All systems operational.

The September census results showed that 80.7% of participating community members banned from a PC, 12.3% from a Mac, and 3.5% from a Linux platform. This week's question provides a little more detail.

Of the 54 bNers and bNettes polled, 55% use some form of Windows, 24% have Linux, 2% Amiga OS, and 19% are using OSX to store all their pictures of Melissa Theuriau. Most PC users have WinXP (47%), but a few use Win2000 (2%) or Vista (6%). *shudder*

Apparently, the guy in the grey suit has convinced more bNers and bNettes to go with his operating system than that hipster Mac dude. Or perhaps we're just too lazy to switch over to the Penguin.

Missing votes

Some votes has disappeared during the night. At the moment we have no idea why and if they are gone for good. Blogger-support has been e-mailed...

Update: The votes have re-appeared. Still no clue what had happened.

You can check out any time you want....

Apparently banniNation is just too addictive to settle for less than one hour of interaction. Thirty percent of people never leave and 25% banninate 8-15 hours per week. Only 40 people participated in this weeks poll, but the bimodal distribution of answers to this week's question How many hours a week do you banninate? suggests a couple of possibilities.

1. A lot of people banninate at work and home. In fact, work and home could be the same place.

2. Some people only banninate from home or from work. Hey, not everyone has the luxury of living in a cubicle.

Any other hypotheses? This is a question that could be tested in the next banniNation census.

Results are posted here.

Parallel Universes

For many years, science fiction authors have speculated on the possibility that the South won the Civil War, that dinosaurs never went extinct, and that you can buy a decent pint at a restaurant at the end of the universe to enjoy while watching the big bang. Within the past decade, physicists have come to realize that science fiction may not be fiction. Parallel universes exist side by side and our twin might literally be only a few millimeters away... in another universe.

We are still far from being capable of jumping dimensions, but if we could where would we choose to go? Most would choose to brave Vogon construction crews and poetry rather than take the red pill, sail a firefly, wield a light saber, or get beamed aboard the USS Enterprise. Results are posted in the wiki as well.



Thread comments may be found here.

The Afterglow

It is over just as quickly as it started. Now it’s time to clean up and think about the future.

The results are posted in here.

What did we learn from this? Posting comments, voting in the queue and lurking are popular activities. Alt creation, the wiki and the Beer Garden not so much. We also learned it can be difficult to count to three. 152 people gave their opinion, but dividing the amount of total votes by three gives the result of 154.

Interpret the results as you like.

The First Time...

The first time is never easy. It can be painful and messy, and if that's the case, hopefully over quickly. Hopefully, this first time will be good for everyone.

Some of the polls will be "serious business," others more in line with the sort of locker room fun that pervades the NSFW threads. Polls about politics, current events, movies, social commentary, literature, general bN user stats could all show up at the top of the page.



Here's how we hope it will work:

On Sunday, a question will be posted. bNers and bNettes will have a week to vote. On Saturday, at midnight, the polls will close, the results tallied, and then posted on the blog. On Sunday, a scheduled thread will come up to discuss poll results. This thread will be linked to the blog as well. A new question will be posted. Wash, rinse, repeat.


Of course, there are all sorts of ways trolls, cabals, and alt armies could abuse the system. We're hoping that good citizenship, common decency, and basic morals and ethics prevent that. No one knows who is voting and when and how. Please be considerate of your fellow community members and vote once per physical individual.


Hopefully, you will submit polls of your own (with an answer list). Please send along questions with answers to bn.polling@gmail.com. WIE is always appreciated too. ;~)