Samildanach Posted:

Well, as I said in what you quoted, a good post/reply/enemy takes account of the forum you’re submitting. A typical post for SPAM is not a typical post for Childhood Trauma. Logically, copying your idea from last week’s forum to this week is not an optimal strategy. It may happen some, but check the forum ideas list next week and see how many are familiar, if not exactly the same… then check thread titles and see how many are the same.

You can reuse other ideas, with some alterations – but you can’t count on their performing equally well if you just cut’n’paste them. I may be overwhelmingly new to buildr, but I’ve already waded through a flood of terrible avatars and posts and titles, and they were very definitely aimed at the current forum, not copied from last week’s.

I said, “when a similar build comes up.” All topics and replies aren’t equally applicable for every possible forum, unless you’re writing generically, which would be one strategy.

Further, reusing the exact same idea isn’t really “learning”, particularly at the stage where you’re just changing a phrase. You’re not coming up with better ideas, you’re just selling the current idea better, and waiting for the week when the competition lags.

Just changing a phrase, changing a title, or changing the topics can make all the difference in the world about how your forum is received. So yes, it is learning. Figuring out how to make a decent idea a really good idea that wins is interesting. I come up with new ideas, tweak some old ones, and leave others alone because I like them the way they are regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Submissions that nobody likes aren’t ever going to get close to winning, so if people resubmit things that do poorly, they just hurt themselves. And if somebody wins a few weeks down the road with a submission that came in 2nd, 3rd, or maybe even in the middle of the pack previously, well, good for them. Sometimes it’s the case that there are a few really neat ideas that would all make good forums, so that’s great if they get a chance later. I don’t see that as a cheaper win. Voters are fickle and it’s hard to know what people will really like from week to week.