So, I have an idea for forumbuildr 2.0 beta. Right now, if you submit an idea early on, before a lot of other people have submitted, then you’re likely to get a lot of upvotes. However, once time goes on, you get more downvotes than before because more people have submitted an idea in that same category, and want to downvote all other ideas. See “the prisoners’ dilemma.” Anyhoo, I’ve just had an idea about how to fix this: before you submit an idea in a certain subcategory (angry rants, forum ideas, etc), you’re allowed to upvote or downvote as you please; however, if you submit an idea in a category, all your downvotes cease to count, and you’re no long allowed to downvote, only upvote or “mark read”/”neutral vote”. Neutral votes would not count either way, they’d just be a way for you to mark as read an idea that you’d read through. This would stop bumholes (like me) from downvoting anything that isn’t theirs while, at the same time, letting them upvote those ideas they still think are great.

Hopefully a mod reads this and doesn’t think it’s too ****ing horrible of an idea. Also, I hope that I’ve put this in the right place, if not please move it and school me for being an idiot.

kthxbai

How about limiting the downvotes people have each day or week? To zero, as a personal suggestion?

I don’t think this method is weeding out the crappy submissions. I can say some of my -4s are more appropriate to the forum than some of my +4s. With the reward system added to the nature of Internet polls, the voting is as unbiased as Fox News.