Module: Topic Poll

Yes, the poll is added from the editor, either when starting a new message or when editing an existing one. This message must be the starting message of a thread, so you cannot add polls to reply messages.

Enjoy!

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

One more question, though: Regarding blocking repeated voting it I don't understand is it based on a whole cookie or IP only?

Regards, Zdravko.

Quote
From the README
o Anonymous vote tracking is done using a combi of cookies and IP blocking.

Quote
From the module code comments
Checks if a vote was already cast for the poll in the message. It will check if the vote cookie is available. If this is the case, voting is denied. For anonymous users, voting twice from the same IP address within the IP blocking time is denied as well.

Anonymous users get both a cookie and IP-tracking. After the IP-tracking time has passed, they could vote again, but only if they deleted the voting cookie. If they delete the cookie before the IP-tracking time has passed, they will not be able to vote.

This only applies to anonymous users. Registered users can only vote once.

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2010 06:28AM by Maurice Makaay.

What does it mean for users coming from the same IP? Via proxy. Only one can vote?

Yes, that is of course a consequence of using an IP-block. For anonymous users, there is no perfect solution.

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

Well, the thing is I have many many such users.

If one has disabled cookies, is it possible to disable voting for such a user? Then I guess, cookie block would outperform IP block. What would you say?

That's not a feasible direction. I'm not fully sure what you mean with "outperform", but I am sure that it's not something that will provide perfect anonymous user tracking.

Forget about any kind of useful and trustworthy activity tracking when handling anonymous users. There's no way without requesting more info from the user to be able to identify him/her (e.g. letting the user confirm a vote by e-mail, SMS, IM, whatever, which would totally defeat the purpose of anonymous access).

Put differently: "Anonymous" is called that way for a reason. IP and cookie tracking are just hacks that can only partly replace the benefits of real identification mechanisms.

Of course, feel free to implement things differently if you think that it would make the module more applicable to your cause.

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

I agree with you. There is no perfect way. However, I have to solve this compromise: allow voting freely for everybody or many user will complain they can't vote even they never did vote in the first place. Both seem like a drawback in my case.

Statistically speaking, one can't do much harm to a poll if one can be at least delayed for a certain period of time. Forcing one to delete his cookie or wait for an hour or so, well I would consider it a statistically perfect system. :)
Only browsers with disabled cookies can harm the results.

That's why you can tweak the timing of the IP-block. If you think IP-blocking sucks, then make the IP-block really low.

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Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

Obviously you did both blocking on cookie and on IP. So if I disable IP I will be fine with users behind proxies.

Another issue occured when we tested it. I have two polls in the same forum and users (anonymous). After voting on one
thay couldn't vote on another.

Regards, Zdravko

ps. usually I know what I can do, what I don't know is how dumb I am. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2010 08:34AM by Zdravko Balorda.