update 2009 #13

Data, new pols
Ing. Mhd. Hashem Taufiqui , Petro Koçi , Ilir Meta , Belgische politieke partijen , Laura Chinchilla Miranda , Jaroslav Foldyna , Roman Šmucler , Jaromír Drábek , Fritz Kuhn , Tarek Al-Wazir , Friedrich Merz , Erika Steinbach , Christian Wulff , Dieter Althaus , Ilse Aigner , Piratenpartei Deutschland , Jens Seipenbusch , Jürgen Trittin , Renate Künast , Andreas Popp , Peter Ramsauer , Gerda Hasselfeldt , Günther Oettinger , Klaus Wowereit , Matthias Platzeck , Jens Böhrnsen , Roland Koch , Ole von Beust , Erwin Sellering , Kurt Beck , Peter Müller , Jürgen Rüttgers , Stanislaw Tillich , Wolfgang Böhmer , Peter Harry Carstensen , Andrea Ypsilanti , Die Republikaner , Rolf Schlierer , Internet Censorship Controversy , Homosexual marriage , Health care system , Michael Melchior , Renovación Nacional (Perù) , Béla Bugár , Piratpartiet , Rickard Falkvinge ,

System , new functionality
- help page, to shortly guide users through the site
- users directory, to access users and their profiles
- improved routines for detection of spam or other inappropriate activity
- started to publish information about users and IP address which were banned or blacklisted for exceeding limits of rational activity

We are not alone on the way of new thinking

National politics is discredited. The wrong people are in power. The whole system is broken. But through technology we can all fight back. Andreas Whittam Smith, The revolution by text.

update 2009 #12

Our sorry for longer delay in the blog updates. I was busy for the site development and optimization. Following is the improvement from the last 3 months:

- Further optimization of SQL queries (every single query was reviewed)
- Further optimization of database structure
- Further on-page SEO optimization
- Started working on off-page SEO optimization
- Created Twitter support, posting news to few Twitter accounts
- ElectionsMeter sitemap survey of polls
- Support User to user communication
- User profiles were extended for user’s Facebook, Twitter account, blog url and short info about the user’s mission
- Display of user notice boards
- Spread Nofollow attribute on links where desired
- Users can now vote on users opinions
- Users can include own links in polls and vote about the links. User’s links display snapshot of the linked site.
- Some javascript and ajax was used to make polls more user friendly and interactive
- User’s are now fully supported to edit and delete their own entries
- Launched users statistics to decently display users activity
- Other statistics support for last 10 entries on the site and top 10 entries on the site
- Added automatic control of users trying abuse site voting limits
- Improved automatic control detecting external programmed scripts and voting robots
- Embedded PHPBB forum was updated and SEO optimized
- Social linking service was extended and optimized to better reflect country specific linking sites
- Added functionality to invite friends, to send an email with the particular poll data.
- Polls display little more information in their analytics section. Newly every poll indicates user name (or IP address if not logged in) of the last voter voting in the poll.
- and many more updates ..

Site optimization

Already planned (some improvements already done) and also in reflection to recent heavy traffic on the site we did some site optimization:
- cache setup
- etags setup
- CDN setup (temporal)
- CSS and Javascript compression
- Pictures compression optimization
- CSS sprites
- MySQL queries and indexes
- conditional layout display

Having all above improvements implemented we were lucky to reduce size of site code by half, loading speed for several seconds and responsiveness of database queries number of times.

The site should be now enough optimized to process traffic of 6 thousand voting users per hour.

Users attack poll "Creationism vs. Evolution"

Professor at the University of Minnesota, PZ Mayers posted on June 4, 2009 link to ElectionsMeter poll "Creationism vs. Evolution" on Pharyngula (Scienceblogs). He very likely wanted his readers to have a little fun while voting in this particular “pointless” poll. Readers then encouraged themselves to beat the poll to give lesson to all creationists. They came and hit the site with sudden high traffic so the site was overloaded. Within 24 hours 10 thousand users hit the poll (pike 3000 users per hour). To be honest we failed in this test of site performance. The site was very slow responding and even unavailable to some users so we decided immediately to review site code for better performance.

The same poll link appeared also on Bannination site. Where someone posted discussion about Evolution “Proof that Creationists are really juvenile. Do you love Jesus or Darwin?“ and linked the poll.

It was pretty good exercise for us. For the first time we could experience really huge bunch of users using the site, voting and commenting. The only thing we could finally regret after such attack of users (I am sorry to say, fascist of unified opinion) the result of the poll is not very representative. Wow! This is part of democracy. The poll was not abused in any way but simply and perfectly reflects will of the users. A problem however exists with type of users (users of unified opinion). The poll simply and drastically misses users of the other opinion. We as the site providers cannot be asked to adjust the poll result according to any reason, we can only encourage rest of the population to express its vote. The big question is only are there any Creationist, do they know about the poll, do they have interest to join the poll, does the general population ever have interest to vote in poll, if then what the general population be voting for, are only fascists interested in voting?

Will further users balance the result?

update 2009 #11

Data :
(1) new pols
Přijetí měny EURO v České republice, Gerald Häfner, Treaty of Lisbon, Lisabonská smlouva, Junge Liberale Österreich, Alev Korun

System :(1) new functionality
- simple sitemap, all polls and best bookmarks
- simple links survey, index of extenal links
- features of system mananagement and maintenance were extended
- links service by Addtoany was implemented to footer of every page (available to registered uses)
- RSS connections by Addtoany were implemented to RSS page

(2) improvements
- design of front page was simplified
- little update of Metadatas
- attempt of login will return erorr message if user's internet browser has cookies disabled or accidentaly deleted

update 2009 #10

Data :
(1) new pols
Josef Bucher,Accession of Turkey to the European Union,Nová strana

System :
(1) new functionality
- join our newly opened discussion forum
- users may choose from predefined customised layouts (full, standart, light), the option is available at the bottom of every page
- users can quickly swith and surf through pages they visited at ElectionsMeter, surfing history is displayed at the bottom of every page

(2) improvements
- unsuccessful login procedure was secured by captcha
- arrow signals of a poll direction change were corrected
- important links at bottom ribbon received icons
- poll page upper right corner of links was updated
- script calculating poll graphs was optimised
- sign-in emails were updated and extended

update 2009 #9

Data :
(1) new pols
Corneliu Vadim Tudor,Alegeri prezidenţiale în România,Principesa Margareta a României,Radu Duda,Crin Antonescu,Béla Markó,Mircea Geoană,Theodor Stolojan,Emil Boc,Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu,Traian Băsescu,UDMR / RMDSz,PNŢ-CD,Partidul Naţional Liberal,Partidul Conservator,Partidul Social Democrat,Partidul Democrat-Liberal,Jan Fischer,Centre démocrate humaniste,Socialistische Partij Anders,Parti Socialiste (Belgium),Vlaams Belang,Mouvement réformateur,Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie,Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams,Beatrix der Nederlanden,André Rouvoet,Wolfgang Schäuble,Ursula von der Leyen,Paul van Buitenen,Mark Rutte,Wouter Bos,Jan Peter Balkenende,Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Dem,Socialistische Partij,Partij van de Arbeid,Christen Democratisch Appèl,Han Seung-soo,Lee Myung-bak,Jayu Seonjin-dang,Minju-dang,Arnold Schwarzenegger,Hannara-dang

System :
(1) new functionality
- RSS, we reviewed and significantly exteded RSS functionality of the site, now the ElectionsMeter headlines can be easily delivered to your RSS readers, you can choose among regions of your interest, daily updates of significant moves and weeekly surveys of newly added polls
- new users with first votes get a window informing them about further functionality of the site
- icons, (widgets) now can display an arrow signal of a poll direction change
- warning messages and user dialogs were put to more userfriedly style

(2) improvements
- we spent our effort in last days on the code validation, the site is now HTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 valid! the site is however still under development so we will process this effort soon againg
- the code was also reviewed the way to care for the site be always properly displayed and well functioning in Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7, IE8), Firefox 3.0 and Opera 9.6
- graphs, histograms of poll results were recoded to more properly display the results
- icons, (widgets) were extended by javascript solution
- we improved the site defence against some rude robots
- some improvements were done in METADATAs

update 2009 #8

Data :
(1) new pols
Kim Yong-il,Kim Jong-il,Kim Il-sung,Workers Party of Korea,Chondoist Chongu Party,DRFR,Jean-Marie Dedecker,Marianne Thyssen,Yves Leterme,Herman Van Rompuy,Albert II de Belgique,Boutros Boutros-Ghali,Ahmed Aboul Gheit,Ahmed Nazif,Muhammad Hosni Mubarak,Nasserist Party,Party Hizb al Tagammu,New Wafd Party,NDP (Egypt),Jaromír Štětina,Milan Hamerský,Jana Hybášková,Vladimír Železný,Benjamin Kuras,Věra Flasarová,David Macek,Jaromír Kohlíček,Jiří Maštálka,Vladimír Remek,Miloslav Ransdorf,Jaroslav Lobkowicz,Marie Jílková,Ondřej Benešík,Milan Horáček,Jiřina Šiklová,Přemysl Rabas,Jan Dusík,Zuzana Brzobohatá,Libor Rouček,Richard Falbr,Ivo Strejček,Milan Cabrnoch,Evžen Tošenovský,Oldřich Vlasák,Jan Zahradil,Pavel Jajtner,Zuzana Roithová,EU volby 2009,Ban Ki-moon,Euthanasia,OPEC,BRIC,ASEAN,The United Nations,International Monetary Fund,G20 major economies,2009 m. Lietuvos Prezidento rinkimai,Zigmas Vaišvila,Algirdas Pilvelis,Algimantas Matulevičius,Algirdas Butkevičius,Loreta Graužinienė,Valentinas Mazuronis,Dalia Grybauskaitė,Iranian presidential election 2009,Reza Pahlavi,Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi,Hassan Rowhani,Abdollah Nouri,Mohsen Mehralizadeh,Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf,Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel,Mir-Hossein Mousavi,Mehdi Karroubi,Elecciones presidenciales de El Salvador de 2009,Rodrigo Ávila,Mauricio Funes,Elecciones presidenciales de Chile de 2009,Hernán Büchi,Jiří Havel,Evelyn Matthei,Pablo Longueira,Martin Říman,Adolfo Zaldívar,José Miguel Insulza,Nicolás Eyzaguirre,Soledad Alvear,Afghan presidential election 2009,Sayed Jalal,Zalmay Khalilzad,Ramazan Bashardost,Anwar ul-Haq Ahady,Gul Agha Sherzai,Ali Ahmad Jalali,Ashraf Ghani,Dr. Abdullah Abdullah,Macedonian presidential election 2009,Agron Buxhaku,Mirushe Hoxha,Imer Selmani,Prezidentské voľby 2009 na Slovensku,Dagmara Bollová,Milan Melnik,Zuzana Martináková,Iveta Radičová

update 2009 #7

Data :
(1) new pols
- Egypt : Party Hizb al Tagammu, New Wafd Party, NDP (Egypt)
- global : Ban Ki-moon, Euthanasia, OPEC, BRIC, ASEAN, The United Nations, International Monetary Fund, G20 major economies

System :
(1) new functionality
- in every poll is displayed histogram of election results from last 90 days, graph is showing development of votes for/against the politician
- domain ElectionsMeter.org was acquired and redirected to ElectionsMeter.com
- domain ElectionMeter.com (the term in singular number) was acquired for "strategic reasons", currently the domain offers overal view of all politicians and politics polls in the World
- hosting services were split between Hostmonster and Justhost
- Spanish 1politico.es and Chinese portal 1politician.cn were kicked off
- at the 1st-politician portals (1stpolitician.com, 1politician.eu, 1politician.cn, 1politiker.de, 1politik.ru, 1politik.cz) a buble appears with portrait and short description of the politician when a user moves mouse over the name
- the 1st-politician portals now counts and display politicians League (like in fotball the first League contains popular players and second League simply is occupied by a bit less popular and important players, data are based on voting results)

(2) improvements
- javasript routine to add/edit arguments now supports user preselected languages
- a routine controlling adding opinions in the poll was recoded
- search routine was added to 404page
- search routine was improved to let user search in predefined language version, whole ElectionsMeter or whole Google
- design of the 1st-politician portals was unified
- Robots.txt was updated and Sitemap was optimised