The phrasing is "at a time," and what that refers to is being active. I consider a thread active as long as the poll can still be voted on. After the poll has closed, then the rules applying to bumping threads apply as well, in which case I will lock and bin them.
As noted in my previous clarification, I'll consider a thread active so long as the poll is running. That said, if a poll is clearly dying of inactivity and it has some ridiculous voting period, once activity has ceased for a suitable amount of time (I'll say 14 days/two weeks just so there's a number), then it'll be considered dead and bumping rules apply.
I implore you to reconsider the definition, because I've always made polls that have no time limits. Sometimes, people just don't have anything to say so I'd like to give them the luxury of just voting and being done with it. Sometimes even if a poll is old, people just like voting for no reason. Look at every poll I've ever made and on average you'll find 40+ people; you won't find anything like that if the polls had limits.
I just want to know the reasoning behind it. You originally made these rules to prevent shitposters like PitchEnder from spamming the section. So instead of taking care of the problem like directly trashing his stuff and infracting him for it, you're going to just put a giant bandaid on the problem and prevent any kind of poll from lasting so long? That makes absolutely no sense. If the shitpolling was moderated to begin with, we wouldn't even have to come to this. Even you admit to this...
That said, though, I feel I've been too lazy(sic), letting polls "die" rather than cleaning up the ones I felt were made with little effort or thought.
You've always discussed never having a bigger section to moderate in the past. Then the one time this section goes to shit, you devise a limitation on an element that never hurt anyone instead of tackling the issue directly. PitchEnder's polls didn't linger because the polls didn't have a duration, they lingered because there were goshdarn so much of them all at the same time. Think about it: if a poll ended and a discussion stayed, would that poll still be active? Yeah. Because it's still being bumped in the section.
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I can say that if I think a poll has absolutely no merit, I'll likely bin it. If a lot of people show dislike for a poll, I'll bin it. If the creator of the poll feels there's reason this decision is wrong, they can appeal to me, but if I feel there reasons are pretty BS, it stays dead.
As I painted before, nobody will dislike polls outright because it's a case for infracting (posting off-topic, being mean, or derailment; take your pick). Moreover, reporting a bad poll is petty at best because of how subjective it is. So now you're saying that people are allowed to express dislike for a poll in the reports now? If you really mean that, then you should append in the rules to implore users that Reporting the "Bad" polls is recommended. But then we're back at the circular reasoning: What is considered "Bad"? What are the guidelines for good pollmaking? If you don't want the reports section to stink up with petty subjective complaints, you should really set a Standard for what polls ought to be so we will know what are Bad examples of polls.
For example:
a Good poll
a) has never been done before
b) has good amount of choices that stand out
c) discusses to a broad audience
d) is not offensive to any user in particular
A Bad poll is
a) a rehashed version of existing ones (use the Search Feature for any topics less than a month old---those may not be repeated)
b) has vague, unclear choices that are too few or too many
c) pertains only to a specific audience (such as "What should my RHG be like?" We see alot of those; it's your discretion if you want to allow these things)
d) is made to insult or affect a certain group of users or an individual to the point that it breaks the rules.
^THIS is just an example. You do not need to use it exactly. I just gave a sample guideline to state my point; if you want "good" polls to appear now, they should have "good" standards. And you need to clarify what makes it so.
