Posted by Moot on 10/31/06 19:47

Marek Zawadzki wrote:
> - Limiting votes to an IP is also not perfect, since people are behind
> NATs quite often (or maybe your opinion is different?).

Maybe. See below:

> - I was thinking about email-based authentication (when you want to
> vote, system sends email which you have to confirm), where you would
> need to have many email accounts to manipulate votes, but isnt' it even
> bigger pain than registering?

I'd wager that it is less of a perceived hassle to log into a website
than to go check your email after voting to click a link.

> - Maybe very long captchas? (that would require jerks to type a lot, but
> still...)

Ugh. I hate captchas. Especially long ones.

> - Some weird JavaScript setup that requires you to leave the site open
> for a while for the vote to become active? (nah)

And what happens when they have javascript disabled?

>
> So (and I don't need it to be perfect every time), do you have any idea
> on how to make it complicated enough that most of the jerks stay off and
> it's simpler/better than registering for the good users?
>

Off the top of my head, how about a two-fold system where votes can be
cast by both registered and anonymous users. Where registered users
can vote once, and are counted as a full vote, but anonymous votes are
counted at some % of a full vote, maybe half, maybe 2/3, or whatever
works for you. You could also tie that in with the IP address by
counting successive votes from the same IP to be worth less and less.

That way, someone trying to skew the results by voting multiple times
finds his votes being worth less and less as he votes more.

But...I digress. This isn't a national election or anything, so does
it really matter if the results are skewed a bit? Is the benefit worth
the effort?

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