What do you think of online polls?

• Don't care for them.

• Vote on them whenever I can.

• They're unscientific, so why bother?

We try to come up with interesting polls each day and they've been a great success for the most part in building our Web traffic and allowing readers to have their say.

Our first poll, as near as we can tell, ran in April 2008, and since then, they've popped up as regular features on other local media Web sites. We try to pick out the story that readers are talking about most and craft questions and answers that will draw the most votes. The key is to make the question irresistible to answer and the responses provocative and clever.

A poll that draws 4,000 or more votes is considered a success but we are regularly surpassing that mark and in the past five months, our most popular poll occurred on Dec. 11, when we asked readers to vote for U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie's replacement once he resigns from Congress and runs for governor. The votes totaled 9,866.

Rounding out the top 10 were the Aug. 8 poll about Gov. Linda Lingle announcing state layoffs (9,755 votes), reactions to the University of Hawai'i football season (9,636), coach Greg McMackin's gay slur (9,567), the proposal to rename a popular beach park after President Obama (9,444 votes), Lingle's plan for furloughs (8,132) and Honolulu Police Department officers arrested on marijuana charges in Las Vegas (7,907). The next most popular were Michelle Wie's future (7,628), the HGEA tentative agreement with the state (7,521) and the reaction to the president's vacation to Hawai'i this month (7,005).

We goofed recently when we polled readers on who they thought was to blame for the suicide of Robert Yagi, 71, who attempted to kill his terminally ill wife at Castle Hospital. A friend of the Yagi family called to complain about what she thought was the insensitive nature of the poll and we took it down.

The polls are not scientific and readers can rack up multiple votes with each visit to the site, but they are a fun way to gauge public opinion and keep our fans coming back to www.honoluluadvertiser.com.