5 ms·
I was surprised to read how easy it was to game... at the heart of the success seems to be a real lack of quality coding on Time's behalf.
by joshsharp 17y ago
I was surprised to read how easy it was to game... at the heart of the success seems to be a real lack of quality coding on Time's behalf.
- Frazzydee 17y agoquite surprising, since time's poll has historically been a target of similar attacks.
- extension 17y agoFair internet voting is generally an unsolvable problem, unless you have a voting list from a more reliable source and you can authenticate people on that list. Despite best practices, any high profile "best person in the world" poll has a pretty good chance of being won by moot/Lowtax/gimmick-meme-of-the-day.
- colinplamondon 17y agoBest answer is probably just to use Facebook Connect- they're already pouring money into CS reps whose job it is to take down fake accounts. Blocks out people who aren't on Facebook, but it's a simple solution to something that can otherwise be a huge timesink.
- potatolicious 17y agoHow much of CNN's viewer base is Facebook-connected? The point of this sort of polling is to drive traffic - this ain't gonna happen if most of the people can't vote without going through a big signup for a service they don't want.
- coopr 17y agoIndeed Switzerland seems to seem think that fair internet voting is possible - http://www.geneve.ch/evoting/english/presentation_projet.asp http://www.geneve.ch/evoting/english/presentation_projet.asp and http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/25/world/main645615.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/25/world/main645615.s... describe how they've experimented with it in national elections.
- moss 17y agoBut a big part of the system described there is about authenticating people as being registered voters, which is what extension said the prerequisite was for fair internet voting.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- jacoblyles 17y agoWhat could they have done to prevent this?
- Steve0 17y agoSeveral (flawed)things, limit voting to ip, mail confirmation, but I think a captcha would be the best trade-off between inconvenience for the user and blocking bots.
- nailer 17y agoCaptcha makes it harder, but it doesn't block bots. You can use Python's sphinx library (the voice one) to turn those mp3s back into the original text, then use mechanize or windmill or whatever to re-enter it.
- EvilTrout 17y agoChoosing a new salt that isn't easily obtainable in a flash applet would certainly help :)
- Mgreen 17y agoLooks like they are still using the same codebase that was gamed before. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27475 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27475