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I suggest an extra qa for polls under the roof of stackexchange.

As people are sensitive when it comes to polls here, questions like "Which software programmes can I use for getting started with ...", "Can you list the items you need to accomplish " or the all-time favourite "what do you think of ..." will go there.

A QA for polls and non-specific questions.

See here: https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9464/polls-and-non-specific-questions

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    Why? There are so many other places on the internet for polls, why not keep this one only for Q&As?
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:31
  • New site requests should go to area51.stackexchange.com. And I have a hunch the outcome will be "nope".
    – Bart
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:32
  • You meant "sensitive", not "sensible", I think.
    – Daniel Fischer
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:33
  • @Bart See discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9464/…
    – Zurechtweiser
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:34
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    Polls are off-topic on Stack Overflow for reasons of quality. The idea is that polls tend to attract garbage content in the long term. Just starting a separate SE site for them doesn't solve that fundamental problem. As long as nobody figures out how to do polls well and meaningfully, there shouldn't be a site for them.
    – Pekka
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:34
  • What I like about stackoverflow is that you get quick quality replies from a huge variety of people. Name one platform you can reach the same huge amount of people at. If you need to have a strict "this is not appropriate" filter at so then you need to offer alternatives or people will come back with their broad questions.
    – Zurechtweiser
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:37
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    No. Stack Overflow needs to do what it does best. There is no obligation whatsoever to cater for anything else.
    – Bart
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:41
  • Absolutely not. I wish I could downvote this suggestion more than once.
    – user164207
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:57
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    @Zurechtweiser - "If you need to have a strict 'this is not appropriate' filter at so then you need to offer alternatives" No. No, we do not. The Stack Exchange network of sites is a proper subset of all the sites on the internet.
    – user164207
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 19:58
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    @DanielFischer No, he meant "sensible", he just didn't know it.
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 20:00
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    "What I like about stackoverflow is that you get quick quality replies from a huge variety of people." Explains why that would be good for you (in the short term), but not why it would be good for the site (it wouldn't, we tried it and now we know).
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 20:01
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    Really? Off-topic? You can disagree with the request (I do, largely for the reasons already stated here), but how exactly is this off-topic for meta?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 1:56
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    @AnnaLear I was one of the off-topic voters. Given that this is not a discussion, but a "feature-request", which is in actual fact really a request for a new site, wouldn't Area 51 be the place? Is Meta really on-topic for this? Because that explains my vote and not some misplaced disagreement.
    – Bart
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 6:08
  • @Bart I think opinions differ a bit on that. I'm usually in the "questions about starting new sites are on-topic here" camp. That said, marking as a duplicate of meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/… seems to make more sense than either closing as off-topic or migrating to Area51.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 15:26
  • @AnnaLear Fair enough. And the dupe is a nice solution indeed. I just wanted to indicate that it's not an "I disagree with this" vote, which is what sparked this gem.
    – Bart
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 15:29

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While I think there should be a little more slack on recommendation questions, the Stack Exchange engine isn't really designed well for polls.

Polls that start with a list and get voted on are useful as a determinant of meta information, but on Stack Exchange, you start with no answers and have them added, so the first answers get the majority of votes and you get a skewed perspective. If you're going to build a poll that way you really need to have no voting until the list is built, but the SE engine isn't built for that.

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