I'm going to add explicit support for polls. As soon as I get done reading hundreds of YC applications :(

Haha, well at least you fixed the 'not enough applications problem'! I would have submitted but I can't move this summer, although I think just getting feedback from yCombinator would be worth it to me. To bad time is your most precious commodity.

is there any way you could filter applications before reading them?

We do, in a sense: some people who apply we already know, because people we've funded recommended them. If you can impress the founders of a YC startup, that counts for a lot.

This site was designed partly as an additional filter. It works too. When I met danielha I knew his name because he was #1 on News.YC.

Of course, the best way to counter this is to go around downvoting Alex's comments that aren't particularly interesting or insightful. I wouldn't normally do something like this, but in order to make up for 74 (!) upvotes, it might be necessary.

Well actually the point was to try to start an interesting discussion and get people sharing stories, but I see your point.

He could also use a comment, and then it wouldn't be quite as lame.

You may already know this, but unlike reddit, comment scores here affect karma.

One decent approach is to create two comments with instructions to vote one up and the other down, so you stay karma-neutral. So you need a total of 1+2n comments for a poll with n options. Like so:

Do you think this is a good idea?

(Vote this like you would an ordinary comment)

Vote this up for no.

Vote this up for yes.

Sigh. The sum of the scores on my four comments is now 6 and yesterday it was 3 (should always be 4). Apparently this is a bad idea.

Another approach is to let PG take care of it and get back to working on something that matters, whatever that may be;-)

Vote this down for no.

Vote this down for yes.