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A poll? Who cares. Unless you are 12 years old. I use a phone fitting my needs.

by Yaggo 16y ago

ukdm 16y ago
Wasn't it accompanied by quite a well-written article? That's what I'm reading on the forums: "It was a huge article. For quite a while, iPhone 4 was ahead. I did a few page refreshes and EVO 4G was starting to catch up really fast. Next time I refreshed, the article disappeared without a trace....down the memory hole, like it never existed...many hundreds of comments in a couple of hours."
- weego 16y ago
  Maybe so, but as your parent post says who genuinely cares? That article and poll outcome are not going to be some holy grail that changes any consumer's mind about what to buy, the bias of the employee in the shop that 90% of people who want a phone go to for advice are far more effective. The other 10% are the ones reading a tech journal online and already have a fixed opinion on what they would get, so the playground analogy of "I want my favourite to win" is very well fitting to this situation. Let's also not kid ourselves that there was some genuine gold or masterpiece of literature in the comments either (more likely some variant on the laughably naive "when will the world wake up and realise that they DON'T WANT A CLOSED PHONE OS"); the entire world would be better off if stuff like this wasn't even given the oxygen of publicity.
jgrahamc 16y ago
Given how fixable (http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/british-computer-society-pioneers-vote.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/british-computer-society-pioneer...) many online polls are, who cares?
- mahmud 16y ago
  According to TIME magazine, the point of online polls is Moot.
  - thenduks 16y ago
    We should take a poll to find out for sure.
- pohl 16y ago
  Even if a given online poll is never actually fixed in practice, they're still seriously bad quantitative measurement if they use a self-selected sample of people. You're not even able to say that n% of Engadget readers felt some way, because the population of people who happen to show up while the survey is open is still not randomly selected within that demographic: what day of the week did you post it? Did someone with an axe to grind promote the blog post for you on another site, on facebook, or some IRC channel...on Colbert? Respondents have to be randomly selected, and this is widely known. But since polls generate traffic and engage the readership everybody looks the other way. Even on esteemed sites like HN where everybody should know better - although I have faith that it's not done here for the purpose of generating traffic. I'm an old fart, and "journalism" is an accolade that I would never bestow upon a techno-lust blog. Still, this event is dubious. But it's not like the poll was actual quantitative measurement, so the world didn't lose anything of value beyond whatever dubious value it had to fanbois and rabid detractors alike.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

A poll? Who cares. Unless you are 12 years old. I use a phone fitting my needs.

by Yaggo 16y ago

A poll? Who cares. Unless you are 12 years old. I use a phone fitting my needs.

ukdm 16y ago

Wasn't it accompanied by quite a well-written article? That's what I'm reading on the forums: "It was a huge article. For quite a while, iPhone 4 was ahead. I did a few page refreshes and EVO 4G was starting to catch up really fast. Next time I refreshed, the article disappeared without a trace....down the memory hole, like it never existed...many hundreds of comments in a couple of hours."

weego 16y ago
Maybe so, but as your parent post says who genuinely cares? That article and poll outcome are not going to be some holy grail that changes any consumer's mind about what to buy, the bias of the employee in the shop that 90% of people who want a phone go to for advice are far more effective. The other 10% are the ones reading a tech journal online and already have a fixed opinion on what they would get, so the playground analogy of "I want my favourite to win" is very well fitting to this situation. Let's also not kid ourselves that there was some genuine gold or masterpiece of literature in the comments either (more likely some variant on the laughably naive "when will the world wake up and realise that they DON'T WANT A CLOSED PHONE OS"); the entire world would be better off if stuff like this wasn't even given the oxygen of publicity.

jgrahamc 16y ago

Given how fixable (http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/british-computer-society-pioneers-vote.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/british-computer-society-pioneer...) many online polls are, who cares?

mahmud 16y ago
According to TIME magazine, the point of online polls is Moot.
- thenduks 16y ago
  We should take a poll to find out for sure.
pohl 16y ago
Even if a given online poll is never actually fixed in practice, they're still seriously bad quantitative measurement if they use a self-selected sample of people. You're not even able to say that n% of Engadget readers felt some way, because the population of people who happen to show up while the survey is open is still not randomly selected within that demographic: what day of the week did you post it? Did someone with an axe to grind promote the blog post for you on another site, on facebook, or some IRC channel...on Colbert? Respondents have to be randomly selected, and this is widely known. But since polls generate traffic and engage the readership everybody looks the other way. Even on esteemed sites like HN where everybody should know better - although I have faith that it's not done here for the purpose of generating traffic. I'm an old fart, and "journalism" is an accolade that I would never bestow upon a techno-lust blog. Still, this event is dubious. But it's not like the poll was actual quantitative measurement, so the world didn't lose anything of value beyond whatever dubious value it had to fanbois and rabid detractors alike.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]