The Day Identica Groups Became Annoying

So Identi.ca went through a major upgrade, it was down a little longer than expected but that's alright. It came back all new and improved. There are lots of issues people have with it, it affected some clients for one. Most of them are not that bad but the polls have made groups annoying.

When you create a poll about a group, say !Linux, it posts that poll to the Linux group as you'd expect, that's why the ! exists. That in itself is fine, the problem that everyone who responds to that poll also automatically spams the !Linux group with their response. That's incredibly annoying.

I can see polls have some use, I can see why some people enjoy creating them and responding to them. The responses REALLY need to either go to a tag that people can subscribe to, or only to the person who created the poll.

At this stage I am seriously considering unsubscribing from every group I've joined just to avoid this spam. If being spammed is a "benefit" of joining a group, I can see groups rapidly fall out of favour on Identi.ca. If people have to leave groups they have some common interest in all because Identi.ca spams them by default with poll responses how many will just ditch Identi.ca altogether?

Given the arrival of Google+ has drawn the attention of several heavy denters, you'd think it'd be a priority for Identi.ca to not drive people away.

I'm finding other issues with replies caught in repeating loops at random, which I put down to the clients not having updated to reflect changes in the new Identi.ca yet. These I understand, yes they are annoying, but I understand. I also understand they are temporary and client related, so switching clients can fix the problems.

I've noticed a varied reaction to the new Identi.ca, some love it, some hate it, some are inbetween with specific parts they like or don't like. On the whole I do like the new UI, it feels cleaner, although I only use a client so I'm not the target audience. None of that affects the poll response spamming the groups.

Options are one thing, being opted into something that drives you nuts without your knowledge and with no way of opting out is a way of sending me the "fuck off, you're no longer suited to what we're aiming for" message. Stuff that just adds extra noise really needs to be an opt in.

I am not the only one who is pissed off about the poll response spam. I created a poll about it to make a point. I didn't want to see the responses, but of course it spams them to me. This one was self inflicted, so I can't really complain. I know it will be the only poll I'll create, in part because polls don't really interest me, and in part because I don't want spammed with the responses.

If polls spam by default, how soon will it be before admins of groups are under pressure from their members to ban polls in their groups? Where it becomes a taboo action to create a poll, all because it spams people. One feature of a website being blocked by another because of the default actions.