I wasn't talking about doing polls only. Each application would get a discussion thread, so there is room for someone to write a passionate essay or whatever.
I agree that there are issues with exposing voting. Maybe it would be interesting to shuffle the number of votes at first, see what happens when an application that was below the fold shoots to the top. (Maybe news.yc should do this too?)
The advantage of voting is that you can quickly flag wastes of time. In, e.g., fiction publishing, the ratio of acceptable to crap is 1 to 100 or worse, because any idiot can and does write a novel. You don't need to know everything as a reader to be able to eliminate the crap.
I think what you are really worried about is a situation where you have so many winners that there's no time to find the diamond in the rough. I don't think that's different from these startups' current situation though. They need to stand head and shoulders above the competition in some manner. They might as well start now.
Exactly. The startup would have to opt to be publicly vetted, but it would make a lot of sense. The worries of group-think are overrated. I think most would happily allow it and be grateful for the feedback and to see how they rate.
It takes some of the stress off of YC and lets a very smart community get involved. It's a win-win, really.
I agree that there are issues with exposing voting. Maybe it would be interesting to shuffle the number of votes at first, see what happens when an application that was below the fold shoots to the top. (Maybe news.yc should do this too?)
The advantage of voting is that you can quickly flag wastes of time. In, e.g., fiction publishing, the ratio of acceptable to crap is 1 to 100 or worse, because any idiot can and does write a novel. You don't need to know everything as a reader to be able to eliminate the crap.
I think what you are really worried about is a situation where you have so many winners that there's no time to find the diamond in the rough. I don't think that's different from these startups' current situation though. They need to stand head and shoulders above the competition in some manner. They might as well start now.