I agree that the lightbox experience is common, but I view the surveys as fundamentally different than advertisements. Part of our idea is that your attention is more valuable than a banner/video ad. If I had 30 seconds of time from a smart HN reader, I'd rather ask for advice than show a commercial. Hopefully getting at that valuable opinion will allow you to get better free content online.

And, just to be clear, we're keeping the surveys fully anonymous; so we will not collect or tie to an e-mail address or other personally identifiable information.