..you could let them send in a note from their parents to get unbanned :-)
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec...
So, if HN internally keeps a reference from votes in the under-10 category of this poll to the accounts they came from, and if any of those people are under 13, there may be cause for real concern re: COPPA.
There are sort of 3 ways to approach this safely... 1. don't ask, don't tell (eg: Google's main search page) 2. ask, and reject (eg: Facebook account signup) 3. ask, accept, and get consent (eg: some child focused sites)
HN is pretty clearly not a child-oriented website, but if there is concrete knowledge of age, COPPA can apply.
Path's case is different, since the form asking for the birthdate was made by them, so they knew they had that information.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-human-rights...
Something like trolling, getting a rise out of people, etc -- I don't like it or agree with it, but I can comprehend it. In this case, no one is even going to see or know what you did. Is there some pleasure taken in knowing that people think the results are valid while you secretly know they aren't? Or was there an awareness that the moderators would see the bad results, be annoyed by them, and post about it?
The options I would've expected as more reasonable: <20, 20-35, 36-40, 41+. Then you would hope the results of the poll are interesting enough to talk about (otherwise, yes, you'll degenerate into humour).
> setting all the +80s font to extra large and all the <10s font to comic sans
That actually made me seriously consider voting up both the 80+ and <10 answers just to see what "easter eggs" pg implements.
In my opinion the option for over 80 is the proxy vote for please don't post things like this.
Times like these are what really get me pumped about the great community I'm diving into surrounding tech.
It's called second childhood. May you someday be eligible, but yet escape achieving it.
As for the fonts, you can be sure the octo- and nona- hackers will have long since implemented suitable user scripts.
I propose two HN sites based upon basically the same underlying data. A "good" one, and a phantom one. Users who get honey potted end up in a phantom mode where any moderation or posting actions that they take affect only the phantom HN that they view. Phantoms can see the posts and moderation results of good users, but good users can't see the posts and results of phantom users.
Or maybe a little dunce cap icon next to their name.