BitPoll - combine donating and voting

[molecular]

Couple days ago, I had the idea to make BitPoll, so I hacked up a prototype (http://bitpoll.dyndns.org), here's a screenshot:

BitPoll combines donations with voting.

The idea is that anyone can cast a poll by making a list of poll items that can be voted for by transferring Bitcoins to the given address. Usually the poll creator will generate fresh addresses for each of the items.

BitPoll uses blockexplorer to determine the amount of Bitcoins that have been transferred to each poll item's address. The poll items each have a desired amount, when the total balance of an item reaches 100% of this amount, that item is considered to be fullfilled and the address is not shown any more.

Currenlty polls stay open indefinitely. I plan to implement different modes to define when a poll is considered to be finished (winner takes it all, close idividual items, ...)

Tell me what you think, or even donate on the site if you like the idea ;)

EDIT: changed urls from https to http

[ploum]

I think that the idea is genius. I would kill to have such a feature for FLOSS softwares. (and please, don't move to java!)

I see to possible voting system:

- traditional with fixed price (one man, one vote, possibly enforced by cookies and IP)
- the richest is right (which might make sense)

[molecular]

I think that the idea is genius. I would kill to have such a feature for FLOSS softwares. (and please, don't move to java!)

I see to possible voting system:

- traditional with fixed price (one man, one vote, possibly enforced by cookies and IP)
- the richest is right (which might make sense)

Yep. The idea here is to go with the second option: Less democratic, but more funding-oriented. Vote with your wallet.

[ribuck]

This is an awesome idea! I sent a small donation.

I would like to see the "winner takes all" option implemented. It would make a great way to resolve ongoing bickering: challenge everyone to "pay up or shut up".

[molecular]

This is an awesome idea! I sent a small donation.

I would like to see the "winner takes all" option implemented. It would make a great way to resolve ongoing bickering: challenge everyone to "pay up or shut up".

Yay! Thanks for the donation.

"winner takes it all" makes sense in a lot of cases, especially when the options contradict each other (decision to be made)

"run indefinitely" (items will be closed individually when they reach 100%, poll remains open until all items are closed) can also make sense, though.

[jtimon]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but...Why do you check the chain every 5 minutes if blocks are added every 10 minutes?
Well, I it can take less than 10 minutes, but I think blocks are never generated as fast as every 5 minutes.

Anyway, it seems a good idea.

[SgtSpike]

If I understand this right... the person creating the poll gets 100% of the funds that are "voted" with?

Interesting...  I need to start thinking up good polls then. 

[molecular]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but...Why do you check the chain every 5 minutes if blocks are added every 10 minutes?
Well, I it can take less than 10 minutes, but I think blocks are never generated as fast as every 5 minutes.

Anyway, it seems a good idea.

Well, it takes 10 minutes on average until a block is generated. I think the distribution is a poisson distribution.

A <5 minute block is not uncommon (see the yellow marks on http://www.bitcoinmonitor.com/, there where 7 <5 minute blocks in the last 60 minutes. Of course the fact that a difficulty increase is immanent helps this, we're mining too fast at the moment).

[molecular]

If I understand this right... the person creating the poll gets 100% of the funds that are "voted" with?

Interesting...  I need to start thinking up good polls then. 

Looking forward to that.

However: I haven't implemented "Poll Creation" yet, so you can't create your own poll currently.

I'll implement that once the remaining 1.35 BTC have been donated for that feature. So maybe you want to donate a little to the address given on http://bitpoll.dyndns.org/?poll=1 for the option "good idea, implement poll creation"