Voting from visitors those are not registered users of symantec connect.

Interesting, but the fake voting and spam bot side effects are a non-trivial problem.
I'd say implement this only if there's some CAPTCHA or other filter in place.

I agree MitchR, not easy to manage & lower the signification/value of the vote himself. If you implment this idea, I just suggest you separate a counter for "anonymous" votes.

Yeah, this idea is prone to spamming/botting. And I don't like Captchas. Maybe anonymous users would just add these to Stumble or Digg. :D
And maybe they'll also stumble onto the rewards page and sign up.

If the captcha is simple enough I don't see why it'd be such a big deal. Even if not everyone uses the captcha, some would. And we'd still be getting the benefit of this suggestion, more feedback.

Isn't that the point of the whole point system in the first place? To get more feedback? More community involvement? If a customer doesnt' feel like registering an account, but can still interact in small ways, maybe they'll be more inclined to stick around. maybe they'll use the site more often, and maybe they'll even change their mind later as they get more involved.

I like this idea.

Though I pose the question, do you get points for anonymous votes on your idea/article/whatever ?

thanks Rob for your opinion. totaly agree on this.
On points on anonymous votes, I really don't care. This thumbs up/down approach is to know how useful the particulat post/article/blog etc. was. It also gives a better indication of what our reader wants to read at the first place. It will definatly help me next time to write some thing more relevant to the users and I won't talk or invest my all time on those all technical Jargons that only 2 guys are going to read. I would like to write some thing that is more useful to 100's of our readers.

Praveen

I am in favor of this. Rob pointed correctly, it may attract folks to come back again. perhaps just to see how many votes that articles have now :P

 I would agree...that visitors should atleast have the power to vote...It doesn't mind if we get or don't get points from visitors. But the value of a post increases where everybody can vote..It will also be easier to find helpful and quality solutions,blogs,articles easily.

Sorry to be so blunt.

I agree in concept with your proposal. Allowing anonymous users to vote would encourage voting and might give us a better idea of which articles are useful which are not.

But, with our system we reward authors of positively voted submissions with reward points. What's to keep a user (or group of employees) from posting an article, logging out, and voting on the article to earn points?