The entire point of the discussion channel is to discuss, you can’t join a discussion if you don’t reply. Sure, with a poll you can technically contribute, but a poll itself is not a discussion, you need to have more than a poll.
If you don’t want to reply, why are you in the discussion channel?
A poll is like the formal way or presenting your opinions on something. An opinion that matters and is representative of OP’s discussion. You can’t expect everyone who contributes to the poll to voice their opinions on the thread itself. If within the topic there are various opinions that are similar, should I be inclined to repeat it, because my stance is quite literally the same? Do I need to? It shouldn’t be expected of every guy to reply, in the same way, that every guy contributes to a poll.
Honestly, If you’re annoyed that polls are shit then just flag it. I’m talking about literally poll-only with 2 sentences. I don’t see why you need to remove from it discussion, since that takes away good quality ones.
I flooded this topic enough already. Poll-only should be banned, however that’s done.
And finally last edit:
Polls can reduce the amount of clutter. Let say you’re created a very controversial topic, it blows off, a lot of people have seen it. A poll can provide general options for people to choose. But without one, more people are willing to reply; you get a lot of crap replies. They shouldn’t be used entirely for discussion though.
Have to admit I was a bit curious what brought this thread on so I checked Development Discussion. Yep, I see it. “How long have you been developing?” with a poll that has a number of years on it.
Most of these threads really are just complete filler and don’t deserve to exist. Why does it matter how many years someone has developed? Why does the OP need to know that? Why is any of the data accumulated via polls in Development Discussion even relevant to anybody…? The world may never know…
I’m personally just confused why they’re even posted in the first place. I can’t imagine myself just making a thread titled “What’s your favourite coding language?” “Java, C++, Lua, etc”… like, who cares?
The problem is probably the snowball effect – as people keep posting these, others catch on and think it’s OK. DevForum turning into Twitter/Facebook has become a running problem lately with all the polls and social mediaficiation – people obsessing over stats, for example. All you can do is flag it, really, since minimodding is banned (though to be honest, I’m not sure what “minimodding” is classed as. Is kindly reminding someone that their post is completely irrelevant/unnecessary minimodding? Bit of a vague term.)
I mean it depends. If the post has actual content and a poll to encourage engagement and participation, I believe they’re fine. However, if someone asks a question and slaps a poll, then I don’t see the point of the topic.
I’ve seen a ton of topics with this, sometimes it’ll have actual content before the poll, most of the time they ask a question and slap a poll.
Thats not the point. The whole point of that section is to discuss about development, not vote on a poll about certain opinions. To start a discussion and if you want to contribute to it, you have to reply. If you make a poll, your just voting on a certain topic, not discussing the main concern itself. If you want personal opinions, ask it, not making a poll about it cause it doesn’t explain how it contributed to the topic.
What is DevForum? It is a place where developers can get resources. How do we get resources? It is through polls. They really make the discussion interesting, collecting information about different people’s opinion. Would you rather read a 300-400 word paragraph to see a answer that can easily be done through a poll? You decide. 
You can contribute through poll to. Why would people then choose their option in polls? Isn’t it known as contributing?
Whats the point of making a discussion topic in the first place when you’re not even discussing about development? Hence why the name is there. If there a poll, and yes, some polls are contributing, but most of them are vague like “How Old Were You When You Started Developing” or “How Many Years Have You Developed For”. The point is is that just a poll discussion makes it vague, and ruins the purpose of the channel.
If you ask me it is anti TOS phishing for children’s IRL ages and OP might not have meant it to be this way, but it is incredibly sinister and dangerous in the hands of the wrong viewer.
I actually flagged the thread when I realised it was a proxy for ascertaining irl ages.
I really don’t see how that’s phishing. Not everybody starts developing on Roblox at the age of ten lol. But yes, it should be flagged anyway for being spammy.
Personally I don’t care for polls as long as they’re not biased towards OP’s opinion and those have been popping out a lot lately.
If they bother you so much why not just ignore them?
Polls are for collecting data on what’s for what.
If you don’t like them, ignore them.
Not what discussion is for. See my earlier replies and the op.
You could say the same thing about any complaint with the forum (or anything for that fact). If we dismiss spam issues with ‘just ignore them’ the spam would be normalised and become worse.
Technically, you do start discussions to collect data (or information) from people. Dev Discussion is meant to collect and spread knowledge in general and maybe someone wants to know if people would be interested in a genre of games they don’t see on the front page or what method is more efficient when running a development team.
No we cannot. If you’re willing to ignore people actually breaking the rules just cus someone told you that you can ignore polls, then your priorities don’t lie in the right place.
Polling should encourage in-depth responses which aren’t just the typical yes and no format. If your question doesn’t do much more than yes/no then it isn’t really that useful. I like more in-depth discussion, then looking at data lol. Also it would be better if the OP of the poll to paste their answer while explaining it.
However, that still doesn’t mean polls should be allowed even if they’re more in-depth. Polls usually come from posts which OP doesn’t care much or really anyone else, if OP doesn’t care about it why does he/she post it lol. But if the poll is important for OP and isn’t offtopic and encourages good discussion then I think the post should be allowed.