Question K 1.6 b Polls: Change vote lost all earlier votes

RC didn´t bring any help to this issue :dry:

sozzled wrote: How can we fix this?

What I'm about to write is probably not very helpful. I feel that it was/is a mistake to allow users to change their vote. If you don't get the problem when you don't try to change your vote, then don't try to change your vote. Pretty simple, really, isn't it?

Here is my 2 cents:

Poll itself is the main thing. Feature to change vote is extra and if there is one, it should be optional. Some users and admins want that feature, some doesn´t.

Problem right now is, that there is no selection over it. No choice whether or not to allow users to change their vote

I´m sorry, but just the advice "don´t change your vote" is not very helpful indeed, because every user must be aware of it and whoever registered user can violate the whole poll if they don´t like the result

How Kunena should proceed with this? I think it´s quite simple; if there is no easy fix to vote change, then take the feature off at least until there is a fix. It´s far better to have a simple working poll than one with a feature that breaks the whole thing.

So... remaining issue is; if I´m going to use Kunena 1.6 rc with the poll feature, then where and how I can disable the 'change your vote' link?

i agree with Admata on the issue, meanwhile here is how you can "hide" the function

components/com_kunena/template/default/plugin/poll/pollbox.php

delete the following (under line 78)
the users won't see the link to change their vote anymore

Thank you to everyone for their contributions to this topic. I realise that my earlier comments were not much help (as far as the technicalities of the problem were concerned) but, I hope, I was able to give a different perspective on this issue. I thoroughly agree with what Admata wrote. Importantly, it's a good feature that we have a means to conduct polling. The ability to change votes is something that not everyone would want to use. I agree that having the option to choose whether you should be able to change your vote is, probably, a solution that overcomes my objections on ethical grounds.

But, the technical problem is that there is no such option as Admata described and the consequences are that the current K 1.6 polling feature is "buggy". Let's just say that it's a "known issue" and it wasn't fixed in time for K 1.6 RC1 and, for the time being, we'll have to leave it at that.

There are two workarounds: (1) if you use the polling feature, ask your users not to change their votes; or (2) stop people from being able to change their votes by using the kind of hack suggested by Baze in the message above.

The only other option that I can see is to not use the polling feature at all.

If we don't use the polling we wont be able to elect the government )

just kidding, thanks for your replies sozzled, and i hope you'll manage to convince the developers to add the option for enable/disable or to remove it in the stable version.

btw if you ask the users not to change their vote, they'll all change it. At least that's the case with my users...

Baze wrote: components/com_kunena/template/default/plugin/poll/pollbox.php

delete the following (under line 78)
...

the users won't see the link to change their vote anymore

Thx. I actually removed just the link and replaced JText to "You have voted this poll". My problem is solved

My vote in this issue goes to suggestion that development team choose similar solution for Kunena 1.6 stable and focus on more important matters, like modules for latest post, etc.

In my opinion optional feature to change vote may well be delayed to take place in Kunena 1.7

Thanks, Baze. There are really two issues involved here.

The ability to conduct a poll is a good feature. If we'd stuck to the plan and released K 1.6 with a reliable polling feature - but without the ability to change your vote - then K 1.6 would have been released earlier. We could have added the vote-changing functionality later.

Whether or not it's ethical to let people change their vote - even whether or not we could "optionally" enable the mechanism to do that - if the "change vote" feature had not been incorporated into K 1.6 we would not be having this discussion now. The reality is that there is serious problem that undermines the whole polling feature. Users are faced with the situation where they cannot reliably cast their votes simply because, if one person changes their vote, all the votes are lost.

Of course we can't ask our users not to change their votes ... when you can clearly see that you can. We have to mask the "change vote feature" until the problems with using it have been resolved. Otherwise, it's simple: the polling feature works until someone changes their vote.