Hahaha, the diminutive carriage clan made fun of this kind of thing when a logo one of our clan members made was copied by someone else, with the only change being a different font for the letters. We made a thousand joke logos, all made from the original design, netting a few chocolate scoops, and many lulz.

But yeah, there should be some way to report blatant duche baggery like this.

Hell, what if someone started submitting real forums to forumbuildr? You know, like http://wiccapedia.co.nr/ (site seems to be down now though).

Or they could recycle old internet jokes, like: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071105202027AAMW1MN

Then again, at least that’s not stealing from the community.

As for downvoting rip offs, who’s to say which one is the rip off?

That too annoyed the crap out of me. I lawl’d the first one, the second one I was like “why did I lawl?”

Goth_Jesus Posted:

If people “know it’s copied” and downvote the idea, then there’s an even bigger problem with the system. Voting is supposed to be anonymous, and if a large percentage of voters know who submitted a forum idea, and change their vote based on that, then it’s by no means a stretch of the imagination to suppose that their original votes were based on the submitter.

I’m not so sure I agree with this only because I’ll occasionally know something is copied strictly by the submit date attached to the bottom of it (at least with forum ideas). Quite a few times in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a second submittal of the *exact*same*idea* a few days after the first one pops up. (This is usually with forum ideas that are doing well, too… an exact copy/paste doesn’t fit with the idea of the original submitter cleaning something up.)

I have no idea who submitted the original (or the dupe), but I can usually tell if it’s a true dupe and someone’s just trying to mooch chocolate off of someone else’s good idea.

Goth_Jesus Posted:

So you downvote people if they resubmit their own ideas?

Let’s use Alcoholics Unanimous as an example. It’s doing well, but it’s not in first place.

I come along to see what new forum ideas are there and the *exact* same idea is there again… obviously with a later date stamp. If the original person submitted the exact same thing again when it’s already doing well, yes, I downvote it because that’s ****ed up of original submitter to try for more chocolate with the *same* idea when it’s already doing well. (But I’ll bet that’s rarely if ever the case… it’s usually going to be a copycat that just wants to mooch chocolate off of someone else)

If I see the same idea with slight modifications as something that’s been downvoted already, I tend to bumume that’s probably the same person that fixed their submission (note, it’s slightly different and hopefully better), I’ll give it an honest vote.

Goth_Jesus Posted:

For it to be re-submitted, it can’t be doing well, it has to have been knocked off the scoreboard. You can’t have two identical ideas.

Unless CZ says otherwise and the difference was a space at the end or something incredibly minor, I’ve seen it. I’ve had two windows up comparing and they were the exact same thing as far as I could tell.

I want to say I saw it with Urbane the week that it won, but I’m not 100% sure anymore… I just remember it was a forum idea that was doing incredibly well and someone copied and pasted and submitted it as their own.

Edit: or maybe 1 person can’t submit an identical idea… but 2 different people could… that’s plausible in database world (which leads into my belief that anyone posting an *identical* forum is a chocolate thief and deserves automatic downvotes)

Arktor Posted:

In my experience, that doesn’t work. Then again, there are numerous ways to trick a reader (for example, replacing an “of” with an “ov”Log in to see images!

Ok… so I lost the battle, but I still insist I’m winning the war Log in to see images!

Minor changes like that (especially when it doesn’t add to the value of the forum) usually indicate someone copying someone else’s idea – thereby deserving the downvote.

At least that’s *my* opinion. Log in to see images!