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Comment by psyklic | Hacker News Reader

It required me to enter a name and email so I didn't bother voting.

Yes, an email address to answer a frivolous online poll is pretty extreme.

I can understand why you might want people to enter an email address (for validation/more authentic results etc...) and if you're going to take that approach you sell it to your audience - tell them what the benefits are.

Also say that the email address requires validation. I put in a fake address and of-course my vote didn't get counted. If I knew up-front it was to be validated I probably would have entered a correct one.

Having said all that I don't agree with email validation. It doesn't ensure unique votes. Can you explain why you choose it?

Also some of your buttons perform JavaScript operations, some load new pages - with the same design and sitting next to each other. It's always best to be consistent and have some sort of icon or UI element to define which actions keep you on the same page.

I agree that email validation is flawed in terms of ensuring uniqueness, so this is something I may drop and insist users create an account. One thing I have considered in the mean time is allowing registered users to hide non-signed in participants.

That'd be better. Make the default action when voting "vote as anonymous, unless logged in", and upgrade that anonymous vote to a registered one if the user decides to register after voting.

Also, having an account is not ensuring uniqueness either.

Interestingly, one of the main criticisms I originally received was that you could vote without providing an email address!

same..

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