Personally, I find them & their discussions quite interesting usually, and if gathering karma is for some reason important to the submitters, well more power to them.
There's an ebb and flow to these things on Hacker News. I'd suggest sampling at a lower rate to determine the flavor of Hacker News. Right now there are a few polls, in a couple of days there are likely to be none.
In general, I've noticed that there are many circumstances where lowering your sampling rate leads to greater happiness and more interesting surprises (for example, frequency of news reading, email checking, "everything OK honey?" questioning, ...).
definitively, people have noticed that this is the fast lane to high karma. I don't see any value in them especially if they ask general questions like what OS do you use to name a recent one. These polls belong on shallow tech sites not on HN (imho).
This is what I was thinking, and since this guy said it, I gave him an upvote. Now I'm not sure if I'm making a mockery of the system or falling for it...
:) That certainly wasn't my intent. The usefulness of upvotes is that the most useful information goes to the most readable place. (Usefulness being defined by the number of upvotes!)
Having a history of providing useful information might be good for somebody's personal ego, to which I say: Get a life. But does anyone here bother to look at somebody's karma count and say, "Now THAT person needs listening to!"
People care about their HN karma - I don't know if it's 1% of people or 99% of people (maybe a poll is needed for that) - but certainly some people do.
And because of that, "cheap ways to get a bit of karma" matter, because by their definition they are acts of people who are valuing karmic return over quality of submission, resulting in low-quality discussions that appeal to our lowest common denominators, not to our curiosity.
edit:
To take the discussion further... First, I wouldn't neccesarily say that polls are a cheap way to get karma. Is karma meant to be a reward for effort, or for value? Sure, a poll might get more points per minute it took to create than a great blog post or Show HN post, but it doesn't neccesarily mean it was less useful to have on HN. And in comments we don't discriminate, I've seen plenty of extremely-short comments get high upvote numbers.
And finally... while some people may be motivated more by karma than anything else, is this automatically a bad thing? Arguably if a poll (or anything else) gains the user karma, it is (in theory) a sign that what they submitted was good content, and therefore better that somebody submit it to get karma than for nobody to bother at all.
100% of active participants care about not getting negative karma on comments.
This is good actually, because rude or completely pointless comments are severely downvoted, this being the punishment instrument that the community has for people that break the guidelines.
Personally I would generally care about being downvoted because generally I don't comment anything that I would expect to be downvoted, and therefore if it does it annoys me to know that either I was wrong in my judgement of what I said, or that the downvoter was wrong in how they read it (or that the downvoter is just an asshole - the ultimate conclusion I always come to when wondering why somebody downvoted me!)
But I'd never care about it as more of a signal of how a comment was received... if I felt there was a valid reason for me to reply with a one-word comment to somebody simply saying "Cunt." then knowing that I would be downvoted wouldn't come into it.
So far I don't think I've ever written that comment on HN, but I have written a few that I expected to get quite a few downvotes for - often accurate expectations, occasionally completely wrong. And as long as I know that they're downvoting for the reasons I expected, not that I've said something I wish I hadn't, I'm fine with that.
> 100% of active participants care about not getting negative karma on comments.
Add me to the list of people that really don't give a damn.
It would be interesting to see a list of the 10 most-downvoted comments. (I might have multiple entries.) Some things just need saying: People who will say them and endure such ignominious downvotes might well have a bit more experience than the avg user here. They say them to plant seeds in less-experienced folks, knowing that it may well take years to germinate.
>Add me to the list of people that really don't give a damn.
And me.
There is a lot of value in expressing opinions which go against the grain, even if they are not easily accepted. It's only through honest debate that the truth can be found.
While HN's voting system is superior to that of other social news sites, I still think that the down arrow should have a "report" link instead to make people think twice about down-voting someone's opinion, assuming that the opinion is honest. Upvotes are harmless, assuming that spam is taken care of, and I see no problem with that aspect of the behaviour of such a system.
I think most people probably don't care so much about karma, since it doesn't really mean an awful lot.
However, getting negative karma hurts, for some reason.
Often if I'm down voted, I assume I've done something wrong and either try to fix my comment or remove it altogether.
I hope no one down votes this comment down just to see if I remove it. :)
I like the polls. The thing is you don't get karma/points when someone votes. Someone has to upvote it to have it stay on the front page. If you don't like the poll or polls in general then you shouldn't up vote them.
Is the number of polls getting out of hand? Yes and no. I think there was a flood of them in the past 48-72 hours but that should die as the most common questions get answered. From my standpoint its an easy way to gain statistics on HN users, however it may also be the way to quick karma as you mention. I created a CS degree poll in the last 24 hours not for karma whoring but because I'm questioning my own education and lack of theoretical foundation, finding out whether that attributed to success or negatively impacted members here is helping me on the road forward.
I find both the polls, their results (even considering HN is a very biased sample) and, most of all, the discussions they generate very interesting. When the kind of smart people who comes here debate, I always end up enlightened.
I don't have a problem with polls, per se, but the ones coming up lately seem totally pointless. "What kind of OS do you use" is most often the opener for the Eternal Argument. Plus we're talking about a fraction of a fraction of an already small community, self-selected so those who want to assert that their OS (or whatever) is The Best are much more likely to comment. It might be better phrased "what OS are HN users most passionate about?"
Anyway no one's putting a gun to my head and making me read it, so carry on. :)
"What kind of OS do you use" is most often the opener for the Eternal Argument. [...] It might be better phrased "what OS are HN users most passionate about?"
Actually, I think this poll gave a much more balanced view of OS distribution on HN than the comments I read here all the day. It takes much more passion to write a comment "I am using $OS because..." than to vote for one's OS in such a poll.
For example, I was a little bit surprised about how many HN users actually use Windows as their primary OS, given that Windows tips and tools rarely show up on the frontpage.
So, in my opinion, polls are useful in getting a more objective view of HN interests than one can get from submissions and comments.
Once we can have polls inside of comments inside of polls, then things will be out of hand.
Otherwise, it's just people trying to take a temperature. It doesn't bother me, as the polls I notice are typically in some way relevant to the community at large.
I think the abundance of polls underlines a general appreciation of the HN crowd.
I think most of us would agree that the quality of participants (and their participations) here on HN is a refreshing change from the rest of online communities (Ya, I know, it was better before, quality degrading, yada yada yada, how original).
The point is, we generally like the people here and we want to know more, profile more (doesn't it fit with the mindset of the community?). This is why we care about favorite languages, primary OS, (expect a favorite browser poll soon) and the sort.
In a way, every poll results from people wanting to know, what tools do all theses cool people use/prefer/promote ...
In fact I don't like your poll. As you ask a "leading" question, rather than an "open" question.
For example, had you asked the question, as "Do people mind the surveys on HN?", I suspect, you may have got a different response.
Particularly, I liked both the polls today, as I was curious to know about how long people had been programming for and the default OS, which BTW was not a surprise.
63 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadIn general, I've noticed that there are many circumstances where lowering your sampling rate leads to greater happiness and more interesting surprises (for example, frequency of news reading, email checking, "everything OK honey?" questioning, ...).
It's like complaining about down-votes; it's unfortunate that a quality comment is down-voted but it usually corrects itself with a little time.
It's just you. As soon as somebody determines why HN karma is worth a damn, then it's a problem.
:) That certainly wasn't my intent. The usefulness of upvotes is that the most useful information goes to the most readable place. (Usefulness being defined by the number of upvotes!)
Having a history of providing useful information might be good for somebody's personal ego, to which I say: Get a life. But does anyone here bother to look at somebody's karma count and say, "Now THAT person needs listening to!"
And because of that, "cheap ways to get a bit of karma" matter, because by their definition they are acts of people who are valuing karmic return over quality of submission, resulting in low-quality discussions that appeal to our lowest common denominators, not to our curiosity.
edit:
To take the discussion further... First, I wouldn't neccesarily say that polls are a cheap way to get karma. Is karma meant to be a reward for effort, or for value? Sure, a poll might get more points per minute it took to create than a great blog post or Show HN post, but it doesn't neccesarily mean it was less useful to have on HN. And in comments we don't discriminate, I've seen plenty of extremely-short comments get high upvote numbers.
And finally... while some people may be motivated more by karma than anything else, is this automatically a bad thing? Arguably if a poll (or anything else) gains the user karma, it is (in theory) a sign that what they submitted was good content, and therefore better that somebody submit it to get karma than for nobody to bother at all.
This is good actually, because rude or completely pointless comments are severely downvoted, this being the punishment instrument that the community has for people that break the guidelines.
Personally I would generally care about being downvoted because generally I don't comment anything that I would expect to be downvoted, and therefore if it does it annoys me to know that either I was wrong in my judgement of what I said, or that the downvoter was wrong in how they read it (or that the downvoter is just an asshole - the ultimate conclusion I always come to when wondering why somebody downvoted me!)
But I'd never care about it as more of a signal of how a comment was received... if I felt there was a valid reason for me to reply with a one-word comment to somebody simply saying "Cunt." then knowing that I would be downvoted wouldn't come into it.
So far I don't think I've ever written that comment on HN, but I have written a few that I expected to get quite a few downvotes for - often accurate expectations, occasionally completely wrong. And as long as I know that they're downvoting for the reasons I expected, not that I've said something I wish I hadn't, I'm fine with that.
Add me to the list of people that really don't give a damn.
It would be interesting to see a list of the 10 most-downvoted comments. (I might have multiple entries.) Some things just need saying: People who will say them and endure such ignominious downvotes might well have a bit more experience than the avg user here. They say them to plant seeds in less-experienced folks, knowing that it may well take years to germinate.
And me.
There is a lot of value in expressing opinions which go against the grain, even if they are not easily accepted. It's only through honest debate that the truth can be found.
While HN's voting system is superior to that of other social news sites, I still think that the down arrow should have a "report" link instead to make people think twice about down-voting someone's opinion, assuming that the opinion is honest. Upvotes are harmless, assuming that spam is taken care of, and I see no problem with that aspect of the behaviour of such a system.
edit: How ironic that in this discussion you got downvoted for a useful comment.
However, getting negative karma hurts, for some reason. Often if I'm down voted, I assume I've done something wrong and either try to fix my comment or remove it altogether.
I hope no one down votes this comment down just to see if I remove it. :)
I find both the polls, their results (even considering HN is a very biased sample) and, most of all, the discussions they generate very interesting. When the kind of smart people who comes here debate, I always end up enlightened.
Anyway no one's putting a gun to my head and making me read it, so carry on. :)
Actually, I think this poll gave a much more balanced view of OS distribution on HN than the comments I read here all the day. It takes much more passion to write a comment "I am using $OS because..." than to vote for one's OS in such a poll. For example, I was a little bit surprised about how many HN users actually use Windows as their primary OS, given that Windows tips and tools rarely show up on the frontpage.
So, in my opinion, polls are useful in getting a more objective view of HN interests than one can get from submissions and comments.
Otherwise, it's just people trying to take a temperature. It doesn't bother me, as the polls I notice are typically in some way relevant to the community at large.
I think most of us would agree that the quality of participants (and their participations) here on HN is a refreshing change from the rest of online communities (Ya, I know, it was better before, quality degrading, yada yada yada, how original).
The point is, we generally like the people here and we want to know more, profile more (doesn't it fit with the mindset of the community?). This is why we care about favorite languages, primary OS, (expect a favorite browser poll soon) and the sort.
In a way, every poll results from people wanting to know, what tools do all theses cool people use/prefer/promote ...
One good thing about polls is they do bring a good discussion and a nice demographic insight, when they are not overused.
For example, had you asked the question, as "Do people mind the surveys on HN?", I suspect, you may have got a different response.
Particularly, I liked both the polls today, as I was curious to know about how long people had been programming for and the default OS, which BTW was not a surprise.