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Most of the "Ask YC" questions get answers the asker did not expect, so a poll would do no good.
by andr 19y ago
Most of the "Ask YC" questions get answers the asker did not expect, so a poll would do no good.
- pg 19y agoThe creator of a poll can add new choices later, in response to comments.
- abstractbill 19y agoWouldn't the results then be biased in favor of the original choices (since they were available longer) making it hard to draw any conclusions?
- anewaccountname 19y agoNo, because it would be added in according to the scientific method.
- inklesspen 19y agowhat on earth does that mean?
- anewaccountname 19y agoIt was a joke.
- mixmax 19y agoThat would skew the results. If it was possible to downvote choices a new choice could maybe start out with an average of the other choices. But since this isn't possible I don't see an obvious way of resolving this. Note by the way that the same mechanism applies to comments, particularly since the comments that are added later and therefore have no votes are displayed at the bottom, thus making it proportionally harder for them to make it to the top of the thread before it falls off the frontpage. The last argument assumes that users start from the top of the page, and don't always make it through all the comments to the bottom. A behaviour that I think is quite common - I know I do it...
- mnemonicsloth 19y agoResults of these polls are already skewed because the respondents are self-selected.
- mixmax 19y agoYou're right - but that's a problem that can't really be solved, unless we start hijacking unsuspecting random people to answer. :-)
- robg 19y agoLove the line break for a new choice. Could you automatically add in letters or numbers to delineate them? It would make discussion around each choice a bit easier, especially if there are four choices or more.
- robg 19y agoFeature request: Allow author to make choices exclusive or multi-response. By that I mean, some polls http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126903 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126903 are designed to allow voters to vote on multiple choices. While others: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923 should only allow for a singular response.
- ratsbane 19y ago1) I like the way you implemented the poll. 2) But I'd like to be able to change a vote - even if just for a few minutes. I upvoted the third choice and then upvoted the second just to see if I could vote for more than one - but that was just a test. I wanted to change my vote but couldn't. 3) What if you showed votes as a ratio of votes to (quantity of unique visitors since the choice was added)? This would balance the scores of questions added later. This might be interesting with comments, too. A really good comment added to a posting that almost everyone has seen doesn't get recognized so much now.