The inaugural TransGuys Community Awards have just launched, and I wanted to share a bit about the decisions I had to make on the technology side of things.
The TCAs have three parts: nominations, voting, and judging. Ideally then, the system running the biennial awards would provide functionality for public nominations, an unlimited number of vote/rs, and detailed reporting. Integration with WordPress would be a bonus. I've used several PHP poll and survey apps in the past for various projects, but most of them are no longer maintained, aren't PHP5 compatible, have security vulnerabilities, and/or ultimately don't fit my requirements for the TCAs. Plus, I'd rather use a service than have to maintain the code.
I'm a big fan of Polldaddy. It has no nomination functionality, however I'm still using Polldaddy to collect the nomination results. It's a messy solution though: by default, a poll must have two preset answers, or in this case nominations. I've used dummy entries here because true values would give those nominations unfair promotion. So, sponsors select the "Other" field and enter their nomination. It's not pretty. To further derail the usability, the nomination form's button label is "Vote." This is confusing because actual voting doesn't open until November 22.
The benefit of using Polldaddy over a simple form for collecting nominations is the reporting tool. Now, the reports won't be entirely accurate though because sponsors may enter name variations for the same nominees. I'll still have to export the results and manually group nominations for the same candidates with OpenOffice Calc.
Polldaddy's free accounts come with a limit of 100 responses per month.* This isn't a problem for collecting nominations, but it's a clear barrier to using Polldaddy for the voting phase of the TCAs. I need unlimited vote/rs, and that's harder to find then it sounds in a free poll web app. Initially, I was also interested in hiding results during the voting phase, which would give announcing the results more meaning, but this became a moot point when I added judging to the awards. The service I've selected for the voting phase is addpoll.com. It supports unlimited votes, vote throttling, and embedding. The UI is a bit weak, but it'll get the job done.
Other poll apps I looked at and why they weren't suitable:
- Google Friend Connect's Polls Gadget - Too restrictive, requires Google account.
- SurveyMonkey - Vote/r limit.
- MicroPoll - Pretty, but only single-question polls, and users can't add answers (for nominations.)
- BallotBin - Older looking UI, doesn't look like it can be embedded, single vote limit.
- QuestionPro - The free account is too limiting, but for $15/month this might be an option for the 2011 TCAs.
Other higher priced premium election apps that look good:
- electionbuddy - $179 for a 2000-voter election.
- SimplyVoting - Variable pricing, about $500 per 1000 voters.
- MotionVoter - $50/year, 500 voter limit.
I'm not entirely happy with the technology choices I had to make for the TCAs, and obviously there's room for improvement. In my perfect world, there'd be an open source, PHP electionbuddy clone out there available for download. It doesn't have to be as robust as The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation's system. Or, maybe by next year this time there'll be a new player in the online poll/survey/voting world that offers the perfect solution. Until then, the "quick & dirty" combination of Polldaddy and addpoll.com to collect nominations and votes will provide the lo-tech engine of the hi-flyin' inaugural TransGuys Community Awards.
*UPDATE, 11/01/10: I like Polldaddy even more now! I just went through a mini panic thinking that the Polldaddy monthly response limit of 100 might actually apply to my entire account, not per poll! If this were true, I'd have to scramble to find another solution for collecting the nominations. It's OK though, I was wrong. Actually, I was double wrong. Yay! The 100 response monthly limit applies to surveys, while poll votes are unlimited across all accounts! This means I can use Polldaddy for nominations and voting, no need for addpoll.com. Excellent!
