PollXT outperforms the default Joomla polls toy by far and seems to have no serious competitor in this area.
However, it might need some serious recoding, as it keeps on freezing Firefox 2.0.0.3 after a while. I can hardly finish even the simplest task without a hang.
It is in deed feature rich, but at this stage it requires loads of patience to work with.

Works exactly as described and does a superb job. The categories display in the frontend cam be toggled on/off from the Menu Item which links to the component.

The guys at joomlapolis.com are doing a superb job with CB, no one dares to doubt, but missing or overlooking a backend feature like this is almost gross. Most people who admin community driven sites are in fact site owners who perform all operations from the backend.
Congratulations to the developer who came up with this essential tool. I can finally approve and manage user avatars without having to login as superdamin from the frontend.
A huge A+.

I actually did not experience any major trouble while dealing with mkPostman, though it can be enhanced, just like most extensions overhere. It allows to create user groups, a very neat feature to send newsletters to specific audiences.

VFM is a very promising component, in that it provides eyecandy and a granular ACL which empowers site admins to set access levels on files per user or group, without patching any core file.

I'd just like a little detail to be modified. In the current version, most admin tasks take place in the frontend. I think it would be a lot better to handle these tasks in the backend, for the sake of convenience and consistency.