BTW, here's my thoughts on Poll closures in general. I've already done two, and have a third one in the works. I've been thinking about "Poll issues."
The only people who can vote in the Poll are members. So this is the primamry determinant of Poll duration, i.e.: have the likely amount of members who would vote in a given Poll voted?
Now we are at the first week of this Board and we have 60+ members. Taking a pallpark guess, I'd say a fifth or sixth are maybe Alt IDs, and we can hope these aren't used in voting, but the point is you have to subtract that amount from the current member count to see your max possible electorate.
In this current period, let's say that's 50 members. Now in my Poll on nutty characters, I would guess no more than half or two-thirds of members at best would be interested in this less than mainstream topic.
So that's 30 to 37 members. Currenty my poll sits at 16 voters, which is close to half that range of possible voters.
This is Thursday, and my Poll has been running two or three days now. (God, how quick we forget!) The workweek generally seems a lower posting volume than the weekend, yet I'm halfway there with three days of higher volume likely to come.
Which means that reaching the high end of my likely electorate is going to occur by Monday at the latest, which logically suggests shutting it down on Tues or Wed.
This analysis seems a handy basic model. However, the current kicker is that this site first started during last weekend, and it seems there's still a fair amount of Legion posters that haven't got the word, but will probably, hopefully, find out this weekend. [I Suggest DCMB posters keep the news front and center on that Legion board this weekend.]
So I will let my Poll run during next week and watch the daily percentage of new votes. If it begin to trickle, I'll probably close it. O/W I'll let it run one more weekend.
All this analysis is a round about way of saying that once the membership levels off to a steady small rate of increase, I don't think Polls need to run past a week, two at the most, in order to give everybody a chance to vote. I think it's important not to go past this "time limit" because I predict Poll creation will become very popular on the Board once every discovers it ease.
At which point, the Polls are going to stack up on the first pages driving down much of the other topics. 90% of topics seem to be gone in two days.
Having a category of topic that keeps getting bumped for weeks or is often flagged by the mods to be at the top can create havoc.
Rather than create software limits on Poll duration or the amount created by a member, I think as long as it becomes to be understood by the membership that one week is all that most Polls will need to give everyboy a chance to vote, then most of the potential problems will be minimized.
Basically, long Polls are not necessary. After one weekend's availability of voting, if it trickles to one or two votes daily, shut it down, cause that indicates voting has sated and a consensus of opinion probably has been captured.
Lest I forget, after two polls, one a single question, and the other multiples, let me wholeheartedly express that I think the Polls are a fantastic fun capability for members and can be very useful in creating interest in Legion as well as enticing lurkers into membership in order to enjoy the voting experience!
But we need to be proactive with a group sensibility about the necessity of shorter duration Polls.
Just my 20 cents.