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Comment by p_ing | Hacker News Reader

For Jury, I would give a "skip question" option. I found one relating to Christianity that I had _no_ idea what the "correct" answer would be based on the two options.

I thought clicking "Ask a new question" then going right back into Jury Duty would give me a new question, but I landed on the same one.

I think the asker providing the two valid responses is flawed. It doesn't allow the "jury" to draw their own conclusion, or provides leading answers (one about "is it rude" to eat by themselves when they're socially exhausted in a work context -- one is "yes they would be offended", the other "no they won't be" -- well, they certainly may be but it is your right to eat alone, so the answer could have been "they may, but you need to take care of yourself").

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Skipping unanswerable questions would be good for everyone. Any answer would be misleading.

But answer choices should not be qualified by anything, because that systematically creates unanswerable regions.

There should be Context and Question, narrowed down any way the questioner wants. Then just “Yes” or “No” without qualification.

That is what a jury does.

Or: allow answer qualifications, followed by an automatic “None of the above”.

Anyone getting a lot of the latter is getting accurate feedback that the choices they posted were too narrow.

Without either fix, the basic logic of the utility will often be broken. Maybe both? Allow questions to be yes/no, or n choices with NOTA.

Even one of the poster's sample question, the one about the brothers third wedding, is one I would not want to answer with a simple yes/no.

Definitely not answerable. Not without knowing whether it’s a cash bar or an open bar.

Maybe also add a "Needs More Info/Context " option. So two choices which the user provides, and then two system-added options (NOTA/NMI). If the jury votes on the latter two options, allow the user to resubmit the question with edited text/choices.

> Skipping unanswerable questions would be good for everyone. Any answer would be misleading.

I disagree with this. The purpose of the website is to provide answers. If you let people skip questions, you can't guarantee that any given question will ever be answered.

The whole concept here is that you aren't asking people who hold particular credentials. You, Nevermark, should provide your take, regardless of whether you feel it's valid.

However, I'm uncomfortable with the fact that the two answer options are both specified by the user. They should be limited to "yes" or "no", with the meaning of that supplied by the question.

But you can’t provide your take if it isn’t an option.

You can click a choice you don’t agree with, or the other choice you don’t agree with. Neither choice is a service to anyone.

That is the problem of the current site in a nutshell.

Leads me to the conclusion that I don't know what JuryNow is for. The post says it's a game but it's not really. I think that people will use it 'fo real'. But think about a real jury. Typically you will be excused from a jury if you are an expert in a specific field that is important to the case, or if you have a conflict of interest. The jury must be a bit of a blank slate so that both prosecution and defence can give them the facts pertaining to the case, question witnesses, call experts to give testimony when pertinent and then let the jury deliberate together on the result.

If these JuryNow questions are just a snap judgement on a one-shot question, with no opportunity for depth or deliberation between members, then I can see all sorts of potential problems, including the one you pointed out. The person asking the question can also load it in such a way that it leans towards their chosen answer (somewhat like loaded surveys with leading questions). I can certainly see it being used that way in toxic online debates, like a cheap mini survey that gives credence to some opinion. Aren't Reddit "CMV" and "AITA" even a little better since the jury can deliberate with each other online, as would happen in a real case?

This is an alternate form of hotornot.com, more or less.

And you're right, typically an expert would be excused, but you would also have the opportunity to learn what the issue is about to make an 'informed' choice, which in one particular case I could not.

I immediately saw a use case as a more randomized r/amITheAsshole

Mechanical Turk in disguise

Yes, skip would be good, but I'd also advocate an option like "I reject the premise of the question".

In legal contexts yes-or-no answers can work because the case can in theory be boiled down to guilty or not. If there is any flaw with the case, the answer should be not guilty.

But let's take the "do I have a moral duty to..." questions used as examples here for contrast. I'd argue you never had a moral duty to attend your sibling's wedding to begin with. But because the question was asked with a weird modifier like "even if it's their 3rd wedding", any answer you give will be inadequate and will just serve to reinforce the flawed premise. Skipping is not enough in my opinion, because even if communicated to the question asker, it doesn't make it clear whether there as an issue on the answerer's side ("I don't know" / "don't feel qualified") or with the question itself.

These aren't even yes or no questions. I got several where the two options where either "Yes" or "Also, Yes" and "No" or "Also, No"

2nd this. Already getting weirdos posting pictures of two children and asking "this" or "this"...

This is why we can’t have nice things

Agreed. There are some questions with answers, neither of which I want to support by selecting.

Might also report skip rate to question asker.

In the generation of LLMs the correct answer doesn't matter any more. All the herd wants is a answer, so they can move on to the next TikTok video.

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