How to pick a winner
- Copy the comments under your post – or the names from a form or a spreadsheet – and paste them into Entries, one per line.
- Set how many winners and how many reserves, in case a winner does not answer.
- Choose the rules: one entry per person, or every comment counting; a word or hashtag every entry must contain; accounts to leave out, like your own.
- Press Draw the winners.
The page counts the entries as you paste: how many lines count, and from how many different people. Somebody is the @handle in their comment, so “@anna” commenting three times is one person.
Show that it was fair
Under the winners is the record of the draw: when it was made, how many entries and people took part, the rules, and a fingerprint of the list of entries. Download it as a picture for a story or a post, print it, or copy it as text.
- Random numbers come from the browser’s cryptographic generator – the one used for passwords – not the everyday random of a game.
- The fingerprint (SHA-256) is worked out from the exact list the winners were drawn from. Keep the list, and anybody can check later that the same list gives the same fingerprint.
- Nobody wins twice, whatever the rules: a person already drawn is skipped.
Private by design
The comments never leave your browser: nothing is uploaded, and no account or login to any social network is needed. The last draw is kept on this device, so the record is still there after a reload.