A poll, naturally, will convey what the group of people here voting tend towards, which seems rather pointless. You can get a feel for what the voting crowd would like by seeing how they vote.
The important question in my mind is, "Why did you come here and what will make you stay?" And for me personally, another important question is, "What is your connection with startups?" A much more interesting poll I found was this one:
It established that most of the voting crowd here actually has nothing to do with startups and only one in five of the folks that vote here have founded one.
From my perspective that, if the trend continues, endangers my reason for being here (and I suspect the reason that most of of came here in the first place). If Hacker News moves in the direction of simply being another nerd-news outlet, it'll be a second-rate one. The opinions I value, honestly, are not that of the majority, but of the interesting minority that are the raison d'être of this site.
Maybe I'm just defending my own pride here, but I have to believe that "not currently working at a startup" and "has nothing to do with startups" are distinct, if not disjoint, sets.
The important question in my mind is, "Why did you come here and what will make you stay?" And for me personally, another important question is, "What is your connection with startups?" A much more interesting poll I found was this one:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=223846
It established that most of the voting crowd here actually has nothing to do with startups and only one in five of the folks that vote here have founded one.
From my perspective that, if the trend continues, endangers my reason for being here (and I suspect the reason that most of of came here in the first place). If Hacker News moves in the direction of simply being another nerd-news outlet, it'll be a second-rate one. The opinions I value, honestly, are not that of the majority, but of the interesting minority that are the raison d'être of this site.