It’s really easy:

1. Log in through your server’s website or on an app
2. Start a new post
3. Click the poll icon, this usually looks like a bar chart 📊 (on some apps there may be no poll icon visible, but you can click the attachment icon and then select poll as an attachment)
4. Write your question in the main part of the post
5. Add up to four responses, and describe each option (you can use emoji too). Some servers running customised code may allow more than four responses.
6. Set the duration, between 5 mins and 7 days
7. Click Publish to post the poll!

Allowing multiple responses on polls

There’s a slightly hidden option when you’re posting a poll where you can allow people to choose more than one response. To switch on multiple responses:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Create the poll via the web interface as described above, but don’t post it yet
3. Click on a circle next to one of the options, the circles will all change into rounded squares, and the poll will now allow multiple responses

If you want to go back to single response, click on a square to change it back to circles before you post.

Some third party apps also allow you to activate multiple responses for a poll.

⚠️ Warning about editing polls

You can edit polls the same way you edit posts, just go to ⋯ on the post and select Edit. However, when you edit the poll’s options it will automatically reset the poll’s results back to zero without any warning! (Editing the main text above the poll doesn’t reset it though.)

This behaviour is presumably to prevent abuse of the poll system, but the lack of warning can really catch people out (it certainly caught me out! 😅 ). For those comfortable using Github, there’s an open issue about this here ⧉.

I can’t find the poll button on my app!

Some third party apps have the poll button hidden away under the attachment button. Click attach, and then instead of choosing an image or video or audio file, choose a poll.

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