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Ruxton
10-05-2010, 01:28 PM
Been toying with this little problem in my head for weeks without coming to a solution i'm entirely happily with, so I thought i'd echo it out to you guys and see if you have any thoughts.

First some links:
http://www.wantsi.com - General Site
http://www.wantsi.com/users/Ruxton - My User Profile/Wishlist
http://www.wantsi.com/users/Ruxton/lists/2 - Entire Wishlist

I'm working on a wishlist website, Wantsi started out as a completely different idea for a wishlist that I've stripped back to a more personal style for myself (and others if you want to sign up). So the basic premise is you build a list of stuff that you want people to buy for you (gift ideas, etc.) from URLs or just via manual entry, that's all fine I don't think i have any major problems here.

However, i think it'd be nice if someone could come along and say "I'm gonna buy that for Mr Ruxton and send it to him" without any kind of interaction from me; While still having some kind of security/transparency (ie. after X days of me not marking it off received it returns to the list or i can just return it cos the "buyer" looks spammy). The issue here is that I can see incoming gifts, so I figured 15 days either side of your set birthday, you cannot change your birthday or see incoming gifts.

I toyed with many ways to approach it and felt that if you weren't a registered logged in Wantsi user i could piss around with Facebook connect *groan* but then there's still a bunch of people who can't login. I settled on the idea of making non logged in users supply an e-mail address to 'authenticate' (sends an auth link you click). You could also store a list of your friends adresses and if it doesn't match, it enters the 30 day bs.

The problem for me with this way is it's totally over complicating what i feel should be a very basic relationship, so I'm fishing for ideas on how others would handle such a situation.

heist
10-05-2010, 02:18 PM
You could just have the recipient review the gifter's details for legitimacy, but hide the gift they sent.

Gifters could then be pretty much free entry.

"Aunty Joan has sent you a gift with message: happy birthday" sweet (i know this person).

"BlanketIron8123 has sent you a gift with message: lombok degradation at house log" ... (mark as spam).

Ruxton
10-05-2010, 04:44 PM
thats the kind of simplification i was chasing heist, nice stuff!

The only issue i foresee with this, is theres nothing stopping me from pretending to be Aunty Joan. However that's a pretty targeted 'attack' on the specific person (they'd have to know a valid person to pretend to be) so I'm not sure i can avoid that situation at all.

cheers :)

heist
10-05-2010, 04:54 PM
Even if such an "attack" was successful - the impact is just the item removed from list temporarily... unlikely target, moderate risk, low impact. I'd just include some pretty basic/unobtrusive bot checking, and then cross the spam-prevention bridge when/if you come to it.

KISS, YAGNI, etc. :)