Some observations and suggestions on my part.

1. Number of submissions. Forum ideas are fine – three is a reasonable number. Everything else just reeks of spam, though.

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).

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.

2aa. Of course, limiting downvotes implies that an “abstain” vote that neither increases or decreases the rating of a submission should be made available. I would also suggest limiting upvotes if downvotes are restricted.

2b. Alternatively, instead of removing submissions based on downvotes, just make them less likely to appear. Each voter would instead get a limited number of “pwn” votes. If a submission acquires enough of these votes it will be “pwned” and disappear off the list. “Less likely” doesn’t mean higher rated submissions always appear before submissions with lower ratings, though.

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.

3. Scoops. It seems a lot of people are really concerned about scoops obtained from forumbuildr. I think it’s important for payout to be fair here – better submissions earn more rewards.

3a. Limiting the number of submissions helps level the playing field somewhat. Of course, that’s mentioned above already.

3b. Also mentioned above, any and all rewards should be awarded on a one-time basis, to avoid Klan backing – even if it is legitimate – eliciting complaints.

Well that’s my 3 cents for now…