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Poll: Did you know that HN allows you to make polls?
It isn't obvious, but it seems like you can!
The link to do so is here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
- zeristor 5y agoMaybe if there were a filter criteria on the top row to show only polls posted to HN people would be more aware of it. We have: Ask, Show, Jobs I guess I should repost this as a Poll
- asplake 5y agoPolls brought a plague of dumb clickbaitiness to LinkedIn, unwittingly amplified by commenters complaining of their lack of nuance. Let’s not do that here
- jonathankoren 5y agoLet’s vote on it.
- seanhunter 5y agoExactly. If they start getting used at all, I hope the feature gets disabled.
- jmcgough 5y agoBack around 2012 HN had a massive amount of polls every day on the frontpage. I even wrote a scraper to scrape them all off and write them to a hnpolls website. Glad it's not really a thing these days.
- jfoster 5y agoProblems like that don't have to be solved by changing the existence of a feature. There are many ways to address such an issue; adjusting the incentives, changing the ranking algorithm, etc.
- dredmorbius 5y ago"How accurate are online polls?" [M]ost online polls that use participants who volunteer to take part do not have a proven record of accuracy. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that not everyone in the U.S. uses the internet, and those who do not are demographically different from the rest of the public. Another reason is that people who volunteer for polls may be different from other people in ways that could make the poll unrepresentative. At worst, online polls can be seriously biased if people who hold a particular point of view are more motivated to participate than those with a different point of view. https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/12/29/how-accurate-are-online-polls/ https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/12/29/how-accurate-are-onli... Rather than serve as accurate assessments of public opinion or beliefs, online polls at best surface sentiments and potential areas of interest. Some are mere amusements. Many serve a darker purpose of advocating for a specific cause or ideology (a "push poll" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll), fishing for either insights on how audiences might be manipulated through advertising or propaganda, or outright soliciting personal information that is of use in hacking into accounts by guessing passwords or so-called "security questions".
- jart 5y agoPew Research is a biased source because CGI Script polling poses an existential threat to their business model.
- dredmorbius 5y agoNo. Pew Research (and pretty much any other credible research institution or academic) are domain experts, understand sampling methodology, and the very-well-known biases which occur from biased and/or self-selecting samples. Public polling can be exceedingly accurate based on surprisingly small samples (roughly 300 in most national political polls, for example, and even that is generous), so long as the sample is in fact truly random. Oh, and that the responses are not similarly filtered. One of the most famous cases of a poll which failed due to sampling bias was in the 1948 US Presidential election, and resulted in the Chicago Tribune erroneous headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman". This was drilled hard in my own stats education several decades ago and remains a sharp lesson in the risks of biased sampling. For a good descrition of the error, see: https://web.archive.org/web/20180823071102/https://textbook.ds100.org/ch/02/design_dewey_truman.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180823071102/https://textbook....
- clock99 5y agoIt's in FAQ, so yes.
- lucgommans 5y agoAnd the answers are randomized for each pageload. Can be a good thing, or it can be annoying if it's more of a scale kind of thing. Then again, polls aren't used that much anyway so having this as only option is fine.
- folli 5y agoIs there a practical reason that they are randomized?
- lucgommans 5y agoUnless there is a particular order, such as 0-5 stars ratings or whatever, one would randomize the choices to avoid people picking the first option they see or other psychological biases related to the list position.
- folli 5y agoMakes sense, thanks.
- maxrf 5y ago"Sorry, you need over 200 karma to create a poll." :(
- javierga 5y agoThat’s going to take a while to process for me. Have tried to be an active user since 2014 and whenever I have something of value, it’s already been expressed better by someone else.
- toastedwedge 5y agoI almost didn't reply to this to say, "This is the same for me as well," because, well, it's the same! Someone already expressed, in better phrasing, what I would otherwise say. But given the subject matter, I feel a reply is in order.
- Aeolun 5y agoEven two hundred valueless comments will get you there though. Question is if you want to make those.
- OJFord 5y agoNo, a comment with a score of 1 (i.e. that isn't voted down at all, or equally up and down) contributes 0 to the author's karma.
- kingcharles 5y agoToday I learned that all my beautiful, insightful 1 karma posts are just for my own vanity.
- Aeolun 5y agoThat seems counterintuitive. Shouldn’t the score be zero in that case?
- 5y ago
- DoreenMichele 5y agoPeople used to occasionally post polls to HN asking demographic data. Probably not entirely accurate but semi useful to me.
- matt_daemon 5y agoNo, and your handle made me laugh as a fellow ‘93 Aussie Wog.
- vorticalbox 5y agoIf you don't mind my asking, could you explain what a "wog" is?
- aorth 5y agoIt's a racial epithet used mostly in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog
- gfykvfyxgc 5y agoIt’s a slur.
- LeonB 5y agoAnd similar to the n word - some Greeks and Italians have taken the word and used it themselves with pride. I’m conflicted about this but happy for my friends who can do it. I certainly don’t think anyone else should use the term.
- Handytinge 5y agoThis isn't really accurate, but I can see how you'd come to this conclusion. Wog definitely started as a slur, but is really just an umbrella term for people of olive skin in Australia these days. It's not polite venacular, but it's inoffensive and common enough to have a movie with the name a few years ago ("Wog Boy"). I can't imagine the term you've equivolised being plastered on posters in theatres everywhere.
- phnofive 5y agoWhere's the option for 'I saw your comment about in that other thread a few hours ago and that reminded me this was launched and forgotten a while ago now'? -- frustrated pollster with poor prognostications for options
- shric 5y agoLooks like it lets you vote for both options
- Aeolun 5y agoI am certain I’ve heard about this before, but I see it so little that I forget every single time.
- encryptluks2 5y agoDid you know that Hacker News frequently prevents users from commenting for several hours if they receive multiple downvotes in a short timespan? You go to respond to someone attacking you, write a long response and.. nope, you've posted too many times.
- wruza 5y agorespond to someone attacking you A common mistake on a forum, that’s how you feed them for more and for everyone to deal with it. HN also rate-limits hot/deep discussions for them to not grow quickly, by removing the reply link for few minutes. If someone misbehaved, it is wise to remain silent and trust the crowd.
- encryptluks2 5y agoFor an IT crowd I would think other methods would be used to prevent spam/bots, not actively promoting for censoring organic discussions (because a crowd says so).
- 1_player 5y agoIn my experience, it works beautifully on HN. It's not censoring, it's giving everyone a timeout and a chance to walk away from the keyboard.
- encryptluks2 5y agoCensorship... Such a beautiful thing, gives people time to think about life. Seriously, this is some 1984 BS. Also, if they are going to prevent you from posting it should say so before you start typing not when you go to submit.
- 1_player 5y agoTo be fair, I've never had my comments censored in any way. I sometimes get the "you're posting too quick" message because I did upvote a couple comments in the previous few seconds, but trying again after a minute works for me. So I honestly haven't seen any automated censorship system you're talking about in my 11 years on this site.
- divbzero 5y agoPerhaps polls are obscure by design. The new poll link is mentioned only in the FAQ and does not appear anywhere on the home page or submit page. (Interestingly, you can vote for more than one response, e.g. both “Yes” and “No” which happens to be the correct answer for me.)
- brtknr 5y agoYou need 200 karma sadly
- cosmos14 5y agoSorry, you need over 200 karma to create a poll.
- cosmos14 5y agoSorry, you need over 200 karma to create a poll. :(
- mw67 5y ago
- Tempest1981 5y agoI can even vote twice; choices aren't mutually exclusive.
- vaylian 5y agoReality is complex. HN supports a complex reality.
- elihu 5y agoYep, I tried it before reading your comment. I think that's great. Approval voting is awesome, and probably a better default for a lot of things anyways. Even mundane things like "where do you want to eat lunch" with first-past-the-post you run the risk of selecting a place most people don't want to eat at because they split their vote between a bunch of options most people preferred. Really, you want people to distinguish between places they want to eat at and places they don't want to eat at, and the optimal thing is to select the one that the most people do want to eat at. That's basically how approval voting works.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Even mundane things like “where do you want to eat lunch” with first-past-the-post you run the risk of selecting a place most people don’t want to eat If you have open ballots and either approval is a commitment to join or disapproval is a waiver of the right to join, approval is very good method for choosing group activities in a way it is not for most public elections, where there is no coherent meaning to the approval/disapproval divide so it ends up just being a very weird forced reduction in resolution of a preference ballot to two preference ranks. (The lack of coherent meaning between different ballots is a problem that most analysis ignores in basically all voting systems that aren’t either bullet ballots of full forced or unforced preference ballots; of popularly proposed alternative voting methods its a particular issue for those using approval or range/score ballots, or variations on either.)
- elihu 5y agoI think approval voting ballots have a pretty reasonable interpretation: if you would tolerate this person in this office then vote for them, if not then don't. The winner of the election is the one with the highest approval rating. If it's a three candidate election and there's one person you like, one person you don't, and one you're ambivalent about then it gets a little more complicated if you want to vote strategically. Generally, you'd vote yes to the first, no to the second, and for the third you can either vote for them or not based on whether you're more worried that your favorite candidate will lose or that your least favorite candidate will win. Range voting is a bit more expressive because you can rank candidates on a scale of one to ten or whatever, but the problem with range voting in real elections is that voters have the most influence over the result when they only use maximum or minimum ratings, thus a minority of strategic voters can outvote a majority of honest voters. Approval voting solves that by forcing everyone to follow the strategic voting strategy. STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) voting is another way to solve that problem. STAR voting works like range voting to select the top two candidates, then does a runoff between those top two after maximizing everyone's voting preferences. It's not perfect, but it's a way to allow people to express ratings that are more subtle than yes/no for each candidate while still giving people who vote honestly the same voting power in most situations as people who vote strategically.
- gordon_freeman 5y agoWow, thanks for this tip! I have been using HN for more than 5+ years addictively and never knew this!
- acqbu 5y agoNo, I did not know. But now I know, thank you!
- richardfey 5y agoAny idea why it is not available in the /submit page?
- achow 5y agoNo
- grumblepeet 5y agoI did not know that you could make polls on HN and I’m also 5 karma points short of being able to make them. Besides that, I don’t think that I would make polls here, I value the good story links posted and the insightful replies, and often when I see polls in other places it just seems to ignite flame wars and low value discussions. It’s a good thing that it is obscure, long may it be rarely used!
- readingnews 5y agoomg, I did not even know we have "karma" here (never looked at my "profile") I actually read HN to get away from stuff like that. Funny, perhaps people come to HN as most people here do not pay attention to those items.
- josefrichter 5y agoYou though you escaped, but karma eventually got you.
- wongarsu 5y agoHN tries to curb the karma addiction by not showing the karma of comments (other than your own), while still keeping it as a proxy for reputation (both in the profile and to gate certain features, most notably the ability to downvote). Not being able to easily compare yourself to others certainly helps, even if it isn't perfect.
- moneywoes 5y agoHow much karma do we need to downvote?
- whelming_wave 5y agoif i recall correctly, 500
- vulcan01 5y ago
- doe88 5y agoWow didnt know it could, found a list a past polls, with really popular ones. https://hn.algolia.com/polls https://hn.algolia.com/polls
- prof-dr-ir 5y agoAnd now I am reminded of the CmdrTaco option, and reminiscing about days long gone - certainly appropriate for New Year's day.
- cmdrtaco 5y agoHey!
- csk111165 5y agoSorry, you need over 200 karma to create a poll.
- pachico 5y agoYesterday I precisely thinking about polls in HN and if they would make sense. Although polls might seem the preamble of an ad populum fallacy when it comes to agreements, I see their potential too. Glad to know they are available and thanks for sharing. Happy new year, BTW!
- SomeBoolshit 5y agoI did not and I guess the person who created this app (Materialistic) didn't, either, cause I don't see a poll here.
- jrootabega 5y agoAt the time when I chose my answer, I did know. So I was obligated to pick "Yes".
- crtasm 5y ago"Did you know.." refers to before you read the question.
- jrootabega 5y agoNOW ya tell me!
- dredmorbius 5y agoWait until we tell you about The Game.
- mgh2 5y agoMaybe is UX, but I don't see the poll link anywhere on my HN. There is ask, but that is different...
- tiffanyh 5y agoI realize a lot of folks aren’t fans of poll. But there can be some value. Eg I could be off basis here but it seems like the norm in the Bay Area is comp approaching $1M. But if you look at this poll from 8 years ago, Bay Area comp of $300k+ is exceeding low. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5802295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5802295
- fragmede 5y agooops, looks like there's an issue with other people being able to create new options - only had yes/no when I first looked
- xg15 5y agoRight now it only seems to support multiple choice polls, is that correct?
- jehb 5y agoIt seems to be, although one could argue the default behavior on HN is a short answer poll.
- laoganmaplz 5y agoNo, but I also sincerely believe that dang is a lizard. Not because I have any reason to believe that dang is a lizard, but because my ethos obligates me to believe anyone is a lizard when I see an opportunity to do so.
- dannnng 5y ago
- gruez 5y ago>but because my ethos obligates me to believe anyone is a lizard when I see an opportunity to do so. Sounds like you're one of those people https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
- Liron 5y agoThe poll looks like a tiny version of the HN home page. It’s just missing comment threads on the choices.
- bell-cot 5y agoI, for one, welcome our (not so) new lizard overlord. /s
- aasasd 5y agoWell, I vaguely knew, but what I learned today is that polls break the ‘Hacker News Enhancement Suite’ plugin.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoThis is cool but I hope they don't become too popular, otherwise we'll start getting a bunch of HN listicles started by buzzfeed staff that they can retread on their site.
- lsferreira42 5y agoWell i am on hackernews since April, 2013 and i still dont have enough karma to do a lot of things, i think i have to be more confident on commenting here