A suggestion for monitoring the Klan-based mbum downvoting and upvoting… could the Forumbuildr Reports have a few voting statistics? Maybe something like:

1) Accepted Submissions by Klan (including non-Klan aligned submitters) – a good way to see if one Klan dominates… not foolproof, as one might expect to see the largest Klans with the most accepted submissions, but if one klan is only 50% bigger than another klan, but has triple the accepted submissions, you know something’s up. Also, if non-aligned submitters are getting hosed, this would show it.

2) Upvote-to-downvote ratio per member by Klan (including non-Klan aligned players)... bigger is better here, I’d think, within reason. I would rather see vote inflation than see everyone crippled by people out to ruin someone else’s fun, though a decent balance is better still.

One possibile use for this ratio is to warn players who exceed a certain threshhold… maybe 3-to-1? You get a warning or the system prevents you from further voting if you downvote three times as often as upvoting (or vice versa.) You’d need to balance out the voting to be able to downvote further. Sure, a crappy submission is still plain old ****, but now there’s the pbum voting option for the average-but-not-awful submissions. You can pbum judgement on a submission that you think is pbumable but barely so, and save downvotes for the real ****ty posts. I think that once you consider the pbum option, the crap-to-creative ratio is pretty even.

I’m sure there are more reports that might help to reveal potential cheating. It’s also nice to be able to see the statistics. The Forumbuildr, IMNSHO, is the best part of the game. Like all similar community-based forums, it can be easily abused by bumhats. I for one will continue to contribute even if there’s no scoops awarded or if everyone downvotes all of my submissions. It’s just plain fun. Hopefully, careful balancing will make it even more fun.