The other day I was surfing everyone’s favorite site for film factoids — IMDB — when I noticed a feature I had not seen before: The Daily Poll. This particular question was “What is the most underrated John Hughes Film?” (includes writing and directing). Now, as a child of the 80s, and because I was just kind of surfing around aimlessly, I figured I could spare 30 seconds to cast my vote (European Vacation — the most overlooked film in the series, but one that I always enjoyed more than the (dare I say it?) overrated Christmas Vacation) and to see what other people were saying.

I got to the poll page ok, but when I went to actually submit my vote, I was greeted with a page that said “Register (it’s free!) and make your vote count!” and had SEVEN fields to fill out… all just to vote in some dumb little poll. Needless to say, I didn’t bother to register (I later found out that I already had an account, btw), because frankly I wasn’t all that concerned with my voice being heard on this pressing issue.

It did get me thinking though… what is IMDB trying to do with this poll? Why does any site put up a poll?

Since IMDB requires registration, my assumption is that they are attempting to gather user information. In this case, however, this seems a bit misguided since it takes much longer to register than to answer the question, and it is doubtful many people would register just to find out whether the world thinks Pretty in Pink is more underrated than Sixteen Candles.

Were I to put a poll on this blog, it would be for two reasons — to judge how engaged people are in the content of the site (polls take much less effort than comments, but they do show people are paying a bit of attention) and to provide something fun or interesting to enhance the site experience. I would never, however, require any sort of registration for this, because it would hinder, not help, the goals I just stated.

Have you used a poll? Why? What benefits did you see?