Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Choose your SINGLE FAVORITE LEGIONNAIRE of all time!

One question, one choice.

I’m using a modified form of Eryk Davis Ester’s Legionnaire list from his prior Favorite Legionnaires Poll, in which voters could choose Ten Favorites.

THIS POLL IS TOUGHER! You get to vote only for your SINGLE FAVORITE LEGIONNAIRE!

This is hard! I have it narrowed down to five, but can't make the final decision...

See.

I think when push comes to shove in picking one TOP favorite Legionnaire of all time, it's going to cause some "serious" evaluations and we're going to come up with unexpected results all around.

I predict the frequent winner in past multi-choice favorite Legionnaire Polls most likely won't win this single choice Poll. My view is that everybody includes him in their "lower" choices (not their top ones) because he is so identified with Legion as an organization, not because he's their strong personal favorite. Thus he may not get many top choice (single) votes here.

We'll see how it turns out. I think this will be an interesting Poll to watch as the votes come in.

[You know I don't think anybody did a single-choice favorite Legionnaire Poll back at the DCMB. I myself don't recall running one, and I was doing about 2/3rds of them at one time. This probably is a first!]

Hmmm, yeah -- it was a real soul-searcher for me

And while I don't think I've seen this poll before, I've seen it as a thread -- not sure if the results were ever tabulated though.

Flagged.

Took about 0.0000000733 seconds for me. Sixteen light-years per hour, remember, and it also applies to clicking the mouse buttons!

Coincidentally, it's the same time needed for me to get from L.A. to Memphis to hook up with Lash LaRue (see his thread) ... *sob* if he even wanted me considered in the poll for his Super-Bitches in the first place *whimper* {wicked grin}

Okay, wiseguys... Yeah, for some there's no decision time needed, but I think the majority of us have a few or more "high" favorites and will have to stop and consider which one is the most-est favorite-est of them all.

Just checked the results, and after 10 votes, only ONE Legionnaire has multiple votes!

BTW, Thanks, 'crawler!

Done.

We have our 2nd Legionnaire with multiple votes now, too.

good poll REEP !!!

i suppose you can guess who i VOTED for ....

interesting results so far !!!

Matthew.

It is interesting who the leader is, as they normally don't do nearly as well in regular polls.

Say it with me.

"Reep is right!"

Very interesting...

I had to vote for my sis....But this is gonna be an interesting outcome.

I wrote this for another thread some time ago but it seems appropriate here -- by way of explanation (if not outright campaigning ):

My favorite pre and post-boot is WILDFIRE! I'm going to try to stick to his current postboot incarnation for examples, but DnA have kept most of what I liked about him preboot so:

• Tragic Hero -- he died not once, but twice (as Blast-off and Atom'X) and is now trapped in a containment suit in a body that can no longer experience physical human sensation (it hasn't been revealed if he has new sensations though -- that'd be interesting). Yet despite that, he's a hero.
  
  There's a loneliness to his situation, not having a real past (since the integrated psyche of Drake Burroughs was "born" only recently) and the Legion is the only family he has -- it's the only place this "freak" feels he belongs. I think it makes him more loyal to the team.
• Power -- he's definitely one of the Big Guns. As ERG-1 he and Mon-El were side by side, pushing a Legion cruiser "faster than it has any right to go". He, Jan and Kid Q dove into the rift and saved the galaxy -- he was channeling / absorbing an unbelievable amount of energy
• Personality -- More than simple "attitude", he's more complex than the cliche "team hothead". He's always among the first to throw himself into the fray (like in "Legion Lost" when he flew into the Progeny armada without flinching) and has a "never say die" attitude in battle. Despite being a bit of a discipline problem and a tendency to shoot off his mouth, he's also an extremely loyal member of the team. As mentioned above, it might be because he has no strong connections aside from the Legion. He has the depth to recognize why the team was "lost" in "Legion Lost" and as seen recently, he's a staunch supporter of Kid Q's leadership so he's not rebellious just for the sake of it, he's blunt with his honesty.
• Costume Design -- The blue faceplate, the biker-inspired design to his helmet and boots that imply the daring and danger of extreme sports, the *cool* glowing winged star emblem -- it's all great! (well, the blast-port on his back could use a trim) Visually, he stands apart from most of the other Legionnaires (he doesn't even have an L* like most of them) I'm glad that Coipel has left his mark on Wildfire hopefully for many years to come.

Wow, 19 votes and only two multiple vote-getters. This is what makes the Legion so special. Nearly every Legionnaire is on equal footing. There's no Wolverines, Batmans or Supermans (well, at least not any more) to draw attention away from the team. Everybody really is somebody's favorite.

Yes, thus far, 16 of 19 votes are for different characters. Somewhat unique in all the Polls I've done here and back on the old DCMB.

Let me again reiterate my strong opinion about campaigning and posting propaganda on Polling topics: I'm very much against it. This has always been my expressed view, and it's backed with my sizable amount of experience with MB Polls.

I have seen several Poll topics become full of propaganda & campaigning posts and people simply just stop voting. They get turned off by it just like in real life. And on a MB it can get out of hand real quick.

The point of these Polls isn't about trying to get others to vote for your view, or any particular view. It is about finding out what are people's own personal opinions on Legion and whatever.

Politicking on these Polls is contrary to the carefree spirit of "pressure-free voting." These are comicbook Polls, not national elections. There is simply no need for campaigning.

If anyone really has an uncontrollable desire to try to persuade people of the wisdom of their comicbook opinions, it would be best to simply start an appropriate discussion topic on The Legion forum, rather than possibly provoking testy arguments and flaming on a Poll topic which can destroy a Poll within an half-hour.

A person can do whatever they want with their own Polls, but I sincerely request that in the Polls I create and run that posters please respect the rights of all members to make up their own minds.

Thank you for your continued consideration.

Reep

I just thought it'd be fun to see why others voted the way they did by experssing their own views about their fav in this thread. I'll bow to your experience in poll-taking, but I doubt that kinda thing would happen here the way you describe it. Anyway, I'll just start a different thread for discussion purposes.

Commentary in the same thread about mechanics, or omissions, or the propriety of choices, or anything else that's instrumental to a poll is entirely appropriate. I would agree that substantive discussion works much better in separate threads.

Still, you're taking them entirely too seriously, as I've said before. Nobody's polls create any "truths," much less the Oracle of Delphi. They're entertainment, nothing more -- and nothing less, either.

This universe of voters is a self-selected group of particular strong interests from a small corner of comics fandom, as much as we all would like to pretend otherwise. It's not at all a genuine "sample," in the sense of Gallup, et al., and I'd say it's more than a bit pretentious to (implicitly) treat it that way.

First, regarding "pretentiousness," well, golly, we're all guilty of that sometimes. Don't you think?

Grey, what I take seriously in these Polls isn't "truth." These Polls aren't about truth. In this we agree. As far as these Polls being a reliable sample of the greater Legion readership, we disagree. I think they are more so than not. Not 100% of course, no poll is, but a good indication most of the time.

[Some state/national polls take a sampling of less than a 1,000, while the better ones shoot for 1,500-4,000. And this is for populations in the tens or hundreds of millions. Responses here at LW (thus far) range 30-50 responses for a readership of under 25,000. Our sampling rate is far, far higher than the national polls.]

What I take seriously in these Polls is 1) the right for everyone to vote their opinions free from pressure to vote someone else's opinion, and 2) the effort and creativity I put into them.

These Polls aren't about any possible enduring "truths" in the results, and I've never felt or expressed that. They're not about truth, they're about candor.

It's about getting people's honest opinion 1) without any pressure to "join our bandwagon!", 2) fear of looking "foolish" by voting for their own choice, or 3) even if a voter feels that their particular personal opinion is the real truth.

Next month, maybe sooner, these opinions will change. It's as much about the process as the results - the democratic process of fostering candor and the demographic process of comparing changing opinions.

I'm just trying to get a snapshot of our honest opinions as a group. I'm not a cleric composing scripture or a mystic divining truth.

But I take getting these honest opinions free from political pressure seriously, while still trying to make it fun for everybody!

True enough, we all get over-baked at times in cooking up what we care about, including me. I wasn't meaning to run down your enthusiasm, if it seemed to come across that way. I'd rather have that encouraged.

As for "sampling," though, I'll still have to disagree strongly with you. The essence of statistical sampling is not the size of the sample (relative or absolute), but that it uses a randomly selected group. If this is not done -- and unlike in spam e-mail for penis pills {g} -- size doesn't really matter.

This is not random. Only those who are among this fan audience, and care to look at polls at all, and care to read a thread, and care to respond will be counted. Quadruply self-selected, at least.

I know I've harped on this, but it's how many Net "polls" -- from news sites to political sites to movie sites -- are misconstrued, often with great harm to rational discussion. They become smaller instruments of "propaganda," to borrow the word you used.

They're not random statistical samples. They reflect only those who are fervent and interested. And to borrow from provocateurs at FreeRepublic.com, a site I know well (and rarely agree with), they can be "FReeped" to tilt one way or another. It's meaningless, but they do it. Why? Propaganda value. And they're counting on others' ignorance about what is, and is not, a random sample.

Beyond all this, o'course, if you would prefer elements of persuasion to be kept out of the threads appended to your polls, that's a reasonable request, and it ought to be respected. (I'll say right now that I want exactly the opposite in any poll I do again.)

I'll note, though, that the poll voting box comes before any such opinions. I believe you underestimate just how much most of us want to resist such appeals. And how resistant most of us can be -- when we care enough about the subject -- to "propaganda" or earnest persuasion.

I should stress again that my main point in these Polls isn't necessarily in getting a representative opinion of all Legion fandom. It's to get a picture of our opinions her at Legion World.

That said, "randomness" isn't all that essential in getting a likely representation of majority opinion of 1) a small population (only 25,000 readership) or 2) a highly specialized interest (one particular comic in the dwindling hobby of comics.)

In a small specialized group, the range of responses is also smaller, allowing less likelihood of missing significant amounts of differing opinion, which is what random Polling hopes to gather.

The larger the size of a polled group, the greater the need for randomness to "catch" reliable percentages and range of major viewpoints. The smaller the group the greater legitimacy of focus group Polling.

Which I guess is what these really are here.

Gotta go to dinner!

{[...] It's to get a picture of our opinions here at Legion World. }

Of those, again, who have chosen to become members of Legion World. And to view this section. And to read a question. And to actually respond. That is an attempt at a "picture" with self-selected brushstrokes, four times over.

And Legion World isn't representative of "Legion" readers in the first place. A more than negligible portion of them don't have a computer -- or even use someone else's, as you do. (That's from a reasonable statistical sampling: Computers are in about 55% to 60% of U.S. homes at present.)

Most who have one aren't on the Net, even now. Most among those who are don't bother to take part in message boards. Only some of those who do choose to come here at all. And only a fraction of visitors ever join.

And some of those who join don't even buy "Legion." I was among them, until Coipel left. Did that stop me from self-selecting to run off at the mouth, here and elsewhere? Not in the slightest.

{[...] That said, "randomness" isn't all that essential in getting a likely representation of majority opinion of 1) a small population (only 25,000 readership) [...]}

I'm sorry about how this looks, in responding to you, but I have no choice about doing it if I'm to stay honest with myself, and it's not meant to be a personal slam.

That being said: This does not involve personal esthetic tastes. This involves science, and this is entirely mistaken.

You're still asserting this despite its having nothing to do with statistical methods. As much as you disclaim it, you're laying hold here of what you see as being "likely" truth. Whatever you may have talked yourself into, and however much you enjoy doing it, this is not statistics.

In this case: Randomness is just as essential in a small population of relevant people. It's almost always far more difficult to attain -- hitting upon "Legion" readers among a broader population, rather than, say, registered voters -- but it remains as essential.

{[...] or 2) a highly specialized interest (one particular comic in the dwindling hobby of comics). }

Again, this doesn't minimize the essential need for its being a random sample. Getting reactions solely from among those who profess such a narrower interest moves the effort even further away from being random.

{ In a small specialized group, the range of responses is also smaller, allowing less likelihood of missing significant amounts of differing opinion, which is what random Polling hopes to gather. }

You're completely mixing together the issues of the wording of questions or offered choices, which has nothing to do with the scope of those being polled -- and the distribution of responses, which has nothing to do with the phrasing of questions. "Hopes" have nothing to do with statistics, in either case.

{[...] The smaller the group the greater legitimacy of focus group Polling. }

"Legitimacy" for what? In claiming that it's an accurate statistical "picture"? Not in the slightest. Smaller groups work against its being valid, mostly due to sampling logistics.

(The largest groups work against it, as well, such as attempting to poll an entire country. As with many other such situations, it forms a bell curve, plotting likely validity against sample size.)

And, since "legitimacy" is a claim for being useful, toward what ends? Beyond sheer entertainment?

Reep, you can claim a desire for "candor," or for "having fun," or whatever personal motive. That's your business, and it can be entirely worthwhile.

When you claim some statistical validity for this, though -- and that is what you are doing, despite apparently completely misunderstanding statistics -- that becomes a matter of science, or of its misuse. And for those of us who do understand, it becomes our business, and you'll be ridden about it.

Grey, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about the value and nature of Polls here at LW, because this is starting to get into lengthy posting and I'm just not interested in spending a week or more in a timeconsuming debate about our staunchly differing viewpoints on Polls.

I think we both have expressed our basic points on the matter.

I like the polls. No justification needed, so bog off!

Keep 'em coming please!