Frequently Asked Questions
What is Oiam for?
Oiam was created with two goals in mind:
- to help you explore the marketplace of opinions existing in our world,
- to help you compare your beliefs against popular views.
Unlike social media, its purpose is not to broadcast your views or help you build new connections. Our focus is on (self-)discovery and perspective.
How does Oiam work?
The main activity on Oiam is answering polls, which are always simple questions with multiple-choice answers, such as Agree or Disagree. We present new polls to you in an easy-to-digest form right on the home page. If you don't like a poll you can skip it instead of answering it. This helps us determine what kind of topics interest you. Once you answer a few polls we start comparing your answers to other people and show you various analytics, such us who is the nearest to you in terms of your views, or which of your answers are the most unusual. We even generate a number representing how unique your views are in general. All this is displayed on your profile page, where you can drill into the data and investigate other people's views.
Why should I care?
If you ever wondered what your purpose is in the world then we think there is something for you here. There are questions that are seldom asked, because they are awkward to bring up in a casual conversation, yet sometimes you wish you could ask them. Not necessarily to get a true answer – some questions have many answers and none of them satisfactory – but to find out what other people actually think. You might want to see if there are people who think like you, to compare your values or to challenge your consensus bias. Oiam asks you questions like "what do you believe in" and lets you ask such questions of others, all in the safety of anonymity.
How is Oiam different from Facebook?
Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram for that matter, are designed to track and engage with your social connections. If views are discussed, it's only in free form, i.e. in the form of a post or a comment to another post, which makes them harder to trace and distill into concrete statements or statistics. Oiam is designed for the interaction to be centered on views, rather than on acquaintance. We limit the interaction to a simple declaration of one's stance; we don't provide a platform for debate or promotion of specific views.
How is Oiam different from X?
X, Bluesky and other microblogging services put less emphasis on social connections than Facebook, but their content is still free-form, which means it's hard to find views that are interesting to you. Interactions on X are focused on specific topics, which may align with a specific view you want to explore, but similarly to Facebook, the conversation will not tell you how many people actually subscribe to this view.
How is Oiam different from Reddit?
The structure of Reddit encourages purposeful conversation and helps with locating a topic of interest, but just like with Facebook and X, you can only do it for one view at a time, and it's hard to tell how prevalent this particular view is. Oiam, for one thing, lets you quickly declare any number of views and know immediately the proportion of people who hold all of them. (See the question about clubs below)
Why do you want users to be anonymous?
Once users reveal their identity, they become vulnerable to judgement and prejudice. It discourages them from being genuine. Oiam aims to be a platform where people can express or explore theirs and other people's beliefs freely and honestly. Views are not meant to be targeted at individuals or promoted in any way. Conversely, individuals are not meant to be targeted for their views. We believe that anonymity helps us achieve this goal.
If everyone is anonymous, how do you stop trolls, extremists and other anti-social behaviour?
Oiam believes in free speech, so we consciously tolerate extremist views, as long as they are not expressed solely to cause offence. It's part of our mission to permit space to those who think they might have unusual views. For users who don't want to see NSFW (Not Safe For Work) material, such as coarse language or sexual terminology, we have a community-driven "Safety Filter" in place. Users can voluntarily flag their content as "not safe", which will prevent it from showing to those who have this filter enabled (it's enabled by default, by the way; you can disable it in your account settings). If you see any content that you deem unsafe, you can flag it yourself and it will stop showing for all users who have the filter enabled (but also notify Oiam and the original author). This mechanism is also intended to be used against trolls and anti-social behaviour. Accounts which engage in such behaviour will be banned.
I've answered some polls, now what?
Once you answer a few polls, take a look at your profile page. Oiam will start showing you users with highly similar and highly dissimilar views to you, as well as other information specific to you. Based on that information Oiam can also start showing you polls that you might find interesting, helping you map out your own niche in the global marketplace of ideas.
Another thing that will happen is that your Oiam score should be going up. This is our measure of how unique you are based on the answers you've given. You can dig into the differences that set you apart by studying your profile page.
Can I create my own polls?
Of course! Not only that, you are encouraged to. To do that, first use the search field on the home page to try to locate the poll you want to create. This helps prevent duplicates. Right under the search results you will find buttons to create a new poll, survey or a club.
How do I create multiple polls? It's tedious having to go back to the home page every time
Right after creating a poll, the confirmation message at the top of the screen offers you an option to create another poll immediately. Please use it with caution, though, as this way of creating a poll doesn't check if a similar one already exists.
What are Surveys for?
Oiam surveys are just like any other surveys. They simply collect a number of questions (polls in Oiam terminology) into a logical set, for example questions about the British Monarchy. This allows you to refer to this set in various situations, e.g. you can post a link to the survey in a forum to invite people to answer these specific questions. Oiam also allows you to convert a survey into a club (see below).
What are Clubs for?
A club in Oiam is a group of people who gave the same answers to a set of polls. Once you define what these polls and answers are (which become the club's manifest) Oiam will automatically add these users to the club. This gives you an easy way to define and address the set of people who have specific views, like your own. Clubs can evolve; you can change the manifest at any time and its membership will update automatically.
My question isn't here. Where can I ask it?
There are two ways:
- On the contact form
- If you are a registered user, you can also leave feedback on the feedback poll.