"My wardrobe is threefold: Things I wear during sex, Things I wear to have more sex and most importantly, 'I don't give a shit.'" -- Twitter user VaginaDrum, 2009-10-26
Huh. DW says non-DW users can respond to polls using OpenID. Only one person has responded (using the poll buttons) to my poll from yesterday, and one complained about not being able to do so. This tells me that (a) there's a hiccup in the process of filling out DW polls using OpenID, (b) how to do so is confusing, (c) both, or (d) it works right but filling out poll answers isn't important enough to be worth clicking through the extra steps for, for many people.
I think (d) seems likely -- it's more steps than using OpenID to leave a comment, and it's really not a very compelling or entertaining poll -- (and feel free to simply respond in a comment, of course), but just in case it's (a) or (b), I went and found out what the steps are. It's a little more annoying than I'd expected, but it did work for me. (Note that there are a few people for whom OpenID just doesn't seem to work in general, for reasons that so far remain mysterious. And debugging somebody else's problem on a site I don't admin, when I can't replicate the problem myself, is not going to get very far, alas.)
I logged out of DW, and tried to fill in the poll. It looked like I simply could not do so. Then I went to the main page, http://www.dreamwidth.org/, which (if you're not currently logged in) has a login button with username/password text entry fields next to it up in the upper-right corner. There's small text up there, "Log in with OpenID", which links to http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid. (The "Log in with OpenID" link next to the login button on http://www.dreamwidth.org/login also takes you there.)
(In what follows, assume we're currently logged in on LJ ...)
I told LJ months ago to automatically accept OpenID credential requests from DW, so I just typed "dglennlivejournal.com" into the box on http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid, and was immdiately logged into DW as my LJ identity, and could fill in the poll. If you've used OpenID to leave a comment on DW recently, and checked the leave-me-logged-in tickybox, you should already be able to fill in the poll.
If I hadn't told LJ to grant future DW OpenID requests, then I would've gotten a page from LJ telling me that DW was asking LJ to confirm that this user claiming to be me-at-LJ is really me. Telling LJ "yes, I triggered that request, it's really me," allows LJ to tell DW, "yeah, it's her," and at that point I'm logged into DW not as me-the-DW-user, but as me-the-LJ/OpenID-user, and can fill in the poll (or leave comments under my LJ identity, or customize DW viewing options under that OpenID login, even attach a user icon IIRC, etc.) I went into more detail on this process in the context of leaving comments, a few months ago and a few months before that.
This process is rather less of an obstacle when leaving comments (except for the folks for whom OpenID just doesn't seem to work, which I wish I was in a position to figure out), and I expect most folks are a bit more motivated when they've already decided to leave a comment and just need to choose between OpenID and anonymous, than when they're still deciding whether it's worth the trouble to fill in a poll. Having "use OpenID" as a visible option on the comment form makes it a lot easier than having to remember, "Oh yeah, I can go to the login page (or directly to the OpenID login page) and log in first, if I want to fill this out" ...
... but if any of you are inspired to experiment a bit with OpenID this afternoon, then hey, I get more poll answers as a side effect. And in the future, if somebody posts a poll where you really, really want to make your voice heard, now you'll know how.
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