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Poll: What is your age?

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Re: Poll: What is your age?

#281

Post by mnicole »

arcatek wrote: post #274
mnicole wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in reality anyone with a hacker mentality should see that the poll is obviously based on the honor system While sure, this might be the case, it still doesn't negate the fact that fundamentally, HN's arrows (of all kinds) should be able to be "undone". Accidents happen, people are curious. We shouldn't blame the users for a system that is broken and relies on them to ignore long-standing standard UX practices when…

Actually, in a poll, you don't change your mind, it would kinda break the purpose :) In an ideal world, we should not even be allowed to see the results before voting, since it could bias us (it should not in this kind of poll, of course).

It isn't even necessarily about changing your mind, it's about misclicking. It's like filling in the wrong bubble of a Scantron form and the answer automatically being sent as soon as you put the pencil on paper. It shouldn't be making those assumptions until you verify that's the response you want to send. On multiple occasions I've clicked a radio button in a form thinking it was the most relevant to me before reading the rest of them (which is not really relevant to this poll in particular, but how the interaction should be treated regardless).

But I definitely agree the responses should not be visible until you've voted.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#282

Post by Jun8 »

bjhoops1 wrote: post #259
Jun8 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been here for some time and I usually agree/upvote pg's comments, not because of reverence to him or because I'm start-struck but because, well, the man is a well of wisdom (I regularly buy Hackers and Painters and give it away as presents to the young students I mentor. And OK, I may be a bit star-struck, too.) This is his first comment I disagreed completely and downvoted. As a personal policy I downvote any c…

Not sure what's more ridiculous - that you took the time to skew a perfectly reasonable poll, or that you expected anyone to understand your tortuous logic in doing so. Just because you personally don't like coffee doesn't mean you should go out of your way to defecate in someone else's mug.

I disagree that this was "a perfectly reasonable poll", from that pov I think my logic may not be that torturous.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#283

Post by Jun8 »

bkanber wrote: post #252
Jun8 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been here for some time and I usually agree/upvote pg's comments, not because of reverence to him or because I'm start-struck but because, well, the man is a well of wisdom (I regularly buy Hackers and Painters and give it away as presents to the young students I mentor. And OK, I may be a bit star-struck, too.) This is his first comment I disagreed completely and downvoted. As a personal policy I downvote any c…

This poll was optional, and you could have simply ignored it. Your action was exactly the type of thing PG's talking about. In the past, the community at large either would have been truthful or simply not responded. Now, a significant portion of the community is responding non-truthfully. Your motivation doesn't matter: whether it was "not believing in the honor system", or "protesting against the poll", or anything…

I thought I made my reasoning clear in my comment on why I chose not to ignore it. I disagree with having polls such as these on HN (as well as asking people about their gender and race).

According to your logic, people should just ignore posts on HN that they disagree with rather than writing comments, the "if you disagree, just leave" approach.

Maybe I overreacted and should have just commented on this poll and and not marked a wrong age bracket. OTOH, I at least commented on my motivation to to do. The motivation of the other $n people (currently 121-1 = 120 under 10) is mostly opaque.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#284

Post by WiseWeasel »

saulrh wrote: post #85
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.

How about an animated hacker mascot that provides helpful tutorials for features, complete with colorful highlighting and font changes to indicate important UI elements?

There's even a helpful js library for this, previously featured on HN:

https://www.smore.com/clippy-js

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#285

Post by WiseWeasel »

pg wrote: post #67
SCdF wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. That's a lot of <10 year olds...

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.

Make an announcement and color their names pink, so everyone knows they're dealing with under-10-year-olds when reading their comments.

Or maybe a little dunce cap icon next to their name.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#286

Post by WiseWeasel »

blablabla123 wrote: post #194
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.

It may sound odd but according to this http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-17.pdf more than 0.5% of the U.S. population is over 90 in 2010. In the poll it is 1.7%. Maybe it's fake, maybe tech people stay longer online...

Look at the curve though. Age should be a smooth bell curve, but here it spikes on the ends (even when accounting for the fact that the end choices potentially cover more than the 5 years covered by the other options), which is clear evidence of error.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#288

Post by moheeb »

ebbv wrote: post #263
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't nearly as interesting of a discussion as you think it is. I'm glad we found someone who can objectively decide what's interesting! Now you can suggest books and movies to me! Do you work for Netflix? But seriously, I never made a value judgement about the poll. The poll costs real time, and real money to host. But data from a poll is not a window. Adding noise into a poll is not breaking a window. This b…

They didn't just click in the 90 sections which, yes, were obviously not useful. They clicked everywhere else too, putting noise into the other fields. I get to decide this isn't interesting because I'm half of the discussion. And I'm telling you, this is boring.

You are now 1/3rd of the discussion and I find it interesting! Looks like you don't decide anything anymore!

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#289

Post by MartinCron »

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.

it's an ill wind that blows no good

Even if we can't count on the honor system, we can still count on occasional slivers of pure poetry. That's something.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#290

Post by bjhoops1 »

Jun8 wrote: post #282
bjhoops1 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what's more ridiculous - that you took the time to skew a perfectly reasonable poll, or that you expected anyone to understand your tortuous logic in doing so. Just because you personally don't like coffee doesn't mean you should go out of your way to defecate in someone else's mug.

I disagree that this was "a perfectly reasonable poll", from that pov I think my logic may not be that torturous.

I suppose if you really are convinced a poll is harmful.

Maybe a more apt analogy would have been knocking that Triple Whopper out of someone's hand before they clog their arteries? :P

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