[ANN] bitcoinsentiment.com

[hathmill]

bitcoinsentiment.com is a crowdvoting site where you can express your sentiment towards Bitcoin and see what other people think. Basically it is a poll that is running continuously.

Voting, viewing and downloading is free.

I believe that it is important that resources that rely on crowd participation are kept free of adds and stuff like that and I am not doing this to make money (though I would stand to benefit from BTC appreciation since I own some coins).

The more people that votes, the better it will work so I have tried to make that easy by creating a widget, that people can use if they want to contribute. There is an API so you can create your own widget if you want to.

 

[Spekulatius]

I suggest reposting this in the speculation subforum and keep a thread up to date which is dedicated to your poll.

[jwzguy]

This is a neat idea, but without at least an indication of sample size, there's no way to gauge how representative your numbers are.

[hathmill]

This is a neat idea, but without at least an indication of sample size, there's no way to gauge how representative your numbers are.

Agreed. The volume is included in the download data and if you hover with the mouse over the graph you get the volume.

I should really plot the volume in the graph as well.

[crazy_rabbit]

You might want to change "bull" and "bear" to just "up" and "down". Many non-finance people won't know those terms, especially non-native speakers.

[hathmill]

I suggest reposting this in the speculation subforum and keep a thread up to date which is dedicated to your poll.

Thanks for your input. Should/Can I move the thread or can a mod help me?

[jwzguy]

This is a neat idea, but without at least an indication of sample size, there's no way to gauge how representative your numbers are.

Agreed. The volume is included in the download data and if you hover with the mouse over the graph you get the volume.

I should really plot the volume in the graph as well.

Cool - sorry, I didn't see that until you pointed it out.

[flynn]

it seems broken

[adamstgBit]

it seems broken

Its not, it will display the HTML code you need to have the bitcoinsentiment.com poll on your site

i find it Extremely weird that this information is displayed after you vote, and then you have to vote again to see the results...
 

[Serenata]

You might want to change "bull" and "bear" to just "up" and "down". Many non-finance people won't know those terms, especially non-native speakers.

True indeed! Judging by the colours I suppose Bull is Up and Bear is down, right?

Nice idea nonetheless.

[hathmill]

You might want to change "bull" and "bear" to just "up" and "down". Many non-finance people won't know those terms, especially non-native speakers.

I changed it to Up, Neutral, Down and added arrows and added localization feature to backlog. Thanks for the input. 

EDIT: Yes green is up (bullish sentiment), while red is down (bearish sentiment). 

[hathmill]

it seems broken

Its not, it will display the HTML code you need to have the bitcoinsentiment.com poll on your site

i find it Extremely weird that this information is displayed after you vote, and then you have to vote again to see the results...
 

Thanks for letting me know of potential issues.

Broken
What exactly seems to be broken? Were you not able to vote?
If you are thinking about that you see some HTML-code, that is a feature. By copying the code you can create widgets on other sites. Perhaps I should add some additional graphics to make the more clear.

Wierdness
What information is displayed after you vote?
If you want to view the chart before voting, there is a link above the poll. But perhaps it was something else you were thinking of?

Again, thanks for your input. It is most appreciated.

[flynn]

it seems broken

Its not, it will display the HTML code you need to have the bitcoinsentiment.com poll on your site

i find it Extremely weird that this information is displayed after you vote, and then you have to vote again to see the results...
 

Well,

this =>

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '9pMsnPÐæíÞ¬³Àpâ zËLëÐ*³') ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 1' at line 1You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '9pMsnPÐæíÞ¬³Àpâ zËLëÐ*³')' at line 1

does NOT sound good to me

[CoinHoarder]

It seems that you can vote as many times as you want. I was able to vote for up, click to vote again, then vote for down.

Some sort of IP analyzer only allowing one vote per IP would be good to protect the integrity of the poll.

[chmod755]

The votes should be a for a specific timeframe: e.g. 1 day, 1 week, 1 month,  1 year or more

[notme]

It seems that you can vote as many times as you want. I was able to vote for up, click to vote again, then vote for down.

Some sort of IP analyzer only allowing one vote per IP would be good to protect the integrity of the poll.

IP alone is a poor indicator of unique users.  Many schools and businesses have a single public IP.  Combine it with a user agent string at a minimum.

[Seal]

It seems that you can vote as many times as you want. I was able to vote for up, click to vote again, then vote for down.

Some sort of IP analyzer only allowing one vote per IP would be good to protect the integrity of the poll.

IP alone is a poor indicator of unique users.  Many schools and businesses have a single public IP.  Combine it with a user agent string at a minimum.

+1. Otherwise vote-rigging will happen.

[hathmill]

it seems broken

Its not, it will display the HTML code you need to have the bitcoinsentiment.com poll on your site

i find it Extremely weird that this information is displayed after you vote, and then you have to vote again to see the results...
 

Well,

this =>

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '9pMsnPÐæíÞ¬³Àpâ zËLëÐ*³') ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 1' at line 1You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '9pMsnPÐæíÞ¬³Àpâ zËLëÐ*³')' at line 1

does NOT sound good to me

lol, that is really bad. I have not seen that one myself, but I have a guess why it happened so I can see if I can fix it.

[hathmill]

It seems that you can vote as many times as you want. I was able to vote for up, click to vote again, then vote for down.

Some sort of IP analyzer only allowing one vote per IP would be good to protect the integrity of the poll.

IP alone is a poor indicator of unique users.  Many schools and businesses have a single public IP.  Combine it with a user agent string at a minimum.

+1. Otherwise vote-rigging will happen.

Yes vote rigging is a concern that I have. When I first thought about how to deal with it, I came up with the idea that voters would have to be members. To protect even further against trolls, a captcha would then be introduced so that member creation would be difficult to automate. Then I finally decided that it would for sure limit the number of voters and it could perhaps prove a little bit difficult to incorporate in the widget.

I have thought about storing the IP-addresses of people, but I decided against that mainly for two reasons. One reason was that unique users might share the same IP-address. The other reason was that I wanted the votes to be anonymous. For this reason I did not want use cookies either.

So what to do.... eventually I came up with a solution, but unfortunately I can not talk about it here because it is definitely not full-proof and for sure not if I write about it here. My hope is that it will at least fend of some of the most obvious attempts to manipulate the data. One of the most obvious ways, being repeatedly clicking on the links, which I of course did a lot myself when I was developing the site. Now, you can click repeatedly on the link without getting any error and without causing damage.

+1 for all your comments!

[hathmill]

The votes should be a for a specific timeframe: e.g. 1 day, 1 week, 1 month,  1 year or more

I would also have liked that, but then I had to give up the idea, because I became afraid that a potential voter would be "overwhlemed by the many options" and well... feel it was a little bit to much work. If there is only one option that is easy to understand, perhaps at least people would vote once.

Thanks for your input though, I am definitely have these things on the backlog if I can only find a good way of presenting them on the site.