Should people be allowed to vote to remove surveys from the board?

I went with 4 cause that's my lucky number.

No. We have a mechanism for this; it's called ratings.

Maybe a survey creator should be allowed to deactivate (but not remove) surveys?

I think that if a survey creator wants their survey deleted from the system, then it should be. Logistically, I would leave the survey question up for a week after removal, but when a user clicks on it, they would get a "This survey has been removed at the request of the creator" message.

As far as other people wanting the survey removed, I personally wish that Bill had the time and inclination to take a stronger hand in the content of SC. But he already spends a huge amount of time on us and he has said that he wants to be fair and to see how the site develops and I respect those reasons as given.

If Bill's not willing to delete surveys on his own initiative (perhaps with a message to the creator, perhaps not), then I don't think any kind of voting system is either fair or workable, really.

No. I believe every survey should have a chance to live. However, if some 8 year old comes on and makes 50 surveys a day about "nothing", i.e. Survey 1: "A? yes, no"; Survey 2: "B? yes, no" that I should have the option to hide everything from that user automatically if I don't like those kinds of surveys. That way it doesn't clutter my "all modified surveys" listing that I use, but would let others answer if they wished to.

I would vote against Bill "being responsible" for keeping Survey Central "clean". He's not my father ;) Every person on Survey Central has a different point of view of what is good and what is not good. For each of us to look to Bill to "protect us from the bad stuff" does not seem workable, even if he had the time. I think each person monitoring his or her own survey lists works much more cleanly. I am willing to take responsibility for the surveys I process.

I prefer that surveys be removed at our benevolent dictator's whim.

After seeing lisashea's comment, I feel I should elaborate. I don't think it is Bill's responsibility to police the surveys in any fashion. I also don't think that any sort of voting to remove them would work well. Thus, leave any deleting to Bill. Kill-file type functions would be spiffy, but I'd probably never use them anyway.

No. If you don't want to see it, you can always hide it.

Anyone can hide a survey they don't want to look at; therefore, I think that this feature is unnecessary.

I'm with daver and hunter on the subject of bill's prerogative here. We must all remember at all times that we are guests in bill's home(page). I respect his absolute right to do whatever he pleases with this page, and if he were somehow to piss me off, I would expect him to respect my absolute right not to come here.

No. Free speech on the Internet!!

bill: hey, I know where you got that!

what's wrong with the "hide" button?

The problem with surveys being removed is that someone later can do a similar survey and get harassed because "that one has been done" but they'd have no way of knowing.

elijahblue - yes, thanks for letting me steal that (did I ask?)

no, no, a thousand times no!

if a survey is obviously unpopular, poorly thought out, or needs modification, and Bill has gotten negative feedback and the survey creator accepts that it should be removed(hopefully to be revamped), then I don't have a problem with it.
I don't want survey creators just bowing out due to criticism, and we are definitely overly critical. I also don't want surveys removed because a certain group decides they don't like it and can vote to have it removed...

This might be a good idea, but it should probably be done on the basis of how many people have voted on the survey to begin with. Sometimes the comments wind up being more interesting or important than the original survey.

I think if a survey is worthy enough for a 0% approval rating, it is worthy enough to be removed.

bill: no, but that's ok, I'm honored. Can I steal a picture of one of your kittens?

any time!

Sure, why not? One can always vote, and bill has always reserved the right to knock surveys out of existence. I assume you mean "votes needed to automatically remove a survey", in which case I'd want the decision to be nearly unanimous, and not "votes needed before bill is allowed to remove a survey" in which case I'd want the answer to be 1.