On the Merits of Voting
Just before the MySQL User Conference, Dups implemented a small little feature for Planet MySQL: “voting”. We wanted to see what a voting system might mean to you, our PlanetMySQL readers.
The question is now how to improve the voting mechanism to make it more useful. The goal is for everyone to see what you and your peers think are the best PlanetMySQL entries over a given week.
Here are some of the options:
1. Open up voting to everyone regardless of whether they are logged in or not. Currently you can only vote if you are logged in with a MySQL.com account. Let’s face it, a login gives a barrier to entry even as much as it gives us the security of knowing we won’t get spammed.
One option is to allow all to vote, within the constraints of spam control of some kind. Another option is to have voting for non-logged in users to count, but count less than those who login. This gives voters the incentive to login and magnify their voice, but allows anyone to have a vote if they choose not to login. An example would be to have a logged in vote worth 1 and a non-logged in vote worth 0.1
The problem, of course, is that we would be setting an artificial “quality” judgement on your vote.
2. We add voting links into the RSS Feed itself, so you can tell the world what you think of blog posts from within your RSS reader. We could also automate a posting of the Top voted entries on PlanetMySQL at the end of each week in case you decide not to come to the web site at all (though we hope you do come by once in a while).
3. We leave it as is!
Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think! Remember the intent of all this is for good posts to not just disappear as the feeds scroll by with ever more content.
We’ve also been asked whether there is any conspiracy to throw posts up and down by us manipulating votes. Let me answer categorically: No. We do not manipulate the votes in any way. What you vote is what you see.
April 28th, 2009 at 15:44
This might not be a direct answer to your quetion, but here’s one problem I see: When you start reading an article, you click through to the original website to read the full article.
After you’re done reading, there is the barrier of going back to planet mysql to cast a vote. Maybe it would be useful to open the links to original articls in new windows, so when you are done and close the window, you still have planet open and can easily cast your vote?
and as answers to your questions:
)
1: open is good, and it would kind of align with the principles our community is built on, right? I wouldn’t even value anonymous votes less. Just provide a captcha or something when you are logged out.
2: Adding them sounds good as that is how most people read their planet (i would hope
3: See above
April 29th, 2009 at 4:35
Allow me to suggest that the current rating for a post is not indicated, but rather hidden.
Don;t know, it doesn’t feel right. As if this is sort of a competition.
You can still have everything else in place, full rating system and all. Just don’t present the actual numbers.
Regards
April 29th, 2009 at 19:33
Go for option 2. Now the voting system is useless for the regular RSS feed users. These probably are the most faithful users.
I also agree on Walters vision on option 1 : when you can reasonably assume a human voter (one per IP, captcha?) just accept he vote as a full one.
Mark