How do I create a poll?

Only Paid and Premium Paid accounts can create polls in their journals and in any communities where they have posting access. Free accounts can vote in polls but can only create polls in paid communities. OpenID accounts can vote in polls but cannot create them.

You can create and post a poll using the Poll Creator. Dropdown menus walk you through the options of:

• where you place the poll: in your own journal or in one of the communities you administer or have posting access to;


• who can view the individual responses to the poll: everyone, only the journal or community's Access List, or just you;


• whether the poll answers will be anonymous: if you choose this, poll responses will appear only as numbered responses, not with usernames attached;


• who can vote in the poll: everyone, or only the journal or community's Access List;


• what you will name it (optional text box).

Next, you can choose from five types of question: Radio Buttons, Check Boxes, Drop-Down box, Text box, or Scale. You can mix question types in the same poll.

• Radio buttons: This question type produces a series of answers with clickable selectors. Only one answer can be selected.


• Check boxes: This question type produces a series of answers with clickable boxes. These questions can have multiple answers. You can set a minimum and maximum number of responses ("at least 2 but no more than 5 answers").


• Dropdown box: This question type produces a dropdown list. Only one answer can be selected.


• Text box: This allows users to type in their own freeform answers. You can specify how much room they have to type, between 1 and 255 characters long.


• Scale: This generates a series of numbers, evenly spaced, for users to pick from. You select the maximum and minimum, and the unit by which the answers will increase. ("On a scale of 1 to 10...") This option calculates some basic statistics about the result: mean, median, and standard deviation.

The poll creator will guide you through the creation of your poll, allow you to preview it, and let you either post it directly to your journal or community. You can also copy the poll code to paste into an entry by hand. If you do this, make sure you're using the HTML editor, not the rich text editor, or else your poll will not be properly posted.

Polls can only be added to entries when they are first posted. You can't create a poll by editing the entry later. Polls can't be edited once they're posted, although the entry they're contained in can be edited normally, as long as you don't remove the <poll-###> tag from the text of the entry.