Introducing voting functionality

[Mark Gorton]

I am happy to introduce polling functionality to the JFK Assassination forum. Registered users of the forum will notice a "Start New Poll" button next to the "Start New Topic" button. By clicking on the "Start New Poll" button, users will start a new thread with the header topic being a poll. Two types of polls are offered: the first is a multiple choice poll, the second allows for a statement to be proposed and then users can vote how much they agree or disagree with the statement. After the header topic, users can then add a series of comments as in a normal forum discussion thread.

I have found the Education Forum to be a great resource for having discussions about the various topics relating to JFK's assassination; however, the discussion threads do not provide a mechanism for gaining consensus or clearly understanding what people think. It is my hope that the polling functionality can enhance these aspects of the forum.

I would like to thank John Simkin for being open to working with me to add functionality to the forum. In addition, I would like to thank Riley Lynch for his hard work developing this software. Riley has done a large amount of work just to add the very basic polling that you now can use. This software is still in its beta phase. We have already deployed it on the Watergate and Political Conspiracies section of the Education Forum, and so far it seems to be working well. However, it is quite possible that bugs will still be discovered. So if you have any issues with the polling functionality, please write a comment or send me a note, and Riley and I will do our best to fix whatever problems exists. We do know that there are browser compatibility issues with version 7 and older of Internet Explorer. If you are experiencing these issues, I suggest upgrading your browser.

The polling is the first software that we are deploying. Riley is now working on ranked lists. For example, ranked lists should allow us to have the community collectively put together a list of best books, videos, etc. on the JFK assassination. I hope that over time, we can continue to develop tools which can help the Education Forum community.

I invite you to launch polls.

Best Regards,

Mark

[Bernice Moore]

Thank you, Riley and Mark...for this new opportunity being supplied to the membership...b