

Voting/rating system without logins? - barmstrong

User registration is obviously a big hurdle which people like Posterous have done well avoiding.<p>For my site (BuyersVote.com) I let people do some things (like starting a new category) without registering, but to actually vote/rate items - I still haven't figured out a way to prevent abuse without people registering.<p>Has anyone been able to successfully do voting without logins?
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jnaut
Add the prefix "Ask HN:" to your question, otherwise it will not get the
visibility and attention you want.

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Here are my two cents on the issue:

Imagine the country going to vote without Identity/SSN verification
(registration) and only asked to put down address (IP), how many times a
fraudulent person would vote? once?

Even online registration is not fool proof 'coz one can register many times
using many emails, but it does create a filter to keep the spam low.

By looking at your site's name 'BuyersVote' I was reminded about a controversy
associated with ebay once (not sure of now), some of the the sellers were
creating bogus buyer accounts on ebay and creating fraudulent positive
feedback for themselves and this was a 'with-registration' system.

So I guess voting systems today are open to abuse, registration just creates a
filter and keep the abuse rate low. This will remain the status-quo till the
web gets a universal, neutral online identity provider. (OpenID is there but
doesn't seem to be catching enough attention and is not an ideal system in my
opinion)

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barmstrong
Cool, thanks for the tip on using "Ask HN:".

Yep OpenID offers a step in the right direction, but not a complete solution.
I actually offer this now so people can login with an account they already
have (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, etc - this uses rpxnow.com). This
reduces the hurdle slightly since they can often login with just a few clicks
instead of a full registration process, but it's still a hurdle. Thanks!

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jnaut
You're welcome!!

