Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

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I've been here for some time and I usually agree/upvote pg's comments, not because of reverence to him or because I'm start-struck but because, well, the man is a well of wisdom (I regularly buy Hackers and Painters and give it away as presents to the young students I mentor. And OK, I may be a bit star-struck, too.)

This is his first comment I disagreed completely and downvoted. As a personal policy I downvote any comment here that gives the old "HN has deteriorated, it's going the way of X" hash without presenting any evidence other than gut feeling. Now, this being pg, it's true that his gut feeling about HN may trump yours or mine. Still, looking at the results of a personal poll and concluding that the HN honor system is broken is too strong a conclusion for me.

When I'm asked a question about my gender/age/ethnicity, if I can get away with it (e.g. no possible jail time :-) I either choose "other/not want to disclose" or if that's not an option give wrong answers. My reasoning behind that, quaint as it may seem, is that these things shouldn't matter; it's generally wrongheaded to collect this information. Knowing the browser/editor/proglang/personal hero/etc that HN'ers think is the best is a nice poll. Asking about their age/gender/ethnicity is definitely, I think, not.

Since there was no "Don't want to disclose" option here, I marked my age as "under 10" as a sort of protest against this poll. Stupid? Maybe. But it wasn't because I don't believe in the HN honor system.

This poll was optional, and you could have simply ignored it.

Your action was exactly the type of thing PG's talking about. In the past, the community at large either would have been truthful or simply not responded. Now, a significant portion of the community is responding non-truthfully. Your motivation doesn't matter: whether it was "not believing in the honor system", or "protesting against the poll", or anything else, you still contributed to the pollution of the data.

I thought I made my reasoning clear in my comment on why I chose not to ignore it. I disagree with having polls such as these on HN (as well as asking people about their gender and race).

According to your logic, people should just ignore posts on HN that they disagree with rather than writing comments, the "if you disagree, just leave" approach.

Maybe I overreacted and should have just commented on this poll and and not marked a wrong age bracket. OTOH, I at least commented on my motivation to to do. The motivation of the other $n people (currently 121-1 = 120 under 10) is mostly opaque.

Not sure what's more ridiculous - that you took the time to skew a perfectly reasonable poll, or that you expected anyone to understand your tortuous logic in doing so.

Just because you personally don't like coffee doesn't mean you should go out of your way to defecate in someone else's mug.

I disagree that this was "a perfectly reasonable poll", from that pov I think my logic may not be that torturous.

I suppose if you really are convinced a poll is harmful.

Maybe a more apt analogy would have been knocking that Triple Whopper out of someone's hand before they clog their arteries? :P

While I disagree that responding falsely was a better move than simply not responding at all, I agree with your point about hn quality lamentations.

As someone who came to hn after "the good ol' days", I would much prefer to see constant reminders of "That's not how we do things here" than "Man, things sure have gotten bad". Entropy is the norm; everything degrades without constant force applied.

One thing I've learned here is that it's much better to encourage what you like than bitch about things sucking.

I don't like the posts that say "weird new tool that everyone but you has heard about has released a new version!" I tried criticizing those posts and got downvoted, probably legitimately.

But my #1 upvoted comment ever, by at least a factor of 3, was this one[1] where I praised a tmux posting that very clearly said what tmux was for someone unfamiliar with the concept.

So clearly I struck a nerve and other people feel the way I do, but I just had to find a positive way to encourage what I wanted.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5462105

I disagree with both your opinion and response.

First off, who are you to decide that this kind of poll is useless, and actively damage it? If you think the poll is useless, fine: we have a flag button for that. I happen to disagree that the poll is useless; I think any data set can be interesting given that you understand the limitations in interpreting it. But that's just my opinion and I totally get that other people could feel differently. Just don't ruin it for those who care. It's immature.

You may not exactly fit the profile of the kind of person that pg is talking about here, but you're definitely acting out and ignoring community standards.

"First off, who are you to decide that this kind of poll is useless"

I am a HN contributor like you, my opinion does not count more than other people's. And I didn't say it was useless, it definitely has use. I said I disagree with collecting this type of demographic data data.

"Just don't ruin it for those who care."

If you read my comment I haven't actually ruined the data at all, I clearly stated which wrong bin I placed my vote in. The OP can now subtract my vote. Compare and contrast with the 300+ people who clicked on <10, >90, and "I clicked on more than once" categories. Now, that's immature, I think.

Wait... so it's immature to mark a fake response, but it's mature to mark a fake response and then confess to it? Nope, don't buy it.

I think you are missing the point that this poll is voluntary. So, the "Do not disclose" option is there -- just click on one of the many other links on HN today, or otherwise do something else with your time. There, you "did not disclose."

But that's not really the same at all. There is a huge difference between not voting and voting with "don't want to disclose". The former is unusable as a data point, while the latter is something that can be analyzed and discussed.

Sure. But by checking a wrong answer, we now have an unusable data point AND we have skewed the poll ...

I think that he actually has a little more than gut feeling here:

> about half the users under 10 are also over 90

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5537050

A similar solution would have been to not answer at all. Is there a non-tangential purpose served by answering "Do not wish to disclose" on a non-mandatory poll?

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