I do agree we have a problem… but I’m not sure what can be done about it, considering the voting environment. The trouble is that no one knows what they really want in forumbuildr. Clever forum ideas do not necessarily make fun builds, but not enough voters actually think that through when voting. Lots of people just vote for the funniest or best-written forum idea, regardless of how bland the forum would actually be (see Internet Confessional, or Obscure Phobia Support Board or SPCA… in other words, see every Pickled male reproductive organbum forum other than Cellmates). Making things even more chaotic is the fact that a lot of the voters are so frustrated with Forumbuildr that they vote things up or down without really thinking about it. People don’t get excited about the few forum ideas they like, they just get annoyed at the ones they hate. Maybe the forum ideas really are that bad, but the negativity leads to apathy, which only makes the problem worse.

And let’s not forget the extreme level of competition in the category. It’s such a hard category to win in that people have come to believe that all voting is strategic. A highly winning forum idea is using illegal alts or klan voting. When one’s own forum idea is downvoted to -5, it’s because people didn’t want it to beat their idea. And anyone who discusses any of the forum ideas in play has some sort of ulterior motive in getting people to vote up their idea or vote down the competition. We’re ****ing paranoid about it! And yeah, some of that does happen, but a lot more of it is just in our heads. And because people believe that everyone is voting strategically, they do the same to keep up. Perception becomes reality and things get more and more cutthroat.

Also, new forum ideas are at a huge disadvantage, no matter how good or bad they are. People tend to vote for the ideas they have seen a few times because 1) the full realization of how bad they are has diminished over time, and 2) people feel like it’s “about time” a forum should win. So long as people continue to vote with a bias against brand-new forum ideas, limiting the number of times a sub can “try again” will hurt everyone.

So yeah. We have a very bad situation as far as the voting environment. Log in to see images! But unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the system. It has to do with the voters. Bad voters are always going to be bad voters so long as it is in their favor to continue being bad voters. Capping the number of times a forum idea can be submitted, will not make those bad voters any less bad. Right now the worst case scenario for people competing in Forum Ideas is that a competing idea wins and you have to wait another week for a shot at the top. But if there’s a cap on subs, you wont be able to just wait. You’ll have to get your idea to the top, period. Voting would become more aggressive. The common-sense strategy would be to get a few people to downvote popular forum ideas to -5 as soon as you see them sent in (if caught quick enough, you’d only need five other people). Do that a few times and the forum idea will never challenge your quest for the top again.

It would make a bad situation worse, in other words. Competition itself is not the enemy. We need competition. But we don’t need to make voting more competitive. We need to make the ideas themselves more competitive. We need to find a system that rewards people for voting up good subs, but there’s no way to do that because there’s no subjective way of determining whether a forum idea is good or bad.

So can anything be done? Perhaps. Maybe if sending in a forum idea required you to also send in 8 examples of material that would be appropriate to the forum build: 2 Enemies, 2 Thread Titles, 2 Typical Posts, and 2 Angry Replies. The extra work would deter people from make **** submissions, and the examples would help voters decide whether a forum idea would actually make for a fun build.