Let visitors also upvote or only registered users?
I have a website where people can find, submit and upvote recently released music gear. At first I built it so that registered users could submit, but everyone who visited could vote. At the last moment before I put the site live I changed it so that everyone has to register before they can upvote. But now I'm doubting this again.
Pro register before upvoting:
• No cheating; if everyone can vote, and want to upvote a certain music instrument, they can open multiple private browser windows and cheat with the voting.
• I have their contact info and can identify them also for marketing reasons
Pro upvoting for everyone:
• Very easy to cast a vote. No signup required. (Also because I now let people only register through Twitter, which makes the barrier even higher.)
• The website will feel more lively if more people actually vote.
It's this website by the way: https://www.greatwavelengths.com/
Would love to hear your thoughts!
I'd think about it in terms of creating value for users. Is a single upvote feature worth signing up to a site for?
Probably not, especially if the site is new. So, I'd agree with your Pro list for letting everyone upvote content and would go that path initially. Overtime, you could change it once you've gotten traction.
When people see activity on a site, it makes them more likely to want to participate, which you need in the beginning.
In the case of cheating, you can counter that with utilizing IP address, browser agent, etc. to create a token, which could be used to limit the cheating. Naturally over time, that would be gamed, but if you get to that stage, you'll have more features of value that would make people want to signup for the site, thus it'd be an easier decision to restrict upvoting.
Another in agreement with this. Open at first, close over time.
Agree with all this. Maybe just use a cookie. Not perfect, but probably good enough for now.
Thanks, I agree. Gonna build it back to the way it was!
I prefer visitors to registered users
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Hey, at first it was because I wanted to create a marketing loop, but now I think it's not that important anymore. So yeah, you're right, I better open it up to more ways of signing up. Thanks for sharing your thought! Helps me to get out of my tunnel vision :)
This comment was deleted 4 years ago