[Foundation-l] Donation Button Enhancement : Part 2

[Robert Rohde]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 11:28 PM, Gregory Maxwell<gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 2:15 AM, effe iets
> anders<effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What about changing it every hour? Then you have sufficient randomness over
>> time, and no flashy buttons.
>
> You still have the problem that peoples response to future buttons
> will depend on the past buttons they've seen.

Yeah, I'd suggest it is better to show each person one button type and
stick with it.

One can approximate that behavior either by assigning each user
randomly and tracking their type via a cookie or by selecting based on
higher order bytes in the IP address and assuming those are fairly
stable (e.g. using BBB mod 4 where the address is AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD).

Neither approach is foolproof or totally without bias, but one can do
fairly well.

-Robert Rohde