Allow anon polling

[torachan]

Title:
Allow anon polling

Area:
polls

Summary:
Everyone should be able to take a poll, regardless of whether they have an account or are logged in.

Description:
It's always bugged me that polls on LJ were only for LJ users (or OpenID). There doesn't seem to be any reason why that should be the case. Most online polls don't require you to log in to a service to take them.

Right now when I do polls I still direct people to LJ rather than having LJ folks come to DW, because people on DW are more likely to have an account on LJ than the other way around (and I don't think most people would sign up for OpenID just to answer a poll, so in terms of making it easier for people on my flist to take a poll, that's not really an option, either). But if anon responses were allowed on DW, I could just direct everyone here.

Some people may want only logged-in users to take their polls, so I'm thinking the best way to go would be to make it an option, much like how you can currently choose to make the poll open to anyone or make it friends-only.

Poll #1393 Allow anon polling

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
12 (30.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
9 (23.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
11 (28.2%)

(I have no opinion)
5 (12.8%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (5.1%)

Comments

[charmian]

I'm not sure how easy this would be for them to implement, since how would this show up on detailed results?

Maybe a better thing to do instead would be to whitelist Polldaddy or another external polling service (as an embed), and allow users to use those.

[distractionary]

If anonymous users might be allowed to fill out a poll, I think they should have a textarea available in which they can fill out however it is they want to be recognized – in other words, a way to sign their response, similar to how a lot of people who comment anonymously will still say "– Dan" at the bottom (or whatever their personal name/style entails).

Then, for instance, on the View Answers screen, instead of saying "distractionary – (Other: please comment)", it would say (although my name isn't Dan) "Dan – (Other: please comment)". No link on the name, because none is included.

Or, taking it a step further, there could be a link, either to email or a different service, if the person filling out the poll wanted to include a url or email address in a second textarea. This, I think, would be more like the comments section of various blogs – the name is posted as a link to whatever address was given in the second part of the form.

[queenbarwench]

+1

If the url given was an openid (ie their LJ address), it might also be nice give the poster the option to login at that point. This is mostly an advantage for the lazy people (much like me) who can't be bothered to log in just to answer a poll.

[erinptah]

+1

[instantramen]

+1

[kyrielle]

+1

[cesy]

+1

[aedifica]

+1

[eruthros]

+1

I'm not really concerned with poll abuse in most of my polls, but I do like to be able to look at the poll results.

[thedivinegoat]

+1

[azurelunatic]

This could, of course, lead to poll-abuse from a person or group who wanted to see their opinion prevail in the poll, unless there were some way of enforcing uniqueness in at least a token fashion.

[torachan]

True, but it would be up to the person making the poll whether or not to allow anons. I mean, most polls are not anything super serious, so I don't foresee a lot of cheating. If it is something more serious and people want to make sure there's no cheating, then they simply disallow anons.

[azurelunatic]

I'd want to see at least a token attempt to avert ballot-stuffing, even if it's not all that much.

[inarticulate]

By IP address has its drawbacks, and it's not guaranteed or anything (I don't even know if it would work), but that might work in a token sense.

[azurelunatic]

The problem that I see with that would be for longer-running polls, where say anonymous students in the same computer lab might not be able to vote.

[inarticulate]

Yeah, that'd be one of the drawbacks I mentioned-- the other one being that it's pretty easy to use a proxy server if you absolutely must stuff ballots. But if this goes through and there needs to be some way of limiting, it might be better than nothing.