Re:Ask HN: Can you make a voting/rating system without logins?
by kapauldo on Saturday October 31, 2009 @03:42PM
(#913942)
that is a drawback, but all you have to do is create a login and the problem is solved. it's a compromise for sure but the problem is, one bad apple ruins the whole system, and as soon as you launch, one bad apple will come along and vote 20 times on a story by clearing their cookies. so, for me, 1 vote per IP for cookie based login or ignore IP for logins has worked out well for me. i haven't officially launched the site yet, and when i do, i am actually leaning toward requiring logins but i'll play that by ear.
Is there ever a situation where a bunch of legitimate users have the same IP? I'm thinking at a university maybe, corporate firewall, or AOL?
Even so this compromise might be worth it to remove the login hurdle.
If you become Digg or something and people start actively trying to get around it, do you think this would be about as secure as logins? Could be a high quality problem to have.