Or remove the ability to post the same thing twice?

If they were ordered by time posted, your entries would likely be grouped together, which could lead to biased voting. Especially if you’re submitting at some random time during the week.

MC Banhammer Posted:

That wouldn’t work for a couple of reasons. Number one being similar but not identical. Let’s say “Posting this” was a common thing, and people wanted to submit it.

Posting this.
Postin' this.
posting [b]THIS[/b]

See?

I’d say one of those is better than the others.

MC Banhammer Posted:

That wouldn’t work for a couple of reasons. Number one being similar but not identical. Let’s say “Posting this” was a common thing, and people wanted to submit it.

Posting this.
Postin' this.
posting [b]THIS[/b]

See?

That still prevents completely identical entries from being submitted, which would cure bug ailments. If two forums are seemingly identical, one would be clued in to look for uncaught spelling errors found in the new one.

As far as order goes, I don’t really see why it’s a big deal. If things aren’t random, biases from all sources can be introduced, as already mentioned.

I think the “copycat” entries this week are more of a result of hivemind and imitating popular things that we see here in Flamebate everyday. I (and many others, probably) submit some entries before getting around to voting. I accidentally duped someone’s entry and didn’t know it, just because it was a popular saying. I don’t think this is as much of an issue in regular forumbuildr weeks, when community jokes aren’t involved. I usually vote on every submission, every week, and I’ve never noticed a huge problem with copycat subs until now.