Doodle Polls and Survey Monkey are quickly becoming my most hated websites. What started out as good ideas are now being abused by faculty and staff in trying to find meeting times and input on various topics. Sending me a Doodle Poll with 40 day/time slots is ridiculous, especially if it takes you over a week to actually pick a date. There is no way I'm going to block off 40 slots for 1 potential meeting. Do you really expect me to cross reference my schedule against 40 potential meeting times spread over a whole month?!And if you wait two weeks before chosing a winner, odds are my time is already dedicated to another cause and your poll FAILED. Then there are all the people who already for whatever reason don't bother replying to these things. There should be an option for that in the poll "don't bother me or I don't care or I'm not going no matter what." If you insist on using these sites, I propose to impose limits on these things, say no more than 10 time slots and 3 days to identify the winner, if that.
These sites actually make me miss LotusNotes, which I've used for two different internships. I don't need to be able to see a calendar with details, I just want to see a calendar with three colors: green for available, red for totally unavailable and yellow for busy, but possibly flexible. Unfortunately, I've met many professors would rather set their desk on fire than make their calendar at all available.
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