Online Poll: Do you support the 291 Apartments at the Four Corners?
Surveys and polls can be very useful in helping inform a decision. If you ask a group of people a question and you know to whom you are talking, you can get a good handle on the group’s support or lack of support for a position.
The key is you need to know who has responded as well as how many people responded; that’s why polling companies get paid to conduct public opinion polls with random samples of respondents. Surveys and polls can also be abused.
For example, in an anonymous online survey an individual or group can distort an outcome by voting many times and/or by getting unconcerned individuals to vote.
This type of survey is an unscientific survey, one where the survey results can be manipulated by individuals. Anonymous surveys on the internet cannot be taken seriously, as has been pointed out in the past.
I applaud desire to get community input on the question, but the zoomerang poll is just not the way to go about doing it!
I called the Zoomerang sales department, and this online poll is subject to the
abuse of multiple votes from multiple voters. It’s very hard to know to whom you are speaking on the internet.
Furthermore, the results show percentages, but no counts. Did 10 people vote or 1,000? We don’t know. This unscientific type of
survey has no place in serious discourse.
Thomas E Ferb, Ph.D.
Candidate for Patchogue Village of Trustee
PS I would have posted this as a comment if you allowed. I really like the picture of the blight on Four Corners. Do we really want more years of this?
NEWS FLASH: It appears Residents First used the free version of Zoomerang, it’s limited to the first 100 votes! And who might they be?
