Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: What is your age?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 318 posts

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#111

Post by icebraining »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #98
staunch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I think you're going to have to ban them. COPPA[1] makes it risky to have children under 13 on your web site without clear parental consent. ..you could let them send in a note from their parents to get unbanned :-) 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec...

If the First Amendment allows children to traffic in snuff films, Nazi regalia, bomb making manuals, Satanist tracts, classified nuclear information, and so forth while in a government school , it's safe to assume that COPPA is an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech. I am astonished that the ACLU has not already handed the FTC their ass.

"The ACLU has long been strongly supportive of COPPA. It is an important first step on the road to universal baseline privacy protections that ensure that every American—young and old—has meaningful control over their personal information online. (...) The ACLU protects privacy and free speech simultaneously, and the two interests are rarely at cross-purposes. Right now, COPPA is a great law and it does both effectively."

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-human-rights...

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#113

Post by RaSoJo »

pavanky wrote: post #55
MichaelApproved wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

759 days ago, 1448 days ago and 1867 days ago, respectively. I think it's OK to ask this question after 2 years. It's great to see how communities change over the years. Yes, I know it's not scientific at all and does a poor job of reflecting real demographics. But, if you think there's value in asking, then there's value in comparing previous answers.

It is also interesting to see what the median age is. I think it is between 25-30 now where as it was between 30-35 before. The ratio of teenagers also seems to be decreasing.

Ah good. I thought i was growing old. Now i realize everyone on HN is growing old with me.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#115

Post by mtdewcmu »

pg wrote: post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

The OP was asking for it when he included 90+ as an answer, don't you think? If you throw out the outliers, it looks plausibly accurate.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#116

Post by RobAley »

pg wrote: post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

PG, have you considered that many (though granted not all) of the "junk" answers may due to the hacker mentality, people asking themselves questions like "what if I choose more than one option, will it let me?", "what if I 'accidentally' select the wrong answer, can I undo it?", "What if too many people give implausible answers, can it be corrected for or will the poll be junked?" and so on. Hackers - tinkers and the curious.

Working in survey based stats all day, I can tell you that the easiest junk answers to filter out are the ones you're seeing at the moment. The plausible looking results you used to get aren't necessarily as good as you think they were.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#117

Post by arethuza »

davidjohnstone wrote: post #81
pg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have to think of something extra for them too. Any ideas? Bear in mind that about half the users under 10 are also over 90, so whatever it is can't conflict with extra large fonts.

Comic Sans was made for this.

Extra large Comic Sans!

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#118

Post by oulipo »

pg wrote: post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

This is a problem with all web polls but this is absolutely not a problem here: you can measure quite precisely the amount of noise in the answers (seems to be about 20 to 50 fake results per age range) and deduce the approximate correct values for all ranges (assuming people that give wrong answers lie uniformly in the answers :)

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#120

Post by mtdewcmu »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #70
pg wrote: post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

> However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. I never heard that phrase so I looked it up. For anyone else that's interested: http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/it%27s+an+ill+w... "This is said when things have gone wrong; the idea being that when bad things happen, there can also be some positive results."

I love a well-used idiom. It may have originated as a reference to sailing. http://www.answers.com/topic/it-s-an-ill-wind-that-blows-nob...
Post reply on HN