People discussing an issue is the only way to come to a consensus.

Polls are not consensus. Polls are a bunch of people voting for whichever option they think is best with nobody arriving at any sort of agreement in the end (i.e., majority rule). Whoever manages to dredge up the most votes "wins" (and with the voluntary response and small sample size, forums polls are hardly accurate). Polls tend to ignore minority viewpoints and tend to arrive at solutions which (depending on the number and type of poll options) are agreeable primarily to the proponents of the winning option, which, with enough poll options, is likely to not even be a majority.

The way to come to a consensus is to do basically exactly what you're doing now with these polls, but minus the polls. Bring up your issue, propose whatever you want (although starting out with proposals can stymie more interesting discussion on some issues), then have a discussion about the issue and arrive at a consensus that's generally agreeable to as many parties as possible. Not a voting result that you can use as a bat to beat everybody else with into doing whatever it says.