For 2014: de-duping votes without using Facebook

[konklone]

It's too late to work on this for 2013, but I'd like to register my discontent with the Facebook requirement for participation in 2013, and start a discussion on the easiest way to do that for next year.

Is there a concern that an email-only registration option will lead people to register under throwaway emails, or use +-addressing or something?

One easy way to deal with this is just to give people multiple options -- you already allow login with Github or Twitter for competing and for judging. Why not allow them as options to login for voting? It's not totally ideal, but it seems practical and doesn't exclude people who refuse Facebook from voting.

[gerad]

What if we switched Facebook to LinkedIn?

[konklone]

🔨

[jacquescrocker]

yeah, linkedin would be a great option for next year. @konklone if you send us a patch, we'd even be happy to incorporate it this year :)

lets sync up after the competition, I agree facebook-only for public voting is a bit limiting

[gerad]

Let's try this a different way. Why are you discontent with Facebook for public votes? It's a very good way to ensure uniqueness and humanness...

[konklone]

Because many people (including myself, at times, though not at this time) do not wish to have a Facebook account, for privacy or other reasons. Further, websites that force users to have a Facebook account are one of the reasons many people feel pressured to use Facebook even when they'd rather not. This isn't a healthy dynamic for the web, or for those users.

Facebook login is a great option to have, and lots of people have no problem using it. It's when it's the only option that it's a problem. And since Node Knockout already has the technical integration to allow easy Github and Twitter login, adding them as voter login options seems like the lowest barrier to addressing this.

[konklone]

@railsjedi, that's good to know - though, learning the ropes of your web app is a bit intimidating for me on short notice. It's a simple enough app, but diving into a whole app is a learning curve. Also, I've done a bunch of Node and JS, but no CoffeeScript, so I'd be working slowly and with friction. I hate to be all complaints and no action, but I don't think I'm the right person to do it.

[gerad]

Do you feel that LinkedIn (if that was the only option) would mitigate the concerns you raise about Facebook identification? Or are we trading one bad for another?

[konklone]

I actually thought you were being sarcastic about LinkedIn, that was my bad. I personally don't have a LinkedIn account, and it's a lot less useful for devs than other fields, IMO (I closed my LinkedIn account years ago), though I know voting is meant to not be limited to devs.

I don't think there's a reason to use LinkedIn over Twitter or Github, when integration is already there for the other account types.

[gerad]

The challenge is mostly identity. When we offer 3 options, one person can vote 3 times, and it takes 3 times as much work doing the data analysis to identify duplicates and fake votes (once for each system).

[konklone]

Then you can de-dupe on the email address associated with the account people log in to. Sure, they can use accounts tied to different emails, but there's nothing stopping someone from registering multiple Facebook accounts under different emails either.

[gerad]

Also, fwiw, you can log into Github and Twitter today (on the site) and if you're not a judge or contestant it'll default you to being a public voter, and you can vote on the team pages. You can't use the voting widget though (well, you might be able to after you're logged in, I should probably check the code).