21–30 of 64 posts
Otherwise, it's just people trying to take a temperature. It doesn't bother me, as the polls I notice are typically in some way relevant to the community at large.
I think most of us would agree that the quality of participants (and their participations) here on HN is a refreshing change from the rest of online communities (Ya, I know, it was better before, quality degrading, yada yada yada, how original).
The point is, we generally like the people here and we want to know more, profile more (doesn't it fit with the mindset of the community?). This is why we care about favorite languages, primary OS, (expect a favorite browser poll soon) and the sort.
In a way, every poll results from people wanting to know, what tools do all theses cool people use/prefer/promote ...
One good thing about polls is they do bring a good discussion and a nice demographic insight, when they are not overused.
For example, had you asked the question, as "Do people mind the surveys on HN?", I suspect, you may have got a different response.
Particularly, I liked both the polls today, as I was curious to know about how long people had been programming for and the default OS, which BTW was not a surprise.
> Is it just me or is it a cheap way to flood the front page for a bit of karma? It's just you. As soon as somebody determines why HN karma is worth a damn, then it's a problem.
There's an ebb and flow to these things on Hacker News. I'd suggest sampling at a lower rate to determine the flavor of Hacker News. Right now there are a few polls, in a couple of days there are likely to be none. In general, I've noticed that there are many circumstances where lowering your sampling rate leads to greater happiness and more interesting surprises (for example, frequency of news reading, email checkin…
It's like complaining about down-votes; it's unfortunate that a quality comment is down-voted but it usually corrects itself with a little time.