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Here are two of the polls created by pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 186 days ago prefer points:

Here are two of the polls created by pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 186 days ago prefer points: 2355 prefer no-points: 1763 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 141 days ago prefer points: 2717 prefer no-points: 1703 So, 57.2% and 61.5%, respectively, were in favor of bringing points back. EDIT: succinctness and formatting EDIT 2: Not sure why this is being downvoted, I simply found and linked to the polls mentioned above, because I couldn't remember the exact outcomes.

dlss 15y ago
I think people are downvoting you because publicly viewable poll results are too similar to publicly viewable karma. My guess is pg just hasn't gotten around to hiding the results from everyone except the poster.
- JangoSteve 15y ago
  I don't understand. Without publicly viewable results, polls are absolutely meaningless to everyone except the poster. In other words, the only content in a poll is the numbers.
  - dlss 15y ago
    It's an analogy. Without publicly viewable karma, posts lose a lot of their information content. Polls without results lose more, but some would argue[1] that there is no royal road to understanding what others think, and that the best way to use polls is to simply read the possible responses and ignore the results. For example, [1] believes that if you saw a poll on "which database do you use?", you should ignore the poll results and researching each option on your own. The person he is replying to is advocating researching databases in HN popularity order. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122546 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122546
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >Without publicly viewable results, polls are absolutely meaningless to everyone except the poster. // Voting is a mini-poll on a comment. Without a result shown there's no point in voting.
    - akavi 15y ago
      That's a secondary, and arguably unwanted purpose of voting. The primary purpose is to push a valuable comment up towards the top of a page (or, conversely, push down a non-contributory comment).
      - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
        Oh wow, did I miss a major feature here. You're saying that currently on HN top comments go to the top of the page? I thought things were ordered by datetime according to the top node of the thread?
  - saurik 15y ago
    So, I actually think dlss is making a very valuable point here: the argument that many people are making with relation to hiding point totals, is that if you can see the number of points a post has, it may affect whether you decide to vote at all: you may go "oh, that's already high enough, I won't bother voting". In essence, people have a mental concept of how high or low they feel posts they are looking at are, and adjust, possibly very subtly, possibly without even realizing it in a way that they would explain if asked, their behavior to cause the post to hit that target, as opposed to showing their true interest with an up/down. (For a reference on users discussing this effect, and some commentary from PG about having seen this effect on the high end of comment karma scores, see this example thread from another post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271 .) How peoples' behaviors change is complex. On the one hand, you may see "your side" heavily lower than "the opposition", and decide "ugh, it's pointless". On the other, you may go "ok, that's just not fair", or "help out the team", and make extra certain to vote on that specific poll. Due to these attitudes, which are pretty much the same things that are driving the changes in behavior with respect to comment voting, you don't get accurate information with public live polls. This really is the same effect, and should be thought of and treated the same. Now, making the entire poll /permanently/ only visible to the poster would mean, as you say, that the poll becomes meaningless. However, I would say that's a strawman: there are numerous other ways to handle the situation that still make sense. Example: polls could be private until they "time out", at which point the poll is no longer votable on, and the data becomes public. Frankly, this seems correct, and I'm glad dlss brought it up (although apparently people disagree with the way he worded it or something, which seems silly). (I also think that this behavior would dovetail very well with "show the comment scores after people can no longer vote on them", which came up elsewhere in the comments for this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122362 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122362 .)
minikomi 15y ago
Perhaps those who see no value in point races also shy away from polls?
- mixmax 15y ago
  Or perhaps they don't? Without more data there's no way to know.
tung 15y ago
Beware of selection bias. I saw these submissions when they were posted, but voted in neither, because I didn't mind the status quo of no points, and I'm wary of meta-discussion. If I had felt differently, I'd definitely have voted.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

dlss 15y ago

I think people are downvoting you because publicly viewable poll results are too similar to publicly viewable karma. My guess is pg just hasn't gotten around to hiding the results from everyone except the poster.

JangoSteve 15y ago
I don't understand. Without publicly viewable results, polls are absolutely meaningless to everyone except the poster. In other words, the only content in a poll is the numbers.
- dlss 15y ago
  It's an analogy. Without publicly viewable karma, posts lose a lot of their information content. Polls without results lose more, but some would argue[1] that there is no royal road to understanding what others think, and that the best way to use polls is to simply read the possible responses and ignore the results. For example, [1] believes that if you saw a poll on "which database do you use?", you should ignore the poll results and researching each option on your own. The person he is replying to is advocating researching databases in HN popularity order. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122546 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122546
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >Without publicly viewable results, polls are absolutely meaningless to everyone except the poster. // Voting is a mini-poll on a comment. Without a result shown there's no point in voting.
  - akavi 15y ago
    That's a secondary, and arguably unwanted purpose of voting. The primary purpose is to push a valuable comment up towards the top of a page (or, conversely, push down a non-contributory comment).
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      Oh wow, did I miss a major feature here. You're saying that currently on HN top comments go to the top of the page? I thought things were ordered by datetime according to the top node of the thread?
- saurik 15y ago
  So, I actually think dlss is making a very valuable point here: the argument that many people are making with relation to hiding point totals, is that if you can see the number of points a post has, it may affect whether you decide to vote at all: you may go "oh, that's already high enough, I won't bother voting". In essence, people have a mental concept of how high or low they feel posts they are looking at are, and adjust, possibly very subtly, possibly without even realizing it in a way that they would explain if asked, their behavior to cause the post to hit that target, as opposed to showing their true interest with an up/down. (For a reference on users discussing this effect, and some commentary from PG about having seen this effect on the high end of comment karma scores, see this example thread from another post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271 .) How peoples' behaviors change is complex. On the one hand, you may see "your side" heavily lower than "the opposition", and decide "ugh, it's pointless". On the other, you may go "ok, that's just not fair", or "help out the team", and make extra certain to vote on that specific poll. Due to these attitudes, which are pretty much the same things that are driving the changes in behavior with respect to comment voting, you don't get accurate information with public live polls. This really is the same effect, and should be thought of and treated the same. Now, making the entire poll /permanently/ only visible to the poster would mean, as you say, that the poll becomes meaningless. However, I would say that's a strawman: there are numerous other ways to handle the situation that still make sense. Example: polls could be private until they "time out", at which point the poll is no longer votable on, and the data becomes public. Frankly, this seems correct, and I'm glad dlss brought it up (although apparently people disagree with the way he worded it or something, which seems silly). (I also think that this behavior would dovetail very well with "show the comment scores after people can no longer vote on them", which came up elsewhere in the comments for this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122362 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122362 .)

minikomi 15y ago

Perhaps those who see no value in point races also shy away from polls?

mixmax 15y ago
Or perhaps they don't? Without more data there's no way to know.

tung 15y ago

Beware of selection bias. I saw these submissions when they were posted, but voted in neither, because I didn't mind the status quo of no points, and I'm wary of meta-discussion. If I had felt differently, I'd definitely have voted.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]