We did a poll to reset after the hack in 1.8, mainly because we had lost weeks of work, which pushed a lot of people (including myself) to vote for a reset. The poll was still close if I remember correctly.
The hardest part about the poll is making sure all players know about it. A lot of players do not frequent the forums, so conducting a poll exclusively on the forums could skew the results. During the poll, Crafty made a prompt in game, like the vote link, for the poll, which I thought was a fair way to go about it.
I think giving the poll an active week of voting OR advertising for a week with in-game server messages when the poll will take place, would be the most accurate gauge of player opinions.
Of course all of this is pure speculation and opinion, ultimately the choice is up to Crafty.