I think Skyreal and others has some really good suggestions here. I’d like to offer a couple of addendums though:

1. To make things easier when awarding additional submissions in a limited submission scenario, set a threshold upvote number that scales with the total number of votes cast and time till the end of submissions. If an idea exceeds that threshold number, then the owner of the idea has one of their submission slots freed up for an additional submission.

2. While the ideas suggested for how to handle downvoting abuse are innovative, there is a method that hasn’t been suggested which might be easier to implement. Maintain the current method of removing votes from the general voting when their score gets to low, but instead of outright deleting the idea, put it into a separate category (call it “pwned ideas” ) that players can browse if they so choose. Players may choose to upvote ideas in this category, but no further downvotes can happen. If a threshold number of upvotes is achieved, then the idea is put back into the general voting list again. This will help recover from spam downvoting by certain klans, and allow players to self-police the submissions themselves.

3. Award scoops at then end of the week, instead of as votes acgreat timesulate. This will help mollify scoop farming by klans, and hopefully make it less attractive to earn scoops via klan mbum-voting.

Honestly, I’d rather forum-building be competitive

Competitive is ok. Monopolies aren’t.

Even with a lot of the suggestions, there’s no stopping a large klan from Upvoting something really lame (in a bad way) whilst Downvoting to -4/-5 anything else. In that case, you may as well hand out chocolate scoops by klan size.

I find that when I hit the “view random submissions’ bumon, it really doesn’t seem to be all that random….I actually enjoy seeing what others have submitted and I’d like to see more of what’s out there to vote on….

Anyway:

1. End Klan monopoly voting.

2. Limit submissions on more categories.

3. End new submissions 24 hours before the end of the voting period.

4. Instead of always receiving scoops, could it be possible to ‘roll for luck’? Meaning that there would be a chance to get a completely worthless prize instead.

5. Perhaps there could also be a prize for the overall worst idea submitted, just for fun and bragging rights. Of course the prize would be worthless.

I don’t think Klan voting is that huge of a scourge. The anonymous random way ideas are presented must make it difficult to find Klan entries. I’m not in a Klan and I managed to get two entries into YouBoob last week. This week I’ve gotten a lot of chocolate scoops.

I hope people aren’t falling into the trap that just because your idea got eliminated it’s all a Klan’s fault. I’ve gotten plenty of stuff voted off as well, and I’m sure it’s because it wasn’t up to snuff not because of Klan cabals.

It seems to be doubly effective to post ASAP after the forum is announced; not only are the most people there to vote on items, but it seems that the way it’s set up, the page of random submissions always has a couple of high-value items at the top of the list. As a result, not only do you get voted on more often, if you get a lot of positive votes, you’re more likely to be on the first page that people go to when voting, making it more likely you’ll get a vote before people get overwhelmed.

My top submission (which I posted Sunday night) doesn’t just have more positive votes than something I put out on Monday; it has five times the total votes. My other submissions may be as good or better, but because it’s usually near the head of the line for reading, it gets a lot of votes.

Wow guys, you really came through with a lot of interesting ideas! Keep them coming if you have them!

Blackthorn Posted:

All of your ideas sound good, Evil Trout. Would the ForumBuildr score be something public or private? Regarding some of the other things people have brought up.

Yes, your ForumBuildr score would be public, and we’d probably do leaderboards for it too Log in to see images!

Skyreal Posted:

1a. I suggest giving people a base number of submissions per day, and then giving one-time bonuses based on positive votes attained, and penalties based on negative votes on the submission. This way, good submitters would be empowered to submit more, and Klan abuse would not be as serious as if long-term bonuses were given for positive votes (e.g. if a high forumbuildr score gives you more submissions).

I hadn’t thought of doing it daily (we had thought weekly) but it’s definitely an interesting idea. It goes with the whole forum visits idea of having people come back to the site every day.

Skyreal Posted:

2. Downvoting. If you keep this, it must be controlled or scaled in some way. Especially as the game’s player base grows, -5 isn’t really a fair indication of whether something deserves to be buried in minutes. As mentioned several times before by other people, there are plenty of people who just downvote everything, and -5 soon becomes a matter of luck – whether the submission gets enough positive votes before the downvoters bring it down (bumuming it is actually worthy of positive votes, of course).

2a. The first thing that comes to my mind is to limit downvotes. I think the number of downvotes you get should be relative to the number of submissions (or possible submissions). For example, if everyone was limited to, say, 20 submissions a day, you might get 20 downvotes a day.

Limiting downvotes is a great idea. Like you say it requires a vote neutral, but it seems to be a feature everyone wants so we’re almost certainly going to add it.

Skyreal Posted:

2ba. If possible I’d suggest a weighted randomizing system. The higher the rating, the higher the likeliness of the submission appearing.

2bb. I imagine I would probably have three month’s worth of nightmares and bumorted erratic deams trying to implement something for that, so alternatively I suggest a tiered randomizing system. Everything within -20 and +20 votes has a higher chance of appearing. Everything else (because they’re relatively established) has a lower chance of appearing.

Actually we already have a weighted randomizing system. You are slightly more likely to see a higher voted submission than a regular one, but not so much that you know that the subs at the top of your list are going to be the highest voted. It just needs a little work, and certainly will need some tuning after we make some of these changes Log in to see images!

One thing that has occurred to me about forumbuildr is that material which is introduced is static. What I mean by this is that any less-than-ideal content that gets through the vetting process is going to stay online forever(I’m mostly thinking about multiple component things here, not forum logos or designs). There can also be problems when random wordlists are altered, as posts that were coherent to their subject in the past become less so as magic word lists expand.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that, at some point in the future when there’s enough of a group of forums and community on here for it to be worthwhile, it may be worth implementing some means of vetting and/or improving preexisting forums, at least the ones made through forumbuildr. If such a system were created, it may make sense for it to have a smaller voting or editing population, since this would be editing and proofreading, not creating gobs of new content. Just an idea for the future, to ensure a consistent level of output quality.

If the submissions with the fewest votes were forced to get more views, maybe that would help cut down the glut of threads/replies. For instance, I submitted something on Tuesday I think, and it’s gotten a total of 4 votes. Not that I think that particular submission was amazing and deserves to get more upvotes, but if it were seen more, there would be a better chance that more people would downvote it off and the clutter would decrease. Or it would get more votes and become more competitive with the others.