Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

http://gopollgo.com/do-you-prefer-starbucks-or-peets-coffee

by BenSchaechter • 16 years ago

20 30 16 years ago

ecaroth2• 16 years ago

Small suggestion... you should make the vote option text a label. Very annoying when you try and click it but realize you cannot, and are forced to click the actual radio button.

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

Good suggestion. I'll add that in.

kevinburke2• 16 years ago

Hi, I just voted and your site has been "Processing my vote...." for the last minute or so. The map is blank.

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

I believe I just fixed this. Sorry about that. But just to be sure, which browser are you using?

kevinburke2• 16 years ago

It was chrome 9.0.something

ses• 16 years ago

Looks nice, although I'm not in the states...

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

We're adding support for other countries currently. I believe Germany and France are in there right now...but that is something that is definitely on the list.

The maps are made with SVG and I make them on my own so they suck up a good amount of time.

edit:typo.

drewse3• 16 years ago

It looks like it's a good idea and the website has a nice design, although I've never understood how online surveys can be unbiased considering the fact that the population of voters is definitely biased. Do you have any plans for making the data more reliable that you're using with the site (e.g. asking users for how they found the site)?

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

We track where users voting come from so you can segment by particular referrers. For example, you could segment votes by Facebook users or Twitter users.

Mostly, we aim to work with larger websites/companies with large amounts of website visitors, Twitter followers or Facebook fans to easily aggregate what their users think.

I'm not positive we'll be able to eliminate bias though. Its on the to-do list =)

Wilduck• 16 years ago

If you click vote without selecting any of the options, it looks like it's processing your vote, but never does anything. There should probably be some message telling you to choose something, rather than make you think that there's something going on when you submit a blank vote.

Other than that, cool interface.

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

Ah, awesome. Nice find. I'll get this fixed. Thanks!

Dobbs• 16 years ago

When I mouse over a state if it has votes then it stays black after mousing over another state. If it doesn't have votes it returns to white.

Let me know if you need more details.

Safari 5.0.2 Mac OS X 10.6.5

Also when casting a vote I'd like it to tell me what city/state it recognized me as. I'm from Provo but there where no votes there, so I'm assuming I'm the one in Salt Lake.

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

Yes, this mouseover problem has been confusing me as of late. I'm using JQuery + Raphael to interact with the SVG map objects. I need to figure out this bug (which I believe is something particular to Raphael) by diving into some docs a bit more.

The geolocation is only as great as your ISP allows. I hope to allow people to change their region if they're logged in. If anyone happens to know a good geocoding service, please let me know.

I'll try to get something worked into the interface to show this.

alextp• 16 years ago

Skipping questions shouldn't be that hard. I don't care for either Peet's or Starbucks, nor do I care for Ke$ha or Kate Perry.

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

So right now there are 3 polls I think. And I have very odd polls that I've made. So that is part of the problem. I hope to make something in the future where you can follow topics and get emailed polls that interest you.

But I think you're right. Skipping should be easier. I'll try to figure out a good solution for this.

Groxx3• 16 years ago

Starbucks edit(+"coffee") isn't coffee.

drewse3• 16 years ago

"Do you prefer Starbucks or Peet's Coffee?" implies the following: "Do you prefer Starbucks' [coffee] or Peet's Coffee?" From what I've learned, this title is grammatically correct.

Here is an explanation: http://www.kerryr.net/webwriting/gpwu_punctuation.htm#q5

Groxx3• 16 years ago

Hah xD Didn't realize it could be interpreted that way.

Correction: Starbucks "coffee" isn't coffee.

blakerc• 16 years ago

Nice app. I like your implementation -- particularly how you encourage users to make their own polls with the orange notification. I recently built a surprisingly similar polling application. Check it out below:

Is Starbucks coffee better than Peet's coffee?

Yes: http://grok.io/yuc No: http://grok.io/nuc

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

We should chat. Feel free to shoot me an email listed on my profile.

mkjones• 16 years ago

I think the "take another poll!" call to action is a good idea for keeping people engaged, assuming there's content. Grok.io needs that - so far it's more concentrated on answering a question accurately than surfacing more questions for a user. The map is cool too - it'd be even neater if you inferred location based on IP address.

(I've worked with Blake on grok.io a bit.) Shall we try:

Is grok.io's forecasting model going to be more successful's than gopollgo.com's consensus model? Yes: http://grok.io/yuS No: http://grok.io/nuS

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

Yup. Once we actually are public and people are making polls, I think "take another poll!" will be very interesting.

We actually do infer location based off of IP address and a few other things.

Grok.io is cool. I like the look and feel of it.

csouth• 16 years ago

I'm guessing the map is for me to put in my location. If so, 2 things. 1 the area I live in is labeled wrong (email me and I'll point you to it if you want to fix it), also when I hit take another poll it takes me out to country level, it should stay.

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

Actually, your location is determined automatically based off of your IP address. The map displays the majority votes for their respective regions.

I'll email you about the misspelling, though. Thanks.

ecaroth2• 16 years ago

Ben, that interactive map that zooms in with all the counties in a state is pretty friggin nifty. Did you make that from scratch with a n ip-to-location data set, or use some kind of location API??

vgurgov• 16 years ago

Hey Ben, As i mentioned on FB - I like your design and implementation. One thing that i noticed just now- when i click "vote", would be cool if "take another poll" would appear somewher near so i dont have to move mouse along whole screem. i believe its your major call to action once i voted, right? small thing, but its quite annoying and slows my voting process which i believe is quite fun by itself. good luck with this!

BenSchaechter12• 16 years ago

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to best solve this problem without complicating the UI.

I've thought about making everything ajax so you can use your arrow keys to navigate through polls much easier. The overhead for that would take some time.

I believe we may launch publicly launch as is (after bugs are fixed), then go from there. I'll keep you updated though.

Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

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