4 ms·
I'll have to think of something extra for them too. Any ideas? Bear in mind that about half the users under 10 are also over 90, so whatever it is can't confl
by pg 14y ago
I'll have to think of something extra for them too. Any ideas? Bear in mind that about half the users under 10 are also over 90, so whatever it is can't conflict with extra large fonts.
- barredo 14y agoput the nicks of the voters below each answer
- petercooper 14y agoOr when someone votes, it posts a comment in the thread with their vote/answer.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI like that idea, but there's plenty of people who use shell accounts and will still pick a ridiculous answer.
- pgbovine 14y agoextra bright colors; maybe some blink tags too.
- goosmurf 14y agoCare bears.
- wavesounds 14y agoTranslate everything to binary
- MichaelApproved 14y agoMany high contrasting colors. Children like different colors and it could help anyone reading that has poor eyesight.
- staunch 14y agoSadly, I think you're going to have to ban them. COPPA[1] makes it risky to have children under 13 on your web site without clear parental consent. ..you could let them send in a note from their parents to get unbanned :-) 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoIf the First Amendment allows children to traffic in snuff films, Nazi regalia, bomb making manuals, Satanist tracts, classified nuclear information, and so forth while in a government school, it's safe to assume that COPPA is an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech. I am astonished that the ACLU has not already handed the FTC their ass.
- icebraining 14y ago"The ACLU has long been strongly supportive of COPPA. It is an important first step on the road to universal baseline privacy protections that ensure that every American—young and old—has meaningful control over their personal information online. (...) The ACLU protects privacy and free speech simultaneously, and the two interests are rarely at cross-purposes. Right now, COPPA is a great law and it does both effectively." http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-human-rights-free-speech/ftc-proposes-changes-privacy-law-collide-free http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-human-rights...
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoWow. And I thought my school was rough.
- orenjacob 14y agoThere can be a very real issue if HN accounts have an age or birthdate associated with them which indicate that the user is under 13. In that situation where knowledge of age is in the hands of the website operator, the FTC has taken notice, and action. See Path's recent FTC COPPA ruling as an example. So, if HN internally keeps a reference from votes in the under-10 category of this poll to the accounts they came from, and if any of those people are under 13, there may be cause for real concern re: COPPA. There are sort of 3 ways to approach this safely... 1. don't ask, don't tell (eg: Google's main search page) 2. ask, and reject (eg: Facebook account signup) 3. ask, accept, and get consent (eg: some child focused sites) HN is pretty clearly not a child-oriented website, but if there is concrete knowledge of age, COPPA can apply.
- jonemo 14y agoLimit their HN access to 20 minutes per day. When I was that young my parents enforced a very strict time limit on daily media consumption.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- davidjohnstone 14y agoComic Sans was made for this.
- gailees 14y agoIt's really great to see how down to earth pg can be on here sometimes. Definitely great to be a part of a thriving community like HN, even though I've gotten on later than what may have been its golden age. Times like these are what really get me pumped about the great community I'm diving into surrounding tech.
- saulrh 14y agoHow about an animated hacker mascot that provides helpful tutorials for features, complete with colorful highlighting and font changes to indicate important UI elements?
- waterlesscloud 14y agoWe could call him Poochie.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoThere's even a helpful js library for this, previously featured on HN: https://www.smore.com/clippy-js https://www.smore.com/clippy-js
- cynwoody 14y ago>Bear in mind that about half the users under 10 are also over 90 It's called second childhood. May you someday be eligible, but yet escape achieving it. As for the fonts, you can be sure the octo- and nona- hackers will have long since implemented suitable user scripts.
- phryk 14y ago<blink> and <marquee>.
- jonahx 14y agoWow. Exactly what kind of pleasure does a person derive from giving false answers to the question "What's your age?" on an anonymous internet poll? I am not asking that facetiously -- I really am curious to know. Is this some people's of idea of "being bad"? "being funny"? Something like trolling, getting a rise out of people, etc -- I don't like it or agree with it, but I can comprehend it. In this case, no one is even going to see or know what you did. Is there some pleasure taken in knowing that people think the results are valid while you secretly know they aren't? Or was there an awareness that the moderators would see the bad results, be annoyed by them, and post about it?
- arh68 14y agoPleasure? That's not what comes to mind. I haven't answered the poll, but I did think about putting <10. Since you seem to comprehend the situation.. it's not about the readers or the moderators, it's more like a dialogue between me and the poll-creator: do you really think there are 10 year olds on the site? Why even make it a poll option? What a hilarious concept, 7 year olds browsing 'Hacker News' at what, 6 in the morning? I like my polls mostly Slashdot-style: you'd be crazy to take them as 'scientific' or 'accurate'. You put options out there, I'll entertain my sense of humor. If you've ever played Apples to Apples, you'll know which kind of player I am. The options I would've expected as more reasonable: <20, 20-35, 36-40, 41+. Then you would hope the results of the poll are interesting enough to talk about (otherwise, yes, you'll degenerate into humour).
- 1337biz 14y agoI is just my habit of creating some noise in any data collection effort. Based on the fact that pg is apparently digging through the results and trying to profile certain user behaviors it is somewhat proving the point. You never know who is going to fiddle with the data so you better noise it up.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoAKA. you're breaking things because you can?
- davidroberts 14y agoHow about lots of cat photos on the front page? I've heard that's very popular with the under 10 group.
- davvid 14y agoYoung children have an easier time reading low contrast text. Make them read light gray on gray.
- zikzikzik 14y agoPonies.
- Alex3917 14y agoWhenever they double click a word a dictionary should pop up, like on nytimes if they still do that.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- benjamincburns 14y agoHmm, maybe we need another poll to decide? :-)
- WiseWeasel 14y agoMake an announcement and color their names pink, so everyone knows they're dealing with under-10-year-olds when reading their comments. Or maybe a little dunce cap icon next to their name.
- crusso 14y agoCan you make polls like this and trollish comments into some kind of honey pot? I propose two HN sites based upon basically the same underlying data. A "good" one, and a phantom one. Users who get honey potted end up in a phantom mode where any moderation or posting actions that they take affect only the phantom HN that they view. Phantoms can see the posts and moderation results of good users, but good users can't see the posts and results of phantom users.