Frankenmuth Michigan: Overwhelming Majority Say "No" To Cross on City Seal

Despite apparent support from city officials and the local press, a very large majority polled clearly say that they prefer that Frankenmuth Michigan NOT boast a Christian Cross on its official city seal.

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See the poll here. More details here.

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The folks in Frankenmuth are probably perfectly happy to flaunt Christian symbolism in people's faces, but PZ's minions swamped the on-line poll. (I cast my vote.) I wish the outcome on this one represented the opinion of the actual majority, but I suspect not. On-line polls are super lame.

Interesting. This poll is not scientific nor does it follow any reasonable polling guidelines - so why does it belong on this site?

By streamfinder (not verified) on 10 May 2008 #permalink

Streamfinder: Be careful. Laden does not like people telling him what to blog.

IIRC, they didn't even specify americans only. Even w/o Scienceblogs, if anybody really seriously cared about online polls, what would happen if all of Iceland suddenly decided to vote in some Anytown USA poll?

Stupid question really. Sorry.

Interesting. This poll is not scientific nor does it follow any reasonable polling guidelines - so why does it belong on this site?

Because the guy who runs it decided it does. Blogs are weird like that.

Streamfinder: Be careful. Laden does not like people telling him what to blog.

Then I presume he won't mind me pointing out (as I did at Pharyngula) that I think this whole "crashing Internet polls" thing has degenerated to the point of childishness and pettiness.

Orac,

I understand what you are saying and I appreciate your comment, but I think you need to use this as a learning opportunity.

Any sort of experience is like this, Orac. What you need to understand is that this (enjoying, or not, a particular exercise) is a personal lived experience that everyone will have a different reaction to, and with those personal reactions certainly changing over time. Everybody has their own opinion about something like this. Some people just discover it and think it is fun, others are bored by it because they've seen it a bunch of times, etc. There is not an objective scale here, and certainly you would not assume that you have exclusive access to such a scale.

If you find the poll crashing to be boring or childish or in some other way something you don't want to experience, there options other than telling PZ or me or anyone else to change what we do. I and many of my readers are still enjoying this. Eventually perhaps we will reach your advanced state!

Beyond this, I simply refer to my colleague
PZ's retort
to your similar comment on his site.

How long before someone sets up an online poll that captures your IP number and if you vote 'wrong' sends you something nasty in return? Just saying, one of the basic cautions of the Internet is NOT clicking on strange links.

There's good reason for caution.

If someone can predict that a lot of people _will_ click a link if they can only fool just one person into recommending it -- the social engineering to fool that one person will, eventually.

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 11 May 2008 #permalink