I want to be able to methodically go through each of the Brainstorm ideas and vote on them. I am a recent arrival (to Brainstorm, not Linux), and so there are many ideas I have never seen. Among these are good ideas, bad ideas, and a whole bunch of ideas on which I have no strong opinion either way.

Currently in the "Random Ideas" selection, those ideas I have recorded a vote for are no longer displayed. Despite the large number of ideas now in the system, I have had the same idea crop up several times because I didn't want to vote on it. I wanted to abstain as it concerned a section of the OS that is irrelevant to me.

Another "problem" with Random Ideas is that continuity between ideas is lost. Later ideas often refer back to earlier ideas, modifying and restating a problem (just like this idea does). This is fine if the first idea you see is the "later" idea. The other way around you are only getting part of the picture.

So what I want is this...
1) The ability to record an abstain (zero) vote.
2) A list of ideas I have not voted for, latest first.

In an attempt to fend off the "abstaining does nothing" comments, The only reason I want the abstain vote is to record that fact that I have seen the idea, understand the idea, have made a decision about it, and no longer wish to see it again IN THIS MODE (and perhaps Random Ideas). In other modes (e.g. Latest comments) the idea would still appear, but the voting arrows would be greyed out.

Elements of this idea have been proposed before. I have read each of the ideas below (and all their comments) and believe them all to be related, but probably not true duplicates:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8273/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7139/

[....]

There are absolutely no guidelines at the moment on what makes a good idea. And theres many reasons we need them!

- People keep saying that we are barking up the wrong tree with coding ideas, because "Canonical doesn't do coding" or "canonical shouldn't be inventing new standards".
- We need to know if you want new project ideas, or just enchancement ideas.
- What are you expecting us to write in an idea. You should present examples of ideas, and the format you want us to write them in. And example format may be:
Title: Clear and concise. Mention affected programs if any
Description: Summary/idea, what happens now in the program, benefits of implementation, disadvantages of implementation, etc.
- Without an example, what are you expecting? We need a few examples! So that we know the best ways of doing things
- Should we be targetting certain programs only, do you want us to suggest new protocols, or are they outside the scope of brainstorm? Do you want us to suggest new standards? Without a clear specification of what the ubuntu team actually does, and what they dont do, we cant optimise the process.
- Are ideas posted upstream?
-Help us, help you by explaining why some ideas are particularly good
- Its Software Engineering 101, we are expected to submit random ideas, but we don't know enough about the ubuntu development teams to submit the best choices
- Outline coders strengths in the team. If you have many coders who are good with image processing, let us know, we will place an emphasis on image processing ideas

Currently, brainstorm asks you sometime for a captcha.

It should not. Captchas are not accessible for people with some disabilities and even with a 10/10 vision, it is somewhat tricky to guess what you have to type.

There are solutions. One of them (which works 100% well for me on multiple sites and for years ) :
http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?150-the-invisible-captcha-mechanism-icm-against-form -spam

It appears that one needs to create separate accounts (username and password) for ubuntuforums.org, launchpad.net and brainstorm.ubuntu.com

How difficult would it be to implement a single login?

Update : NOT a duplicate of OpenID idea #9.

It is likely that the situation will occur that you vote an idea up or down, only to then take part in the discussion and change your mind about it. After all, there is bound to be someone with more expertise with a different view on the subject that you hadn't considered. Currently, you cannot see, remove or reverse your vote. I think you should be able to, on the basis that it would give a more accurate and up-to-date representation of user opinion.

The counter-argument to this would be that it could cause an element of uncertainty, but I do not feel that avoiding this should come at the expense of being able to change your mind.

The Brainstorm website has a good community of people suggesting and commenting on ideas but not much feedback as to the progress made.

I suggest that instead of just "implemented"/"idea being worked upon" there should be a monthly email newsletter or blog entry highlighting the top few ideas that month, and a more detailed reply for what progress has been made implementing ideas. This would allow for more feedback from the developers - for example there could be a paragraph explaining how much progress has been made and an expected completion date along with any other interesting info the developers may have stumbled across.

This need not be long, just pick out a few ideas each month.

..or some way to track comments and replies you make around

See idea http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5994/.

Note that it says "this idea is a dupe of idea #xxx". Follow that link, and it says "this idea is a dupe of #yyy". Note how the list of dupes of #yyy doesn't include 5994, and how 5994 doesn't meantion #yyy.

I think the topmost idea (the one that isn't a dupe of anything else) should show the tree of all the ideas that are a dupe of it, or a dupe of a dupe of it, or .... That is, instead of just the immediate dupes. All the (transitive) dupes should show the same tree, such that you can see the full dupe relationship no matter where in the tree you are. It would also give a better impression of how often an idea is duplicated, and you would have to click around less.

[I also think it would be sensible to flatten the tree, such that all trees have height one or two, i.e. all dupe ideas get reparented to the root]

When reading new ideas, I often know that it's a duplicate of some other idea, but I don't know which one. And it's currently too cumbersome to report a duplicate, so I don't do it (call me lazy if you wish, but I'm sure I'm not the only one). Besides, I think it's important to catch duplicates early, so that people don't spend their time uselessly by reading and voting on duplicate stuff.

Here is how I think it could be improved:
- have a report duplicate button next to each idea in the idea list (we don't need to click on the idea itself).
- have the duplicate system (optionally?) work the other way round, ie add the possibility to mark the *current* idea (ie the new one) a duplicate of another, instead of requiring the user to first find the other idea, use the report duplicate form, go back to see the duplicated idea's number and enter it in the form.
- add search capability/embed a search form directly within the report duplicate page (in a similar way as in the "submit idea" form -- though with some criterion as in the advanced search would be best).

NOTE: The title should say "idea", not "bug".

When you report a duplicate, there's a text field that wants an idea number.

That means you have to open a new tab, navigate to brainstorm.ubuntu.com and find the idea you think it's a dupe of.

It would be much easier if the page had a search, similar to how "Submit Idea" has. Then you just search for some keywords, and see if any of the ideas are the ones you had in mind. If you know it's a dupe, you can probably recognize the idea it's a dupe of by its title.