That sounds fine in theory but in reality anyone with a hacker mentality should see that the poll is obviously based on the honor system and is simply a series of options to upvote without actually attempting to ruin the results.
I present, No True Hacker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman). Some hackers are interested in the results of the poll. Some resent any effort by anyone to collect their personal information. Some just wanted to click all the buttons, to see if they could. None of these are more or less valid than any other viewpoint, and it's silly to argue about what this portends for the HN community.
The use of the word 'vandalize' is kind of interesting to me, because it's usually used in a physical context to mean destroying or damaging something of value. It's kind of like using 'steal' for IP infringement; there's the argument to be made that theft implies the loss of something for one party, as much as the gain for another. This isn't really vandalism, in the same way that downloading songs isn't theft. Neither is morally right, but it's a sort of emotional appeal to compare it to someone throwing a brick through your window.
Was phreaking illegal? Totally. Was it unethical? Yes. Do we not consider it a part of hacker history and culture? You can disagree with people and say what they did was not morally sound, but it's silly to say people don't belong on a hacker site because they have an anarchist kind of worldview.
> This isn't nearly as interesting of a discussion as you think it is.
I'm glad we found someone who can objectively decide what's interesting! Now you can suggest books and movies to me! Do you work for Netflix?
But seriously, I never made a value judgement about the poll. The poll costs real time, and real money to host. But data from a poll is not a window. Adding noise into a poll is not breaking a window.
This blatant inaccuracy is actually harmless, because it basically invalidates the two buckets which were already going to be an insignificant part of the poll. Absent any response I would've said those buckets are there to absorb troublemakers, but pg's response implies I'm giving him too much credit. The bigger risk is people who are fudging by one or two buckets, giving plausible but inaccurate data. Hell, the whole poll could actually be inaccurate, but we're focusing on the fact that there are a few joke responses which can be discarded safely.
They didn't just click in the < 10 and > 90 sections which, yes, were obviously not useful. They clicked everywhere else too, putting noise into the other fields.
I get to decide this isn't interesting because I'm half of the discussion. And I'm telling you, this is boring.
Your use of "vandalize" is certainly too strong and calling people names generally shows a lack or argument. Yet (somewhat unexpectedly) you raise an interesting question, in your first two sentences: if you disagree with something (law/HN poll/etc) how far can you go before it becomes unacceptable? Your view would rule out all kinds of protests that interfere with the process that is being protested.
I think that is too wide a definition of unacceptable.
Saying its 'vandalism' is just hubris. Isn't asking if people under 10 or over 90 are using the site in itself setting the poll up for failure? I tend to run with the edict that if you ask a stupid question, you should expect a stupid answer.
> in reality anyone with a hacker mentality should see that the poll is obviously based on the honor system
While sure, this might be the case, it still doesn't negate the fact that fundamentally, HN's arrows (of all kinds) should be able to be "undone". Accidents happen, people are curious. We shouldn't blame the users for a system that is broken and relies on them to ignore long-standing standard UX practices when it comes to these types of elements. This poll could have only been abused so far if users were only allowed to pick one, even if they chose to pick the wrong one. Given how long people have been complaining about this, it doesn't surprise me they take advantage of it for the sake of proving a point.
Actually, in a poll, you don't change your mind, it would kinda break the purpose :)
In an ideal world, we should not even be allowed to see the results before voting, since it could bias us (it should not in this kind of poll, of course).
It isn't even necessarily about changing your mind, it's about misclicking. It's like filling in the wrong bubble of a Scantron form and the answer automatically being sent as soon as you put the pencil on paper. It shouldn't be making those assumptions until you verify that's the response you want to send. On multiple occasions I've clicked a radio button in a form thinking it was the most relevant to me before reading the rest of them (which is not really relevant to this poll in particular, but how the interaction should be treated regardless).
But I definitely agree the responses should not be visible until you've voted.
