Yeah, I tend to skip those picks. In most cases I've seen lately, it seems like they're just looking for someone to argue with. link with these negative little meatballs.

Though I really don't get it. Why would you post negative picks? Whaaaaaatever people.

I feel like there are some cases where they aren't like I do know one user where it's about even but slightly more negative polls. They guy's alright and he isn't rude about it. So I think it can be fine as long as they are positive about their negativity??? lol?

I agree though; I don't get it either. I will ask a bottom 5 every now and again but those are mostly coupled with top 5's.

This is what I see with anyone who tend to make negative polls. The great examples are just like this:
link
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I particularly don't see the point of the "who is your least favourite character?" polls when about a hundred of them are asked, and it's a roundabout way of working out the club's actual favourite character.

Obviously there are some negative polls that I don't believe are made by people trying to pick a fight (e.g. there is a poll in the Human Rights club that is basically a rant on the fact that there is still racism in the world, and I don't think they're trying to provoke racists to argue with them; I think they're just seeing that other people in the club agree that it needs to be dealt with).

But when it comes to questions like "out of all these characters/movies/whatever that are overrated which is the worst" and so on and so forth, then yeah. This, basically.

I don't really mind people doing stuff like that if this is what interests them (my view on the poll feature is that you should ask questions that you would like to see the answers for) but sometimes it happens so frequently, or the same person publishes the same negative poll in a lot of clubs and maybe a few times a year, that's when it feels like they're looking for an argument rather than actually being interested in the results.

My only personal annoyance with this is when it's all over your updates and you have to scrolls through tons of this sort of thing before you can find a poll you actually want to vote in!

@Flicker I actually think those are fair (so long as the person doesn't go overboard). I think it's interesting to see who everyone's favorites and least favorites are. Though I do prefer to see 'who is your favorite?' I think for me the difference is that people asking about least favorites and other negative polls is that the people inquiring about least favorites usually don't mean any harm.

@glesley "out of all these characters/movies/whatever that are overrated which is the worst"
Yes, this so much. I don't like those because they seem like they are in bad spirit. But like you said; if people are simply genuinely interested in seeing the results and it's asked in a kind and unbiased way, then I think it's fine.

I've just seen ones which needed to go through about a hundred polls because there were so many characters to sort through. It seemed irritatingly long-winded.

Do you mean that they made a series of polls pitting characters against each other?

They made polls of every character in the series (I think it was in the HP club but I can't really remember), then whittled them down one by one, making a new poll for each round. It wasn't really a negative poll series, other than for asking "which is your least favourite?" each time, but it was definitely taking the long way around the question.

Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about. So it was kind of like a countdown? I know the HP spot has had those. I don't particularly care for them--mostly because I like voting on every poll in certain clubs and those make it more tedious to do.

Most definitely.

Honestly 9/10 it's for a stupid and immature reason. 1/10 there's alot of other reasons for it and some aren't inherently bad but most of the time. It's for a stupid and immature reason.

^

I guess it depends on what kind of question it is. Something like "which of my least favourite characters/the least popular characters in the series is your least favourite?" or "which of these issues with the story do you think is worst?" is OK. They're a negative way of looking at things, but they're still valid questions. Loving a fandom doesn't mean loving every character and every plot point or thinking it's entirely perfect without any flaws.

The examples Sparklefairy375 gives are a different category of negative though and are just trying to be offensive.