Current mood:	accomplished
Entry tags:	friday poll

What is this "Friday Poll"?
I got to thinking about the few times people have commented to me asking what in the sam hell this Friday Poll thing is all about. I know several of you have been here since the beginning, but more of you have come along the way, and I wonder how many others would participate if they understood what's happening. Therefore, I present:

Friday Poll: what gives?
Picture it, Livejournal. January, 2005. I had recently befriended petdance, who had engaged me in an IM conversation where we fired silly questions back and forth at one another. The kind of questions that don't seem like they would mean much but say a lot about a person. The following day was a standard Friday in LJLand - lots of refreshing, but nothing getting posted. I decided to stop being part of the problem and become part of the solution. Thus, the Friday Poll was born.

Why do the questions have somebody else's LJ tag in front of them?
Early Friday Polls don't look much like they do today. I wrote all the questions and all the answers. Shortly before my then-job's annual convention, I was low on inspiration and even lower on time. Knowing without outside help the poll would suffer, I asked the Pollketeers to come up with questions for the following week. From then on, there has been a text box at the end of each poll for submitting the following week's questions, for which it is my duty to provide multiple choice answers. The LJ tag before the question identifies who submitted the question the previous Friday. Respondents choose the answer that is right/funniest/your favorite/whatever and if you have one, provide a question for the following week. And so the poll lives on.

Why are some questions replaced with a "Something vs. Something" question, and what's going on with those?
Some questions have too clear an answer, or there's really not much to do with them. If the answer is obvious, I'll either take it in another direction, or replace it with a Deathmatch pairup. For example, if a question is nixed and replaced with "Voltron vs. Megatron" your task is to decide who would win in a fight.

How come there's no political jokes in the answers, and why are political questions replaced with a Deathmatch or some other question?
It is my opinion that politics generally mar comedy. It is the kind of personally involving topic that can turn one man's joke into another man's insult. Anyway, though I am an avid reader of political news and opinion, since I am not an Oscar winner, a lesbian standup comic cum talk show host, or jam band singer/songwriter, I am, by all recent evidence, unqualified to make political commentary, humorous or otherwise. That, and if you're used to being amused by common political jokes, the kind I would be making will be unfamiliar and likely unfavorable to you.

That's it? That's all there is to it?
That's all I can think of that a first-time reader would want to know about The Friday Poll, but if you think there's something else people should know, comment and I'll add more.