Voting while logged out? Why?

[doctorhook]

Why is it possible to vote in polls when logged out? It makes especially easy for folks to vote repeatedly and pad the results. AFAIK, most other forums don't do this, and personally think ENWorld ought not to either.

This is a bug, right? If yes, can somebody fix it? If no, would anybody be willing to explain the logic behind this decision to me?

Thank you for your patience, guys.

[Morrus]

It's a legacy thing from when polls also appeared on the front page, and given that the front page gets 10 times the traffic the forums do, the message "go away, you're not registered" wasn't an appropriate response to the majority of visitors who clicked and voted.

As far as being able to pad the results - it's a messageboard poll, and exsts more for informal conversational fun than anything else. If anyone is relying on the results for actual market research, they'd better find something better than a a free EN World poll to do it, because it wasn't designed with security in mind! There are far better solutions available.

[doctorhook]

Originally Posted by Morrus

It's a legacy thing from when polls also appeared on the front page, and given that the front page gets 10 times the traffic the forums do, the message "go away, you're not registered" wasn't an appropriate response to the majority of visitors who clicked and voted.

As far as being able to pad the results - it's a messageboard poll, and exsts more for informal conversational fun than anything else. If anyone is relying on the results for actual market research, they'd better find something better than a a free EN World poll to do it, because it wasn't designed with security in mind! There are far better solutions available.

That makes sense, I suppose, and you making a good point about validity.

That said, have you considered disabling this capability? Perhaps the "Go away, you're not registered" page could be spiffied-up to entice more users to register, rather than sending them away.