I am developing a website with Tornado and users will be able to vote on items. These items are uploaded by other users and when they upload something I provide them with a url which can share with friends so that they can vote.
The website requires registration for those who upload items and ideally I want to keep it that way. However, it is possible for a person who is not authenticated to vote multiple times on an item because I don’t know how to track what they vote! Is there any good way to go about it?
I emphasize the fact that ideally I want people to be on the website without registration!
George
Really you only have a couple options on this. All of them require the ability to track the person somehow.
If you aren’t going to require authentication then you are only left with tracking against the IP to prevent anyone else from that IP from voting (A problem if people connect from a NAT based network.
The other option is setting a cookie with a unique ID assigned to them (That I would personally generate using a combination of a Hash based off their IP and a random number.) The problem with the Cookie is that if someone clears their cache they are able to vote again. This is why most places require people to be logged into an account to vote.