Support for the max_selections poll parameter

[timothee-haudebourg]

Your use case

What would you like to do?

I would like to configure polls where participants can select multiples options.

Why would you like to do it?

This is useful to achieve consensus when each participant have no preference between multiple options. For instance to settle a meeting time/date.

How would you like to achieve it?

MSC3381 already allows for such poll through the max_selections parameter that can be set to allow more than one vote. I believe this is just a matter of graphical interface.

Have you considered any alternatives?

No response

Additional context

No response

[rihardsk]

It seems that this also might currently be preventing properly bridging whatsapp polls via mautrix-whatsapp – currently bridged polls show up in a plaintext fallback mode.

EDIT: mautrix-whatsapp polls were showing up in plaintext for me because i hadn't enabled sending them in MSC3381 compatible format. But there's still the issue that the bridge supports max_selections while element-web doesn't which leads to broken polls on element.

[EwoutH]

I would also really like allowing multiple answers in polls!

It would be especially useful for picking dates, where participants could then select all the dates available.

[EwoutH]

The announcement blog Element welcomes Polls! from February 2022 already put multi-selection polls on the roadmap:

Allowing multi-selection polls, so respondents can choose more than one response

This issue has racked up quite some likes, the community is clearly interested in it. So kindly tagging @florianduros, @t3chguy and @MidhunSureshR to take this feature again under consideration!

[t3chguy]

@EwoutH the people you tagged are IC's (Individual Contributors) - they do not drive the roadmap or work planning

[EwoutH]

@t3chguy thanks for getting back! Could you loop in some of the people who do?

[t3chguy]

that's what this repo is for

[timvahlbrock]

I would also love to see this being implemented and I can tell from related issues that like me other people would be willing to contribute code for this, if it was taken into consideration. However, I currently haven't got much hope for that, as my last PR on an Element repo has been kindly forwarded to the design team three months ago and unfortunately I haven't heard anything since.

btw: there seems to be another poll related issue #2295 here, which was in this repo before this one and is referenced in the polls wishlist #533, but I think this issue has been more popular.