Goth_Jesus Posted:

If people “know it’s copied” and downvote the idea, then there’s an even bigger problem with the system. Voting is supposed to be anonymous, and if a large percentage of voters know who submitted a forum idea, and change their vote based on that, then it’s by no means a stretch of the imagination to suppose that their original votes were based on the submitter.

I’m not so sure I agree with this only because I’ll occasionally know something is copied strictly by the submit date attached to the bottom of it (at least with forum ideas). Quite a few times in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a second submittal of the *exact*same*idea* a few days after the first one pops up. (This is usually with forum ideas that are doing well, too… an exact copy/paste doesn’t fit with the idea of the original submitter cleaning something up.)

I have no idea who submitted the original (or the dupe), but I can usually tell if it’s a true dupe and someone’s just trying to mooch chocolate off of someone else’s good idea.