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Poll: For or against Offer HN type posts?

31 points by krschultz ↗ HN
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.

23 comments

[ 6.8 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] thread
bobf
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.)
Sukotto
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.

brown9-2
I would think not voting would be the same as "I don't really care" in this case.
kgermino
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.
Sukotto
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".
jsmcgd
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'.
krschultz
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.
chrischen
If they are being voted to the front page wouldn't this poll be heavy on the support side?
eddanger
I'm against polls! :)

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

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

evo_9
How about making Offers there own separate section? Like Jobs.
agentultra
Might have to start filtering HN if they continue to show up.
Chirael
I'm fine with allowing them to continue, but maybe only in the /offers section, and/or maybe weighted downward in the regular section.