Wikipedia:Current surveys

Below are polls currently being held across Wikipedia on various talk pages.

Add new polls under the proper subheading, with its starting date (and, if appropriate, closing date) and a description. When (if?) the poll closes, move the link to the appropriate section.

Use of Polls in Wikipedia

The purpose of this page is to inform the community of polls that are currently being held on various talk pages.

Polls may be used as part of dispute resolution, or to solicit community opinion before making significant changes. They can be useful in developing consensus when regular discussion isn't clarifying the opinions of a group.

While some polls may involve voting for different options, polls are not the same thing as elections. For information on elections related to Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Elections.

• Wikipedia:Polling guidelines - ideas on poll design

Interpreting Polls

The results of a poll are not necessarily binding, and may be subject to interpretation. A simple majority is generally not enough to indicate a consensus. Usually this requires at least a 75% supermajority or greater. If this level of agreement cannot be reached, or the poll was so poorly constructed that people cannot agree on its results, then reconsider the dispute and try to develop polling options that may garner such a supermajority of support.

Successful polls generate consensus, because some people who disagree will nevertheless agree to give way to the majority opinion.

Current polls

Most recent at top of each section

Policies and requirements

• Wikipedia:Sysop Accountability Policy - Should sysops be required to follow the rules? (Yes:7 / No:8 / This vote is nonsense:19)
• Wikipedia:Dealing with trolls - Is it acceptable for sysops to ban obvious trolls? Moved from Wikipedia:Quickpolls start: 3 Jul 2004
• Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Unblocking poll - Should sockpuppets of banned users and persistent vandals be unblocked once there is no longer an IP block in effect and the vandalism spree is over? start: 24 May 2004
• Talk:Georgia#Poll - Should the Georgia page be the disambiguation page? start: 6 May 2004 UTC
• Wikipedia talk:Quickpolls - 30-day review to see if we should continue using the quickpolls process. start: 20 Apr 2004 –
• Arbitration policy ratification vote. ? start: 2 Apr, 2004 – policy live 9 Apr, 2004, 14:44 (UTC), but still open for further votes
• Wikipedia:Three strikes you're out policy - Should trolls and vandals be blocked with the agreement of three sysops, and only unblocked with the agreement of three as well? start: 8 Apr 2004 –
• Talk:Java programming language - is March 28 version better than the current one? start: 6 Apr 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Duplicate articles - Should we have a box for related pages? start: 1 Apr, 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Quickpolls - vote on polling to quickly deal with "problem" users. start: 14 Mar 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version/Policy vote: Protect or slow down editing: Two votes: 1) Banning one (or more) users from the page during 24 hours; and 2) Slowing down the edition process of a page from one specific (or more) user during 24 hours start: 11 Mar 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version/Policy vote: 24 hour bans for revert wars: proposed policy to give sysops the power to ban any user for 24 hours if the engage in revert wars. start: 10 Mar 2004 –
• Mailing list discussions -- can we find a better place to have meta-discussions? start: 2 Mar 2004 –
• Wikipedia:Disambiguation/Sep11: Should 9/11 victims be listed on disambiguation pages? start: 24 Feb 2004 –
• Sysop Protection Pledge Poll- Should sysops refrain from using protection or blocking against even notoriously, obstinately antisocial and uncompromising users on any page that sysop has ever edited or on any page, the wording of which that sysop is fond? Take the poll or add your thoughts on where to draw the line. start: 6 Feb 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk: How to revert a page to an earlier version/Poll: Revert wars considered harmful - Do you support the three revert rule? start: February 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance - Should lack of fame or importance be a legitimate reason to delete an article? start: January 2003 –

Software and features

• Sidebar behavior poll - The sidebar is currently enabled by default. This poll addresses the default behavior. start: 25 Mar 2004 -
• General direction: what should developers be working on?

Conventions and formatting

• MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css - Several polls regarding changes to the default stylesheet. Would possibly override or enable the next poll below. start: 3 Jun 2004 -
• Wikipedia talk:Serif or sans-serif - Should Wikipedia be in serifed font or sans-serif font?
• Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Vote for the list of links proposal - started April 19.
• Talk:Main page - "Did you know" at top or "In the news" at top? start: 7 Apr 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#Merge proposal - Whether to merge Wikipedia:Community Portal and Wikipedia:Goings-on. start: 30 Mar 2004 -
• MediaWiki talk:Communitypage#Backlink poll - Whether to continue using backlinks on pages in the Wikipedia namespace, and if so, in what format. start: 30 Mar 2004 -
• Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Voting on the experiment - Formatting of Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. start: 30 Mar 2004 -
• MediaWiki talk:Stub - changing the look of the stub message. start: 18 Mar 2004 –
• Talk:John Edwards#Straw Poll on Wikifying Parents should the names of John Edwards' parents be wikified. start: 16 Mar 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Bullets versus indentation, quick poll - quick poll on whether to use bullets or indentation for formatting comments. start: 8 Mar 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Japanese) - mainly regarding the order of the surname and the first name. start: 27 Feb 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions: spaces - Should there be spaces between initials in a person's name? (e.g., W.E.B. Du Bois vs. W. E. B. Du Bois) start: 16 Feb 2004 –
• Wikipedia:Language order poll - to find consensus for language lists. start: 6 Feb 2004 –
• Talk: Zürich: How should the name be spelled? start: 2 Feb 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Article series – ongoing discussion of existence, various formatting issues, etc. start: early 2004 –

Article content and structure, and WikiProjects

• Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Poll: should the Featured article candidates and Featured articles pages be renamed?
• Talk:Winter_War: Should the Winter War and Continuation War be considered theatres of World War II? Ends June 28th.
• Category talk:Computer and video games: Should "video games" be used as the umbrella term for "computer and video games"? Ends 2 July.
• Talk:Zionism#Poll: A poll over whether or not the article is pro-Zionist and if a dispute notice should be addded. The article is currently protected. Poll started on 13 June and will end on 20 June.
• Template talk:Europe#Poll: Which items should be listed? opened by Cantus 30 May 2004 and will END SOON.
• Talk:Augusto Pinochet#Another poll - poll to determine if the assertion of U.S.-backing in a disputed version of the intro is 'controversial' and 'misleading'.
• Talk:Schnorrer - poll to determine article content because of an endless edit war between Cantus and Wik
• Talk:Nick Berg/archive 2#Inline image poll moved from Talk:Nick Berg#Inline image poll - poll to determine offensiveness of image of severed head
• Talk:New York, New York - What should the title of the article be? Started May 1, ends May 8
• Talk:Erika Steinbach - vote on wether to keep certain version of paragraph or continue struggle to write something acceptable for User:Nico. 81.27.192.19 18:52, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)~
• Which version of New Imperialism gets posted, the 14 Mar 2004 version or the 28 Mar 2004 one? Also, should the two active antagonists in the 16 months of edit wars be permanently banned from editing this article. See Talk:New Imperialism#New Imperialism final settlement for details. start: 2 Apr 2004
• Talk:Kobe Bryant's accuser - should we publish the name of the woman accusing Bryant of rape? start: 29 Mar 2004
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools - What makes a school worth inclusion in WP? start: 5 Mar 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japanese districts and municipalites - is [[{city}}, {prefecture}]] odd? start: 5 Mar 2004 –
• Talk:Atlantium#Poll - Is "pretends" POV or NPOV? start: 7 Mar 2004 –
• Talk:Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004#Vote - on whether to include Israeli and Palestinian deaths in the same or separate lists. start: 8 Feb 2004 –

Old polls

• Wikipedia_talk:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense: What should the title of the next BJAODN subpage be? Ended 01:42 June 30 2004 UTC with creation of Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense: The next generation
• Talk:1729 (anecdote) - (inactive, since april 1) how should the article about the Hardy-Ramanujan number, 1729 and the interesting number paradox be split? start: 20 Mar 2004 –
• Talk:Main Page/Archive 14#Straw poll: Should we change the main page? start: 24 Feb 2004 – now inactive
• Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks#/archive4#Terrorism in title issue - Is the word "terrorist" needed in the title? start: 10 Feb 2004 –
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lir - Is Lir a valuable contributor? (Step 2 is ongoing so the existence of this poll is disputed) . start: 8 Feb 2004 –
• Section titles rendering - Should there be an empty line after section titles? start: 3 Feb 2004 –
• Talk:Al Gore/discussion archive#Poll on controversial material - Page was protected due to an edit war over whether or not to put all the 'controversial' aspects of Gore on a separate page or to summarize and spin-off if and when those topics get too long. Please opine on the talk page to resolve this conflict. start: 3 Jan 2004 –
• Talk:Citric acid cycle: Krebs Cycle or Citric Acid Cycle? start: 2 Jan 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Proposal for reorganization - a proposal to rename some deletion-related pages and to refine the underlying process start: January 2004 –
• Wikipedia talk:Deleted test - Should the page be renamed to Wikipedia:Delete me or to something else? start: December 2003 –
• Wikipedia talk:Possible misuses of admin privileges#New straw poll - should 168 be resysopped?
• Taxobox#Poll: new name - Should they be termed infobox, factbox or ..?
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage - Under what circumstances to include titles of nobility in biographical article titles.
• Wikipedia talk:Brilliant prose#OK, let's have a straw poll - a poll about what to rename Wikipedia:Brilliant prose to.
• Which articles are "brilliant prose"? Please participate.
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/vote - vote abandoned/pending/something.
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (lists)
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (slogans)
• Talk:List of French monarchs
• Talk:AKFD/redirect – start: 1 July 2003
• Wikipedia talk:Filmographies and Discographies – start: 10 July 2003
• Talk:Main Page/Layout design - started early August (more an opinion poll than vote)
• Talk:Mutual Assured Destruction - Mutual Assured Destruction or Mutually Assured Destruction?
• US or U.S.?
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/monarchical titles
• Talk:Atheism/Godvrs.god poll Poll to clarify opinions on using "God" or "god(s)" in reference to the entities which atheism rejects

Closed polls

• Wikipedia:Naming policy poll - Should geographic articles be named after what most english speakers call them, or the official name (Kiev or Kyiv?). Started April 23, ended midnight UTC, May 7.
• Edit summary prefill poll — should section editing cause the edit summary field to be pre-filled with the section header? start: 19 Mar 2004 – close: 21 Mar 2004
• http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbnailed images - New layout for the thumbnail boxes. start: 12 Mar 2004 – close: 21 Mar 2004
• [of numbers/Deletion/archive1]: Which numbers should we have articles about, if any? Should we list cultural properties like "101 is the number which appears in the movie 101 Dalmatians", as is currently the case? start: 20 Jan 2004 – close: 24 Feb 2004
• Talk:Sedna, Trans-Neptunian object 2003 VB12 Naming the Sedna space object article.
• Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#New sidebar poll - What link to remove from the sidebar in order to add a Community Portal link.
• Talk:John Kerry - To Split or not to split, that is the question.
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles)
• Talk:Inheritance (object-oriented programming) – close: 5 July 2004
• Talk:New Imperialism
• What Wikipedia is not - Rule 5 remains
• logo vote International logo vote stage 1
• logo vote/Vote on voting method Vote on the voting method used for the logo vote (ends September 12, 20:00 UTC)
• logo vote International logo vote stage 2 (September 15 2003, 20:00 - September 25 2003, 20:00 UTC)
• m:International logo vote/Ratification - Should each Wikipedia adopt the Winning logo? Ends October 1st.
• Should links on Wikipedia be underlined by default or not?. Votes to stay underlined.
• Talk:List of encyclopedias - EncycloZine is to be included
• Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/lag time. 5 days lag time for the main VfD. 7+ for the subpages.
• Talk:Mother Teresa - Go with Adam's version? Is it NPOV? Result: ??
• 2003 Canada-U.S. blackout or 2003 Canada-U.S. Blackout? Ended with four votes for Blackout and three votes for blackout.
• Talk:Switzerland#Votes - on naming conventions; called off
• talk:Yeti - Which image (if any)... none. - UtherSRG 19:32, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)
• Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Should this page combine with Featured Pictures Candidates? (poll): Should the two Featured candidated pages be combined. Poll closed March 2. No merger.