Honestly.

This week’s idea is terrible, and not in that ‘occasional idea that sucks but gets upvoted and wins’ kind of way. This idea has been eliminated from the runnings countless times, and has only gotten through this time because there were apparently no better ideas. Continue reading, where I insinuate that allowing the continuous recycling of ideas that are this blatantly terrible cause there to be less viable builds in the overall idea pool.

Flamebate needs some sort of system whereby we can flag consistently terrible, but oft-resubmitted ideas so that they don’t stay in the pool and win by the sheer merit of being the least terrible option at a given time. By not vetting submissions that get absolutely destroyed in the votings a few times (hell we could be generous with it and cap a submission at 5 tries before it has to take a few rounds off), we leave forumbuildr open to stagnancy.

This week’s submitter (who should be perma- /hell- banned for this imho…Log in to see images!) could have taken the time to actually try and come up with an idea that didn’t suck bum, but instead just cut and pasted the same awful mess from 18 or so forumbuildr submissions ago as soon as the previous build was posted. What is the saddest part is that apparently they finally managed to use their terrorist tactics to break down the will and better judgment of the community.

Help keep forumbuildr interesting by having some sort of selective pressure applied against total **** submissions. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe submitting the same terrible idea each and every single time submissions open is meant to serve to **** people off so much that they come up with ideas that -don’t- suck, but it clearly didn’t work so end the experiment already.

...and hellban pickled male reproductive organbum for this.

Or even better, revoke his right to play in Domination.

Or place him in a domination bracket, every time, against BalanceBot.

But save all of BalanceBot’s scoops across characters and runs through the game, such that PD can never win in his domination bracket against a single opponent.

:: E: TL;DR Version 1.0 ::

Terrible ideas that get destroyed in the voting over 5 times should be able to be flagged and/or automatically removed from voting for at least 5 or more full voting cycles.

MC Banhammer Posted:

This is not an RP forum. Please keep all trolling of PD to the appropriate forum, and just stick your original contention w/o bringing the player into it.

Just to be fair, and I should have prefaced it, that was meant to be so obviously sarcastic as to make up for the srz buziness tone of the overall post. Sorry.

I upvote moving this to Whiny ****es.

I do agree we have a problem… but I’m not sure what can be done about it, considering the voting environment. The trouble is that no one knows what they really want in forumbuildr. Clever forum ideas do not necessarily make fun builds, but not enough voters actually think that through when voting. Lots of people just vote for the funniest or best-written forum idea, regardless of how bland the forum would actually be (see Internet Confessional, or Obscure Phobia Support Board or SPCA… in other words, see every Pickled male reproductive organbum forum other than Cellmates). Making things even more chaotic is the fact that a lot of the voters are so frustrated with Forumbuildr that they vote things up or down without really thinking about it. People don’t get excited about the few forum ideas they like, they just get annoyed at the ones they hate. Maybe the forum ideas really are that bad, but the negativity leads to apathy, which only makes the problem worse.

And let’s not forget the extreme level of competition in the category. It’s such a hard category to win in that people have come to believe that all voting is strategic. A highly winning forum idea is using illegal alts or klan voting. When one’s own forum idea is downvoted to -5, it’s because people didn’t want it to beat their idea. And anyone who discusses any of the forum ideas in play has some sort of ulterior motive in getting people to vote up their idea or vote down the competition. We’re ****ing paranoid about it! And yeah, some of that does happen, but a lot more of it is just in our heads. And because people believe that everyone is voting strategically, they do the same to keep up. Perception becomes reality and things get more and more cutthroat.

Also, new forum ideas are at a huge disadvantage, no matter how good or bad they are. People tend to vote for the ideas they have seen a few times because 1) the full realization of how bad they are has diminished over time, and 2) people feel like it’s “about time” a forum should win. So long as people continue to vote with a bias against brand-new forum ideas, limiting the number of times a sub can “try again” will hurt everyone.

So yeah. We have a very bad situation as far as the voting environment. Log in to see images! But unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the system. It has to do with the voters. Bad voters are always going to be bad voters so long as it is in their favor to continue being bad voters. Capping the number of times a forum idea can be submitted, will not make those bad voters any less bad. Right now the worst case scenario for people competing in Forum Ideas is that a competing idea wins and you have to wait another week for a shot at the top. But if there’s a cap on subs, you wont be able to just wait. You’ll have to get your idea to the top, period. Voting would become more aggressive. The common-sense strategy would be to get a few people to downvote popular forum ideas to -5 as soon as you see them sent in (if caught quick enough, you’d only need five other people). Do that a few times and the forum idea will never challenge your quest for the top again.

It would make a bad situation worse, in other words. Competition itself is not the enemy. We need competition. But we don’t need to make voting more competitive. We need to make the ideas themselves more competitive. We need to find a system that rewards people for voting up good subs, but there’s no way to do that because there’s no subjective way of determining whether a forum idea is good or bad.

So can anything be done? Perhaps. Maybe if sending in a forum idea required you to also send in 8 examples of material that would be appropriate to the forum build: 2 Enemies, 2 Thread Titles, 2 Typical Posts, and 2 Angry Replies. The extra work would deter people from make **** submissions, and the examples would help voters decide whether a forum idea would actually make for a fun build.

Orb Posted:

there’s no subjective way of determining whether a forum idea is good or bad.

Which is why all the “This idea sucks!” or “Crappy suggestions keep getting voted up!” comments mean nothing at all. Nothing. Because it’s all subjective. And just because you (not Orb, the generic “you”Log in to see images! think it sucks, doesn’t mean everyone else does. That’s why we vote.

Orb Posted:

So can anything be done? Perhaps. Maybe if sending in a forum idea required you to also send in 8 examples of material that would be appropriate to the forum build: 2 Enemies, 2 Thread Titles, 2 Typical Posts, and 2 Angry Replies. The extra work would deter people from make **** submissions, and the examples would help voters decide whether a forum idea would actually make for a fun build.

This sounds like a great idea.

Or, perhaps make them pay Flezz every submission? That way people will really THINK before hitting ‘submit’.

Wangerbanger Posted:

Or, perhaps make them pay Flezz every submission? That way people will really THINK before hitting ‘submit’.

Not really, since Flezz is hella easy to obtain if you plan beforehand.

Orb Posted:

So can anything be done? Perhaps. Maybe if sending in a forum idea required you to also send in 8 examples of material that would be appropriate to the forum build: 2 Enemies, 2 Thread Titles, 2 Typical Posts, and 2 Angry Replies. The extra work would deter people from make **** submissions, and the examples would help voters decide whether a forum idea would actually make for a fun build.

Good idea as always, Orb. It won’t stop half-bumed forum ideas like PD’s since he’s a hell of a builder, but will kill some real bad ideas.