wing stance is that it should be legal up to 1second before labor happens. The right wing stance is 'sometimes legal, often before heartbeat'.

Lol what absolute horseshit of a take, nonsequitur to boot. 🤡🤡

Edit : surprise surprise they're also a bigot

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Terkala t1_ir3lk0j wrote

That's... the actual legislation the Democrats tried to pass (H.R. 8296), compared to the actual legislation as passed in 80% of the American Midwest states.

If that wasn't the party stance, why would they write and vote for a bill that contains it?

Edit: As you've blocked me, and I see a automod deleted comment beneath this one, I don't think anyone saw your response. But I assume you're pivoting to personal attacks rather than discussing the facts, because the facts are not on your side.

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bowelcrusher OP t1_ir347hd wrote

That's a good point. I'm hoping that this website (or something like it) can become a useful tool for democracy - very quickly giving local governments a rough idea of what the people want

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Invix t1_ir36psq wrote

It won't be. There's no way to do that accurately without some way to prove who the voter is. The voting will just be manipulated.

This site is about as useful as a buzzfeed poll.

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bowelcrusher OP t1_ir80aqn wrote

I covered my butt saying "or something like it". If some random guy like me can whip up a site like this in 6 weeks' worth of spare time here and there, it should be easy for governments to put something useful together and advertise it better than me

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AndrewZabar t1_ir3qlba wrote

It tells us no valuable information. Also it’s only about the same bullshit political “issues” which should not even be issues. These have mostly been addressed and dealt with in most democratic developed countries, but of course America is still fucking arguing about these things so they don’t pay any attention to the fact that the government, our laws and policies have all been bought and owned by the richest. And also that 99.99% of our entire wealth is in the pockets of like 11 people.

Yeah let’s argue about abortion and guns some more.

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bowelcrusher OP t1_ir80qsi wrote

I'm over in Australia but I can't believe what I'm seeing coming out of US. This website was heavily inspired by the Roe v Wade decision - I want to see how many people are actually happy with that outlandish outcome.

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AndrewZabar t1_ir8992o wrote

Very very very few.

The media pumps up quite a lot the idea that the extreme right is supported by a significant portion of our citizens, when it’s really just the ultra rich and the evangelicals trying to do anything to oppress. And people think it’s more than that because they think that lots of people support it. Truth is very very very few do. But the people in power are on a mission to turn us back hundreds of years and have the royalty and peasants kind of society.

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