One stupid question. What’s the point of the voting option: „ I’d prefer an alternative where mixed gender teams would have more chance to be selected“. Ithink that the question is clearly only about championships in which teams register and first have to qualify in order to take part. So how is this supposed to work with the higher probabilities of being selected for mixed teams? In the context of championships it makes no sense to ask if teams could be selected or not
Every team has to qualify in regional qualifier to then play euros etc. So for me there are only two options as an answer. Either Yes or No (and maybe just to test it next year and then see). I don’t get the point for the other answers.
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i guess it was proposed there as an option since its z type of positive balancing we can already see a lot on tournament , its true that it would be a bit akward to implement as qualifier process BUT WHO KNOWS 
thanks for your constructive critic.
i agree that these two items are not clearly explained.
i also know that when the questionnary was created by Jojo and Woods, they wanted to include the alternative proposals they ve heard from other players.
for now, imo, the most important is to focus on the good will and good faith.
fill the questionnary even if its not perfectly formulated.
if none of the 6 items one might chose fits your opinions, there s a space “other” so you can freely propose other alternatives in a better and more concrete formulation.
pajac, personnally i ve understood “yes but gradually” as making part of a YES group, but certainly the “gradually” is confusing.
august, i heard about a proposition that could fit this item.
if these items can be explained in more detailed way, would be much appreciated.
it could be done by the quest authors, or the players who initially envisioned them,
or also by player who maybe already filled the questionnary and selected one of these 2 items, the ve certainly see better than me what it means.
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[important stuff]
It is not complaining; I find it hard to make a good poll, and I’m glad someone created one. I just want to point out that making any decision from that poll will be controversial.
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Based on current results (I assume they will stay the same) and the ambiguity of answers, it will be really controversial to make one decision (mandatory mixed) or the other (nonmandatory mixed). Too many votes cannot be classified as strong yes or strong no; it means that no matter what the decision will be, a significant group of people could feel cheated or tricked.
For me, “yes, gradually” is as much part of a yes as no - Maybe some wildcard spots are reserved for gender-mixed teams (so “no” for mixed euros) but next year more or in main tournament? Or perhaps now 1 Flinta in team is required, and next year, at least 2 (so “yes” for mixed euros)? The same problem is with “I would prefer.” What does it mean ?! If you could select only yes or no, what would you choose?
Explaining these answers now is not a solution, some people already made that votes and it is hard to expect that they everybody will get back to the poll to correct it 
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i see no reason people wouldnt be able to come back and change their answers, if they see that the ambiguous formulation led them to chose a wrong option. the questionnary is modifiable. i tried with my own vote.
what do you think if instead of being pessimist and invalidating it, we try to do something useful to make this questionnary a bit more valid? at the end, no matter our opinions, i guess everybody would be interested in knowing what the comunity thinks overal.
why do you think that adding supplemental explanations to the ambiguous items wouldnt help?
if some people already clicked they certainly knew why. on the other side, those who didnt vote yet could see clearly what is ment.
i m sure that nobody means to sabotage this initiative by invalidating it right? so let’s brainstorm a bit about how to improve it.
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I didn’t say they won’t be able to; I just expressed doubt about their willingness to do so - most people don’t like polls, so it is hard to convince them to fill it out once and much more challenging to persuade them to correct it - that’s just my opinion.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t help to add a supplemental explanation. It will help but It will not make it perfect or good enough - it won’t correct previous answers. I noted that answers are ambiguous in the current form, and I expressed an opinion that using that poll to decide with a current vote distribution will be very controversial. Even if we add supplemental explanations to proposed answers, how will we classify handwritten answers?
@mironova_e I don’t think that it is nice to twist someone’s words like that - for sure, it does not create a welcoming basis for brainstorming.
I don’t have a solution. I would be more than happy to present it if I had. I believe bringing the club-based structure back to life at EHBA and using it to make decisions (clubs have their votes) will be better, but it is not a silver bullet. Such a poll is excellent and valuable for building some landscape, but it is not enough to decide - that’s just my opinion.
Such a decision is really hard to make. No matter how transparent, clear, fair and square the process will be, it will bring a lot of negative emotions. As far as I know, we should instead strive to minimise it.
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I think it is possible to imagine a system to increase the chance of being selected for a mixed team without making it mandatory mixed.
I didn’t give it much thought and to be honest I voted for mandatory mixed 
but it could be something like: For each qualifyers for a given championship, the minimum number of mixed team qualified must reflect the proportion of mixed team that participated in the qualification, and it could be the responsability of the country to find a system to respect this proportion.
Eg, for a country with 4 spots for Euros, where 15 teams participate in the qualifiers, in which 4 are mixed. It means approximately 1/4 of the teams are mixed, hence one spot is reserved for one mixed team. To make it happen, it could be somthing like: the 3 first teams are qualified anyway, and the fourth spot goes to the first mixed team non qualified already. If there was no mixed team in the 3 first, than there will be only 1 mixed team qualified, if there was a mixed team in the 3 first, than there will be 2 mixed teams qualified.
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in that case for exemple , if all mixed teams are ranked 13th ,14th, and 15th , it would then send to euro team 1st ,2nd ,3rd and 13th , which imo strays too far from an accurate representation of one country levels , thats why i rather have mandatory mixed rather than some weird ratio / quota experiments.
these systems are nice to include more mixed team in some tournaments tho !
shouldnt th e season of tournaments that teams get onto to qualify from country qualifiers to euro to worlds needs to showcase still the most skilled players ? , or you kinda loose the purpose of aiming at being "the world champions of bike polo " ?
i know there is also a claim that "bike polo is not diverse because of the lack of diversity showcased in such tournaments " but isnt it forcing a bit the diversity and altering too much the real level of those teams that gets qualified ?
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Would you have the same argument about another mandatory mixed sport?
Mixed double tennis comp do not remove the competitiveness of the game (even tho levels of the top 10 women would hardly get into the top 100 men despite being both pro athletes)
You can find examples of how people play other sports here
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my argument is that i prefer mixed mandatory , im not sure if you read that part right.
what removes competitiveness is the automatic qualification of one team fitting a quota , is mixed tennis doing that ? or other mixed gender sports ? i m reading your wiki link but its not really talking about slots allocations .
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“Gradually” let some place to imagination for sure but something like that could work for this item :
Year 0 (2024)
- Anoucing the plan. Nothing mandatory in year 0
Year 1
- Regional qualifer mixed mandatory
Year 2
- Regional qualifer mixed mandatory
- euro/na/asia/other mixed mandatory
Year 3
- Regional qualifer mixed mandatory
- euro/na/asia/other mixed mandatory
- worlds mixed mandatory
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Does it mean that “non-mixed teams” need to go through wildcard or get some kind of an “extra spot”?
“Extra spot” = organizers / current champs etc.
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I guess.
Or could also means that a qualified mixed team from Regional selection could still form a non-mixed team for euro/worlds.
Maybe it could be the other way around, year 1 Worlds mandatory, then goes all the way to regional in year 3.
Makes more sense, maybe.
Meaning :
Year 0 (2024)
- Anoucing the plan. Nothing mandatory in year 0
Year 1
- Worlds mixed mandatory
Year 2
- Euro/na/asia/other mixed mandatory
- worlds mixed mandatory
Year 3
- Regional qualifer mixed mandatory
- Euro/na/asia/other mixed mandatory
- worlds mixed mandatory
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how does it make any sense to do different formats through one season ? it is as comprimising as throwing squad qualifiers and then going back to 3v3 for worlds.
i see only two realistic options :
running a mixed mandatory circuit paralel to the already established one
or
having the main whbpc circuit mandatory mixed , and then a side of non mixed mandatory tournaments
in both case the whole polo crowd gets to play tournaments , but obviously the shine is stronger on the “mixed gender sport” if the main whbpc circuit is mandatory , this visibility will encourage more womens to join the sport and in the long term balance the numbers and gap levels .
i feel like people want to shortcut straight to polls without having “annoying discussions” where loud people (like me ) sucks all the air , but in the end we will have to do it !
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Yes i admit it’s pretty bad actually.
It’s less bad if you do regional mixed and then have worlds no mixed, because you’ll drop nobody and non-mixed team will try to get to the world via wildcard or special slot.
But it’s weak.
So maybe the most realistic way of interpreting gradually is just :
year 0 : Anoucing the plan
year 0+x : Worlds circuit mandatory
Define x (aim for 2025, 2026 ?)
Hello, here’s a bit of context and explanation :
This poll’s goal is to take the temperature in the community, see where people are at, regarding this new hot topic.
The aim is to collect data, and see how legit all these questions are. The aim is not to bring solutions and to take decisions right away. We don’t have any power, nor any will to do so.
This is just designed to be a starting point for a legit committee to work on this matter.
So to make it very simple we tried to find some possible answers for people that don’t have clear Yes/No answer for this yet.
“Yes but gradually” in my mind was like “I think Yes, but I want players and organisations to have some time to prepare, to find the right approach (whatever it may be, again we’re not debating solutions in this poll”
“I’d prefer an alternative” sounded to me more like “I think No, but I still want some changes to be done to lean towards more representation”
These two options still mean you want a change towards better representation of the flinta community in championships, the first just leans towards the mandatory aspect, and the second goes against it.
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i ll also lay down some context from my perspective: i was trying to engage i a few conversation through here and telegram about inclusivity , and suddenly all these talks got shut down for the sake of giving time to more constructive ways to approach it , this poll was mention as a way to go.
saying this poll has no decisional power is true in a way but also , what if a majority of bike polo players worldwide actually answer it ? the legitimacy will come from the common agreement , if 70% of the world polo crowd answer, and 60% vote for a clear yes to mandatory , you could expect this poll to actually shape some future.
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sure, but i think it’s still important to know how the worlds organisation comittee will use it, or not, to make the next worlds format approved.
I opened a thread here :
- Jojo have planned and announced the closure of the quest on 15 march = tomorrow
- until now there s about 250 votes.
- i suppose the quest is not visible enough and 250 votes is not representative of the total polo comunity ( question: what is the actual size of the polo scene??? who knows? )
- I WOULD LIKE TO ASK TO THE QUEST AUTHORS ( Jojo, woods) TO PROLONGATE THE VOTING PERIOD in order to get as close as possible to the overall opinion of the comunity.
- I also would like to ask any turney organiser having a poloverse page to link the quest in their page, so in can reach more players.
- i ve understood that until today all the major changes in format of world, regional, national champs and in rules were done without popular voting, without any prove of popular agreement. i dont adhere to this kind of procedure. i think that if changes are to be done or a status quo is to be maintained, both should represent the interest of the simple majority of the total number of players.
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Speaking as the rep on the World Bike Polo Organising Committee from Australia, I agree that the best way to make changes is with wide community involvement. That’s why I setup a global vote in 2018 on the format for the 2019 worlds. And that’s why I will advocate for a vote this time.
I have yet to see any objections to votes from the other representatives. But please bear with us.
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