Reality check request

[firecat]

A steering committee for a weekly event polled the membership asking whether it should make a policy change about who can attend the event. This was the result of the poll:

No, I do not want to change the policy - 30%
Yes, I would like to change the policy - 41%
Yes, I would like to change the policy, but only for one meeting a month - 18%
Yes, I would like to change the policy, but retain the current policy once a month - 27%

These poll results were described as "The community was fairly evenly split about this idea" and the decision of the committee was "For the time being we will not be making changes."

These figures add up to more than 100%, so it's hard to gauge, but it seems to me that the membership is not in fact "fairly evenly split" at all. What I see is that at least 70% of the votes are in favor of changing the policy.

However, I'm strongly in favor of changing the policy, so I am biased. What do you think?

Comments

[keryx]

You are so obviously correct that I initially thought the poll-taker was deliberately obstructing the group. But! I suspect I've probably done something like your poll-taker at some point. Let's assume they don't want to change, or even just have no real feelings about the policy, right?

They hear that others would like a change, so they ask. Except they give everyone enough options that the group is divided between "yesssss, let's TOTALLY change" and varying degrees of smaller change. Your poll-taker has no idea what to do, and now they don't have a clear set of orders from the group (because they designed their poll badly). From their perspective, they wanted someone to tell them what to do exactly, and the group is evenly divided on what that exact thing is.

They're completely wrong, of course - actually the group is very much in favor of change! - but lacking any kind of vision for change, they're just flailing & settled on what they'd most like to do... which is nothing. I wonder if you (or someone) can give them a precise suggestion like "try the 50% policy change for 3 months" that would better guide them?

[firecat]

That's a good suggestion, thanks!