Sumedh from Citus here. I can post it as a poll, but that will only include the top-level choice of the Software Category. HN poll doesn't have an interface like Google form, and has no way to get the second-level information of the specific application in that category. That remaining information would have to be solicited via the comments. Is that OK? Or is there some change you'd like to make to the poll.
The text description would also need to be modified a bit due to this. The current text walks people through the structure of the form, so we'd have to simplify it. If the above works, I can modify it, and also happy for you to send me a modified poll and text for me to post.
Hmm, I'm afraid that will be likely to make it difficult to aggregate and analyze the result.
Let me confess that I haven't had a chance to see any HN poll. Does HN allow posting the URL of a poll on a different site? I thought I can submit an article with a brief introduction of the poll and "For details, please see here: <URL>". Then, I wanted to attach the following URL, which is what I posted through Planet PostgreSQL.
If not allowed as a poll system of HN, do you think we can submit a poll request as an "Ask" article?
That can be doable, but its possible it may not get much traction. Typical AskHN doesn't link to an external site, and the data is captured within the HN. Should I try that? The poll might get a bit more traction, but like you noted, the aggregation of the results would involve scanning through the text comments. I don't have a strong recommendation here, but probably the Poll might get a slightly better response.