User:Filll/Peaceful Polling Pledge/Questioning voters

Questioning participants at RfAs and similar polls about their reasons for taking a given position can be useful on occasion, but this interrogation is not always useful to the community or the candidate.

• Only rarely will a poll participant who is the subject of an "aggressive inquisition" change their position in response to outside queries.

• Potential participants might be discouraged from giving any input because of a negative atmosphere this kind of questioning can produce. This is not beneficial to the community or the project.

• It is possible that aggressive questioning will spur more "oppose" votes purely out of irritation. There is no evidence that creating a hostile environment around a poll will necessarily be beneficial to a candidate.

• Occasionally intense questioning will reveal negative information about the candidate. While this can be helpful to the community, there are downsides to this sort of event as well. Not only can it cause hurt feelings and ill will, and potentially be unfair to the candidate, but it can represent a substantial cost to those who contributed the unfavorable posts. Those participants who disclosed this material are then sometimes subject to attacks, threats and can be the targets of vigilante justice mounted in an effort to seek revenge for divulging uncomplimentary data.