Poll: For or against Offer HN type posts? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: For or against Offer HN type posts?

31 pointskrschultz22 comments

Though obviously offered with good intentions, a lot of people find the Offer HN posts to be a bad thing. It is hard to get a sense of the community based on upvotes (being that there are no downvotes for stories), so a poll is the best way to measure sentiment.

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You missed the "I don't really care" option.

To me it's just another fad. Like when we get a bunch of Apple Appstore, or Facebook privacy, or Clojure, or Android, or whatever posts clogging up the main page. After a while people settle down and we get back to having a nicely varied set of articles to read and discuss.

I would think not voting would be the same as "I don't really care" in this case.

But that's hard to record for the same reason that it's hard to get the community's opinion based on upvotes. If 1000 people read this page, 200 vote in favor 90 vote opposed you would say that the majority of people are in favor of Offer HN posts. However, if the other 710 would have voted "I don't care" then your results would be completely off.

You have to know how many people read the thread, Otherwise there's no functional difference between "I chose not to vote" and "I didn't notice the thread".

I reckon that most people notice most threads but only read the ones they're interested in. So in this instance it is probable that those who don't care to read the thread also don't care to vote either way and therefore implicitly tick the '"I don't really care" option'.

Sorry, I forgot about that one. Unfortunately I was working for the last few hours so I hadn't checked back and we've probably missed most of the people that would have voted.

I'm against polls! :)

Although I'm happy to see the community organically grow HN into what people want.

I think a separate /offer area for the Offer HN posts would be great, if they continue appearing on a regular basis in the future. (I voted in support of Offer HN posts, if that matters.)

pg had already done it :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/offers http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless

I agree -- I see no problem other than their potentially clogging the main page. (I voted in support.)

That's why pg made http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless

I'm fine with allowing them to continue, but maybe only in the /offers section, and/or maybe weighted downward in the regular section.

Just out of curiosity - what is the syntax to add polls to a post? Or is that an admin-privilege?

http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

If you have enough karma. This question is answered in the FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

If they are being voted to the front page wouldn't this poll be heavy on the support side?

How about making Offers there own separate section? Like Jobs.

Might have to start filtering HN if they continue to show up.

Can we turn them off as a user configurable option?

In case you missed it in the other replies: http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless

always more options!

How'd you make a poll? Sorry if I'm being dense...

From the FAQs[1]:

    How do I submit a poll?

    http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

    This is an experimental feature so there is currently a
    fairly high karma threshold for submitting new polls.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

(edit: formatting and URL)

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