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Poll: How Old Are You?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How Old Are You?

#71

Post by [deleted] »

ycombinete wrote: post #39
sph wrote: post #7

The fact that the ranges aren't equal makes it pretty useless to parse, unless entered in a spreadsheet later, and I couldn't be bothered to do that. There's no reason to have one category for the 5 years 16-20, and the most common age group of Internet savvy working age adults to be lumped in two 10 year "26-35" and "36-45" ranges. Oh well. It's just for fun I guess.

I posted this exact poll this week, with proper ranges, but deleted it when I saw that HN had re-organised the items seemingly at random (just as it must have done here as well).

[deleted]

Re: Poll: How Old Are You?

#72

Post by xtracto »

Tomte wrote: post #58
twothamendment wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first programming job was at a survey place. Once some high paid survey writer flew in to get one out in a hurry. I was told to sit with him and build it while he designed it. Ever since then I've though about surveys differently. The level of thought that he put into not only each question, but every word. Considering how one question might influence another would cause a change in order, etc. Anyway, it was fasc…

Basically what every student in the social sciences learns. Every introductory textbook on empirical methods has a chapter on surveys and questionnaire design, and there are also specialized books just on that. Tech would sometimes really do well in listening to people outside its field.

There are real complexities in designing a survey right. As you say, it's a subject of multiple books and even PhD dissertations.

I worked for 4 years with a team of mainly social scientists (agricultural economists, rural development researchers, etc) for a huge EU project that included plenty of surveys for 6 locations in different countries/languages. The effort to design the necessary surveys right and in different languages/cultures really amazed me. Some of the teams even got (good) papers out of it. There are so many biases that you can have with the wrong questions, groupings or even question orders.

One example I remember is that while in Germany (Altmark region) you could go straight to the people and ask them about their use of policy programme money, what had worked and what hadn't. You could not do the same in Croatia or in Bulgaria (we had study sites in both places), but had to layout questions differently, to get useful answers.

Re: Poll: How Old Are You?

#73

Post by that »

jeswin wrote: post #52

36-45 is just as big as the 26-35 group, I must say I'm surpised! I'm close to 42 and I've been here for 15 years now (as a reader more than as a contributor); when I joined I certainly didn't expect to be here for that long. Testament to the quality of discussion, although it has gotten a bit partisan of late. I was on Slashdot prior to that for about 10 years. What was most appealing about HN was the information de…

The HN demographics distribution is starting to skew older over time, compared to this older poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734

Reddit stats are had to come by, but I wonder if the users who use it for mostly news and text rather than interesting images/videos/memes (would old.reddit.com users be a good proxy?) has aged the same way.

I think "faster" and "flashier" content wins out in social media, so for example the text interaction people have left for twitter and Substack. Heck, compare pg's amount of public comments here vs all his content on Twitter, sama when he was still with YC, the other YC people, etc. (I mean they probably have alts but still).

I expect that certain ways HN was designed are becoming less attractive as a platform for the population at large, like the 80-character title limit so that it could fit a title in a single terminal line (although I personally love this more than I hate it, keeps things to-the-point).

I wonder what the TikTok version of the HN-type community is like?

Re: Poll: How Old Are You?

#75

Post by sph »

Beltalowda wrote: post #66
sph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this is a forum for entrepreneurs and software engineers, it does not target the world demographic. To be honest, I don't understand what "they develop faster" means either. One year of age is objectively the same length whether you're 10 or 90. What has growth speed and brain development got to do with anything?

> this is a forum for entrepreneurs and software engineers While the demographics certainly skew in that direction, one of the nice things about HN is that it's not just software people. While I certainly comment more on software-related matters because that's where my expertise is, the largest value I get out of HN is from non-software/IT stories and the comments on those. So I would strongly disagree with "this is…

> So I would strongly disagree with "this is a forum for entrepreneurs and software engineers". I'd probably stop coming here if that was the case.

It's a constant tug of war that. I would prefer if there were more deeply technical posts than general news posts one could read on Ars Technica, but I appreciate the anarchic "if people vote for it, it's good enough" policy this forum has.

Re: Poll: How Old Are You?

#76

Post by jemmyw »

that wrote: post #73
jeswin wrote: post #52

36-45 is just as big as the 26-35 group, I must say I'm surpised! I'm close to 42 and I've been here for 15 years now (as a reader more than as a contributor); when I joined I certainly didn't expect to be here for that long. Testament to the quality of discussion, although it has gotten a bit partisan of late. I was on Slashdot prior to that for about 10 years. What was most appealing about HN was the information de…

The HN demographics distribution is starting to skew older over time, compared to this older poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 Reddit stats are had to come by, but I wonder if the users who use it for mostly news and text rather than interesting images/videos/memes (would old.reddit.com users be a good proxy?) has aged the same way. I think "faster" and "flashier" content wins out in social media, so…

It'll be like HN. I don't see where else it can go in terms of media delivery. Nothing seems faster than text to skim through. I could see an ML trained for your specific requirements so only the stories you like surface. I must click on 10% of the headlines and then engage with 10% of those, so that would save time. Then the text/commenting interface would be much the same.

Re: Poll: How Old Are You?

#79

Post by zaphirplane »

cesarb wrote: post #64
zaphirplane wrote: post #20

What’s the point of this ? And will there be a follow up poll “which month were you born on” ?

I don't know what was the intention of the one who posted this poll, but for us in computing, it's relevant to know what we have experienced. For instance, if you were born last century, there's a good chance that you've personally experienced MS-DOS, Windows 95, and floppy disks; someone born this century might have started their computing life without having to worry about CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, high memory, and…

we can interact with comments on the insight and value they provide and not thru the lens that 23% of HN poll responders used windows 95
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