The issue of people posting a poll, for no apparent reason, isn't new. However, the pattern I have noticed is that it generally tends to be people who do not use English as their first language. Or English-natives who are very impulsive. It is almost exclusively people new to the forum...
This lead me to look at the two buttons differently. "New Topic" versus "Post New Poll"
The button "Post New Poll" has two reasons people will click on it:
- There is an action associated it with, "Post."
- "Poll" may be mistranslated to mean "Question."
So really we have two, non-descript buttons that say:
"New Topic" and "Post a new 'question'"
Bytes are (relatively) cheap. It may make sense to change the buttons to be more descriptive, like:
"Post New Discussion Topic" or just "Post New Topic"
and
"Post New Voting Poll"
Or, my personal preference, change the wording of "New Topic" and drop polls all together.
Thoughts?