There is a new poll Discord bot in town, it makes polls more representative, customizable and easier to execute. Its name is Votex and it was developed by an Italian marketing and tech agency, Ziken Labs.
This innovative company is focused on providing solutions to help its clients scale their businesses. And they do it by developing tools for marketing, growth and data analysis.
Votex is one of these tools. It’s a poll bot for Discord and its popularity is growing by the day, so much so that it’s now being implemented by more than 100 servers. Why? Because it allows weighted polls among users based on their roles, it’s customisable and it’s free!
In this article we will guide you through the simple installation and set up of your first poll on Discord with this remarkable tool. But first off, let’s take a step back. You probably do not need to know what Discord is, but we’ll pretend you do for a brief second.
What is Discord?
Discord is an incredibly versatile platform that allows users to chat, speak and video call each other in real-time. It was born out of the desire among gamers to have a digital place where they could discuss the ongoing game, the strategies to go on, or even which game to get involved in next. It did not stay limited to that very long. It’s now been the domain of organizations of any kind, like DAOs, NFT projects, and even schools and other institutions. The main reason is that it seems perfect for tech savvy communities, even in its UX/UI, that somehow reminds a computer screen when a coding window is open.
But that is not the only reason. Discord allows for direct participation, which is a key requirement in the type of communities listed above (DAO’s D stands for decentralized, after all). And what speaks participation more than anything else? The possibility to vote!
Inclusion means votes; polls on Discord
In order to allow the various members to feel listened to and appreciated, which is ultimately the final test of participation, said members must take actual part in the decisions of the community or communities they belong to. To this end, polls are absolutely essential. So essential, that users added them to the platform long before Discord itself implemented the possibility on all its servers.
Poll bots started to emerge early on and were implemented on every server appearing as a member. Now, this was a highly requested feature because it allows participants to vote and admins to make informed decisions for the development of their projects. Decisions that otherwise might have resulted in part of the community feeling unheard and leaving.
Votex is one of these bots and its signature feature is weighted polls based on members’ roles.
More representativity on your servers, weighted polls and their value
The word “weighted poll” comes from statistics and it indicates a slight modification to the structure of the poll that allows for more inclusivity and for representation based on certain specific features. A normal poll asks the community or public of reference a question that in the intention of the proponent(s) will give indications on the general sentiment of the community concerning a certain topic or decision to be taken. The polls results can nonetheless be biased if a portion of the voters is underrepresented.
What does this mean? The most classical example involves the male and female population. Men and women are approximately equally distributed world wide. This means that 50% of the population is made of men and the remaining 50% of women. But, if in a poll the participants’ percentages are 70/30 (70% men and 30% women), this means that there is a gap between the real percentage of women and the percentage of women whose opinion is represented in the vote. This results in women being underrepresented.
Weighing the poll fixes this, in that a multiplier is applied to the underrepresented category, so that the gap is filled and the results of the poll are representative of the actual composition of the population. This is the signature feature of Votex, which allows the admins of the server(s) to apply multipliers to voters in order to get a better nuanced result, which responds to the necessities of the community.
A simple example of a gaming community will make things more clear. The multiplier can be used to basically assign added value to a member based on the role that member has in a game.
So, let’s say that in the game the main roles are:
- Beginner
- Apprentice
- Soldier
- King
An admin might decide that the multiplier for beginner is 1, for apprentice is 2, for soldier is 3 and for king is 5. This will mean that each vote expressed by each role will have to be multiplied by the value decided by the admin…and yes, a king’s vote will count five times more than a beginner’s.
Thus spoke the admin! And it’s finally time for some practice. In the following paragraph, we’ll guide you through the installation.
Votex, how to install your poll bot on Discord
First off, the general stuff. Votex displays six main /commands for the setting and managing of your poll:
/poll
This is the first command and it starts your poll. The following parameters will be needed:
- Question: this introduces the main theme you need to ask your community about
- Answers: this will allow you to list the possible options to answer you Question
- Expiration: this is the parameter by which you decide the whole duration of the poll
/stop
Self explanatory, this command interrupts your poll, and can be used at any time, even if the expiration has not been reached yet.
/cancel
This command allows the cancellation of the poll and its results. It’s different from a /stop command because it can also be used after the poll has ended.
/role
Around this command revolts the whole originality of Votex, because it introduces the parameters that will allow the weighing of your polls:
It comes with three parameters:
- Role: to mention the roles that will take part in the poll
- Allowed: to give permission to take part to the poll to all or only certain roles of your community
- Multiplier: elective but fundamental, this parameter is what gives this tool its peculiarity, since it assigns the multiplier to all the roles, thus “weighing” the poll
/roles
By this command you will be able to send a message to all the specified roles, informing the members of the settings you’ve applied to the poll
/embed
Another signature feature of Votex, this command will allow for customization of the appearance of your poll. It comes with three main parameters:
- Name: by which you give your embed a denomination
- Image: by which you determine the Embed’s image URL
- Color: by which you can determine the Embed’s color (either by its name, like YELLOW or by its hex code “#FFFF00”)
The preliminary information have been delivered to you, now we can proceed to actually install Votex.
Step 1: Info and initial setup of Votex
Get to know Votex, visit the relevant page at top.gg, and find all there is to know about Ziken Labs’ tool.
Step 2: Votex must be invited to your server
Votex appears as a member of your server, and as such must be invited, one server at a time. If you are the admin of more than one server and want to use Votex on all of them, you will have to perform this step for every server.
Step 3: 1st setting of permissions – server
Here you will give access to all the required permissions Votex will need to work on your server:
- Manage roles
- Manage channels
- Send messages
- Read the message history
- Use applications commands
Step 4: 2nd setting of permissions – channel
Now we must consent to the permissions that are required by the individual channel on which you want to carry out the poll:
- See channel
- Manage channel
- Send messages
- Attach files
- Add links
- Read the message history
- Use applications commands
After this operation, the commands we mentioned before will be displayed (/poll, /stop, /cancel etc).
Step 5: Set the roles and give them their multiplier
Here you can decide which roles will be active in the poll and which not, and most importantly, how much every vote of every role will be important, i. e. how much it’ll weigh. It’s the part in which you decide the multipliers for each role:
There are three parameters to be set at this point, we already covered them, they’re namely:
- Role: to mention the roles that will take part in the poll
- Allowed: to give permission to take part to the poll to all or only certain roles of your community
- Multiplier: elective but fundamental, this parameter is what gives this tool its peculiarity, since it assigns the multiplier to all the roles, thus “weighing” the poll
Important note: if you do not set a role, every member will be allowed to take part in the poll. If you set the roles, but do not set the multiplier, every role’s vote will have equal weight.
Step 6: Check before and after launch
You are always able to check the weight of the individual roles, both before and after the launch of your poll.
Step 7: Ok, shall we launch?
Now everything is ready, you have completed your poll setup and can launch it without further ado.
Step 8: Custom parameters, to make things way cooler
Choose the name, image, and color of your poll to make it distinctive and look better for your community members.
Step 9: Let things roll
This is the moment in which you admin can relax and let your community give you the information you need to carry out the right decisions for everyone: they’re called to vote, you just have to wait till the results roll in.
What makes Votex stand out?
As we said before, polls are a highly requested feature on Discord servers. So much so, that in April 2024, following the pestering of the users, the company introduced the possibility to set up polls on all of their servers. Apart from the insistence of the user base, Discord also found that using bots, which, as we saw, have to be invited to the servers as if they were members, could create a great deal of confusion.
But Votex is worth using nonetheless and here are four reasons:
- The signature feature: the weighted vote that Votex offers makes your polls much more representative and inclusive, and allows you to scale your project faster and better.
- Your style: the possibility to personalize name, picture and color will give your polls a touch of you, indirectly giving a sense of exclusivity for your members to revel in. Not to be underestimated.
- Decentralization: the members of your community(ies) will feel that they are actively taking part in the development of your project(s), which will result in greater participation.
- Easy to use: it’s really simple to implement, set and use.
To make things even better, the tool is free! Yes, it does not cost a dime!
It’s a wrap: You’re ready to use Votex
Communities on Discord thrive on participation. Each project that is born on the platform has some common trait, one of the most important ones being decentralization.
There is no decentralization without direct and fair participation of the members, and the best means to ensure this participation and fairness is through weighted polls.
Ziken Labs’ Votex is the go-to Discord poll bot for obtaining just that.