Allow a single vote to submit multiple write-in items

Hey there,

I had not considered a scenario where a content manager might create a poll with no poll choices, although now that you mention it, an all write-in driven choice poll makes perfect sense. In the short term, you may be able to overcome this by editting the content type and setting the poll choice field to be not required just as you would any normal CCK field. I think this would work - let me know if it does not).

One thing to know about write-ins - after talking this over with folks where I work, it was determined that the risk of mischief from anonymous users was pretty high, so write-ins, even if set and user permissions allow it, never appear for unauthenticated users.

Maximum choices means how many items can a single user choose. For instance, if you presented 4 choices and set maximum choices to 2, they would be presented with checkboxes rather than radio buttons and could check up to two of the four choices and would receive feedback if they chose too many.

The write-in checkbox under a given choice means it is flagged as a write in that a user entered. You can unflag it to make it available for other people to vote on either via the node edit form or the write-in management node tab. If write-ins are not allowed, then this box is ignored in any case and no write-in field is available.

As for allowing a user to add more than one write-in to the same poll, this is tricky. The poll's native behavior is to allow one vote per person.

Now remember, the purpose of the module is to track voting, and in the context of voting, allowing a write-in vote is just like going to the polls and writing in the candidate of your choice rather than selecting one already on the list.

What it sounds like to me, though, is you would like users to be able to add choices to a poll that others could vote on. In that case, why not create a role and allow people with that role to create or modify polls?

As for allowing a user to add more than one write-in to the same poll, this is tricky. The poll's native behavior is to allow one vote per person.

If the poll is a ranking poll, the user is allowed to vote for multiple options using a single vote — so I think it's consistent to allow the user to submit multiple write-ins as part of that single vote.

Example use case: I'm running a poll on a large open-source software community website, called "What new features would you like to see in our next release?" I'd like users to rank the 5 features most important to them. I'd like them to select from a bunch of feature ideas we already have in mind, and give them the ability to add up to 5 of their own feature suggestions. But I don't want to give all of the 5000 users on the site access to modify the poll, since users could change existing poll options other users have already voted on, making the poll results meaningless.

(There are 4 items in the initial support request. Items 1, 2, and 3 were addressed by @mishwick's comment #3. Changing this to a feature request for item 4.)

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