Creating and managing polls

Resolvists · October 7, 2025, 8:45pm

This page describes how to create polls to gather votes from users on a topic.

Resolvists Tier - Agora+ Members (paid subscription)

A poll post lets you ask a question and provide several answer options that users can vote on. This can help you:

Gauge public opinion
Understand common experiences
Get a quick read on how others would handle a choice

Important: Polls are not a substitute for legal advice. They are best used to supplement a well-written post.

Summary

This guide covers:

Creating a poll from the toolbar
Manually creating a poll
FAQs

1. Creating a poll from the toolbar

The easiest way to create a poll is to use the poll builder. The poll builder can be accessed from the menu in the composer, and allows you to make a poll without needing to know the exact syntax.

To show advanced options press the icon. This will show you different poll options such as if the poll auto closes, set groups allowed to vote, choose bar or pie, etc.

Poll Type

Single Choice: Default poll type. Users can select a single choice from the poll
Multiple Choice: Users can select multiple choices from the poll. The poll creator must also define the minimum and maximum number of choices a user can make. By default the minimum will be 1, and the maximum will be the number of poll choices.
Number Rating: Users can select a single number. The poll creator must also define the min, max and step for the number rating. For example, if the min is 2, the max is 10, and the step is 2, the options will be 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10.

Results

Always visible: Default poll results. Users can always see the results of the poll, regardless of if they’ve voted.
Only after voting: Users must vote before they can see the results of the poll.
When the poll is closed: Poll results will only be revealed once the poll is closed.
Staff only: Only site staff will be able to see the poll results.

Allowed Groups

Allows the poll creator to limit which groups can participate in the poll. Users not in the listed groups will be able to view the poll, but not vote. Default is all users can participate, no group limitation.

Chart Type

For Single or Multiple Choice polls, choose whether to display the result in a bar graph or pie chart.

Automatically close poll

Allows the poll creator to set a date/time for the poll to close automatically. Unlike manually closed polls, auto-closed polls cannot be re-opened.

2. Manually creating a poll

While the poll builder is the easiest option, it is also possible to manually create and edit polls within the composer itself.

To create a simple poll, surround a markdown list with [poll] and [/poll]:

[poll name="poll_1"]
* A
* B
* C
[/poll]

This will create the following result:

A
B
C

0 voters

To manually create more complex polls, additional parameters can be added to the poll tag. For instance:

[poll name="poll_2" type=multiple results=on_vote min=1 max=2 public=true chartType=pie groups=agoraplus]
# Do you like polls?
* Yes
* No
* Maybe
[/poll]

Do you like polls?

Yes
No
Maybe