[Haskell-cafe] Re: The Haskell re-branding exercise

[Simon Marlow]

Sterling Clover wrote:
> IP based limitations are a terrible idea. Multiple users can be and 
> often are behind the same IP if they're in some sort of intranet, be it 
> corporate, academic, or simply multiple home computers. Mail-based 
> authentication can be screwed with, sure, but it's also very easy to 
> notice this (as opposed to ip nonsense) through simply eyeballing the 
> results. There's no general everywhere way to prevent vote fraud. 
> However, if we make it even require a mild bit of thought, that should 
> be sufficient in this case, as there won't be enough votes to prevent 
> some sort of rough eyeball-based check of the results, and if there are, 
> then that's a sign of fraud for sure! Furthermore, there's very little 
> incentive for someone to go the extra mile here, as we're voting for a 
> haskell logo, and not, e.g., giving away ten thousand dollars. 
> Furthermore, since I assume we'll only be presenting reasonable logos, 
> there's not even some room for pranksters to stage a "write-in" of some 
> gag slogan.

I suggest we do voting by email, and restrict voting to those who have ever 
posted on haskell-cafe before 1 Jan 2009.  We could then have an 
auto-confirmation scheme similar to mailing list sign-up where the 
confirmation message is sent back to the originator to confirm their 
identity, containing a verification link to click on.

I realise there are flaws in this, but it seems to be (a) cheap to 
implement and participate in, and (b) good enough.

Cheers,
	Simon