Poll: My age is...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923

by robg • 18 years ago

25 35 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

robg7• 18 years ago

Sorry for the fairly big ranges. I got an error when I had more choices.

clay• 18 years ago

I clicked this kinda hoping that you would have a choice for every age...

altay• 18 years ago

Despite the number of people who cared enough to vote in the poll, this actual news item only has 3 points. Should it automatically vote the item up when you vote in a poll? (On the other hand, polls would pretty much take over the front page.)

robg7• 18 years ago

That's the Catch-22, I think. Maybe a threshold when a certain number of people vote? Or define hotness as some factor of votes divided by time perhaps?

Erf• 18 years ago

I have no interest in seeing this or other polls on the Hacker News front page, but if others want it I'm happy to contribute to it (all it takes is a click, after all).

And yes; one of the worst things that happened to Reddit was the proliferation of Vote-Up-If posts.

robg7• 18 years ago

But that implementation, I think, is much poorer (as you say Vote up if) because it's really very limited.

Here's I think it's interesting that we can basically run a survey experiment based on the choices offered. For instance, we can see that the age of YC.news users is a slightly skewed distribution with a mean of of maybe 24-25 (even as we could nail it down more with smaller bins). To me, that's much more interesting than "vote up".

ghiotion3• 18 years ago

It's interesting there was so much antipathy towards the Vote-Up-If posts. I found them annoying, but I could live with them. Personally, what ruined reddit for me was Ron Paul, politics, and all the 911wasAnInsideJob folks. I could even live with the over-abundance of LOL cats and flicker links. But the overall nuttiness of the site simply turned me off.

Don't get me wrong, I like politics and I personally think Ron Paul has a lot going for him. But I didn't start reading the site for its political bent; I started reading it for the interesting links and the tech stuff. I'd simply like to get my political news elsewhere. With the bastardized reddit, I couldn't get away from politics, even with the introduction of sub-reddits.

thorax• 18 years ago

I move into a different vote group tomorrow. Better vote while I can.

robg7• 18 years ago

Happy birthday! I'm in two weeks and the same happens to me.

I would have preferred ranges of four years, but I got an error with that many choices.

nextmoveone• 18 years ago

I can vote for more than 1 choice? I would vote for Obama and Hilary if I could.

mdemare3• 18 years ago

In the primaries? That doesn't seem useful...

But with multiple selections in the general election we wouldn't need primaries and would get more centrist presidents.

dfranke• 18 years ago

Not necessarily more centrist, but probably more idiosyncratic. The benefit of approval voting is that you aren't disincentivized from voting for candidates whom you like but think can't win.

doubleplus• 18 years ago

I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

mdemare3• 18 years ago

But have you measured out your life with coffee spoons?

ghiotion3• 18 years ago

I measure out my life in elevator rides to the 9th floor of the crappy office I work in. That's why I started taking the stairs. Nevertheless, +1 for an T.S. Eliot reference.

JayNeely• 18 years ago

Coffee pots.

ghiotion3• 18 years ago

Oh man, if I could give out 10 points for a T.S. Eliot reference, I would. Much love to you. The Four Quartets rivals Hamlet in its intricacy and attention to the human condition. And, it's about 1/10 the size! What a bargain!

yters2• 18 years ago

If you like the Wasteland, you'll like this site: http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explor...

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p3ZpyEuzg1jyMSQxC-NBM...

robg7• 18 years ago

Excellent! Unless there's something atypical about the sample of YC.news users late on a Saturday night (e.g., maybe we're a tad older?), I don't think the distribution will change much.

Xichekolas• 18 years ago

I'm 24 and I'm here on a Saturday night... I may be at my Ballmer Peak, but I'm here!

graywh• 18 years ago

The statistician in me cringes at the information lost in categorizing a continuous variable.

maxwell• 18 years ago

Single vote polls would be useful here.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

PG: how many people voted for more than one?

pg• 18 years ago

The current 50 votes were cast by 38 voters, so there were 12 dishonest votes:

  > (let voters (flat (map [_ 2] 
                           (map [(item _) 'votes] 
                                ((item 126923) 'parts))))
      (list (len voters) (len (dedup voters))))
  (50 38)

In particular, many if not all of the votes by people claiming to be 12 and under were fake.

robg7• 18 years ago

That makes me sad. Any easy way to make poll choices exclusive? Or toss the multi-voters?

michaelneale• 18 years ago

I am so old.

systems• 18 years ago

who lied and said he was 12 and under

cstejerean• 18 years ago

get those 12 and under users off the site unless they have parental consent.

mellampudi• 18 years ago

We have kids under 12 here !!!

pchristensen• 18 years ago

Well, we have people claiming to be under 12.

Poll: My age is...

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