[thelist] Online poll issues

Joshua Olson joshua at waetech.com
Wed Apr 3 07:42:00 CST 2002


----- Original Message -----
From: <martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 8:29 AM
Subject: RE: [thelist] Online poll issues


> >I am recently having poll problems for my schools online newspaper.  Is
> >there really no way to prevent cheating?

A lot of good ideas have already been posted--and here's another one.  While
it may be difficult to stop people from cheating, if not impossible, you can
easily take the immediate gratification out of cheating.

Time stamp the votes as they're placed by users.  When displaying results,
only display the votes based on the number of results received before a
certain cut-off point.  You may make the cut-off point at the top of every
hour, for example.

Someone who submits three or four times will not immediately see the effects
of the cheating and is possibly more likely to stop trying.  This is pure
speculation, but it makes sense to me.  I'd love to see a study on this!

Again, this idea doesn't stop cheating altogether, but it may provide a
deterrent for child-like pranksters.

-joshua





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