Developer comments
This is finally in place, after the January 2009 upgrade!
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I'm all for it, but that's probably a given since I mentioned it at the forums. This brainstorm website has become too cluttered with unrealistic idea as you mentioned, or ideas that are really more like problem reports.
Filtering those out to a special area and having what gets released to the true idea pool will make it much easier and fun to browse for users. Especially to software developers like me who are interested in finding a project to work that people are "wanting".
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aysiu
(Brainstorm moderator)
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 20:05
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I guess I was thinking about it selfishly from the standpoint of someone who wants to vote on things without filtering out all the trash myself, but it would definitely benefit the developers as well.
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Nessa
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 20:09
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The list is growing. I hope we can start sorting it out soon.
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Ansible
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 21:11
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Isn't filtering out the trash part of the job of the crowd here? I mean aside from malicious user bans and spam. That's what voting is for, right? I'd rather have my idea voted down by brainstorm users instead of by some anonymous grammar nazi.
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Anisble - The problem is that regardless of votes, you still have to go through all those ideas to find good ones. The idea is to keep those ideas out (in a separate unmoderated area is my idea) so that you don't have to filter through them to find that one good idea that is now 72 pages buried because of ideas like "add better driver support".
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nand
(Brainstorm admin)
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 21:48
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As said on the forum thread, it does sound interesting.
Blocking the unrealistic/duplicates/bugreports/... ideas from the source would avoid spending too much effort on post-submission moderation.
+1
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smbm
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 21:55
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I'll volunteer to help weed out the unrealistic/duplicates/bugreports with as much spare time as I have if you need a hand.
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aysiu
(Brainstorm moderator)
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 21:58
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I'd also volunteer to help weed out the junk.
"Isn't filtering out the trash part of the job of the crowd here? I mean aside from malicious user bans and spam. That's what voting is for, right?"
Not really. Voting is for prioritizing ideas that are already well-formulated. The idea should be specific (not a jumble of random ideas), not be an upstream bug (that's for bug reports), be feasible (not some vague idea or something that runs contrary to the Ubuntu philosophy), and be clear.
"I'd rather have my idea voted down by brainstorm users instead of by some anonymous grammar nazi."
Grammar isn't really the issue here. Though if an idea is so poorly written as to be virtually unreadable, that shouldn't pass the filter either. And there's absolutely no reason the group of moderators has to be anonymous.
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Ati500
wrote on the 7 Jul 08 at 22:12
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I agree.
And if you need someone who could to do this in his free time (and he has a lot in summer), you can count on me.
I'd really like to help making Ubuntu a better distro, but I don't have good enough skills in programming or graphic designing, so this job fits me well.
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Count me in too. I can help with filtering out things too....
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ampers
wrote on the 8 Jul 08 at 16:33
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Could there be possibly a better way?
I am thinking of something that does not need human intervention?
Have the website divided in two sections. One for new ideas and one for final votes.
When the new ideas section receives a certain number of votes, and proves to be of interest to people, then it could go to the final section.
Or failing that, if you still feel a human moderator should take a hand, have the "new ideas" section taking votes and as soon as it reaches an acceptable number the item is taken out of new ideas and sent in an email to a moderator to check before putting it in the more serious end-game section.
This way something stupid where the originator has got all his friends to vote, gets weeded out.
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deuxpi
wrote on the 8 Jul 08 at 19:39
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A few years ago, I was reading articles on kuro5hin and I still find the moderation and collaborative filtering system quite nice. I don't know how much overhead would occur if a similar system were to be applied to b.u.c. It also echoes ampers' suggestion where "new ideas" = "edit queue". This stage should allow the author of the idea to edit the proposition. My proposition would be to use allow people to mark an idea "Ready to publish" against some expiration delay.
See for example http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=special;page=moderation
Comment moderation would also be an interesting feature.
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aysiu
(Brainstorm moderator)
wrote on the 8 Jul 08 at 19:58
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I wish there were a better way, ampers, and I'd be in support of one if I saw it.
Unfortunately, having people vote first has two deficiencies:
1. It defeats the purpose of the proposal, which is to filter out ideas that shouldn't be voted on in the first place, by making people vote on badly formulated ideas.
2. A lot of people vote based on if an idea sounds nice, not based on whether the idea is feasible, well-formulated, or appropriate.
For example, if an idea says "Fix this Gnome bug," it may get a lot of votes from people who want the bug fixed, but this isn't really the place for filing upstream bugs (or even Ubuntu-related bugs).
Vague "nice-sounding" ideas also get voted up ("Make Ubuntu just work" or "Have Ubuntu automatically detect and set up all hardware"). You might as well ask the developers to bring about world peace and solve world hunger. Ideas have to be ideas, not just vague notions of dream outcomes. They have to be things developers can actually implement.
Right now a lot of garbage is being thrown at both the user community and the developers. If we had well-informed moderators who operated based on strict guidelines filtering out non-ideas, users would be able to vote on only feasible ideas, and developers would only see voted-up ideas that are feasible.
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-1, will make brainstorm slow.
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Ati500
wrote on the 8 Jul 08 at 22:02
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A slow Brainstorm is better than a useless one filled with stupid ideas.
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neon
wrote on the 8 Jul 08 at 22:54
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I'd help. :]
I think though, that a person with a history of good, accepted ideas shouldn't have to be moderated anymore.
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bobbo
(Idea reviewer)
wrote on the 9 Jul 08 at 18:45
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Something like this needs to be done to make brainstorm any use for the devs
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Idea ; SEARCH IDEAS by VOTE SCORE
using the Search Engine
That way you don't see of the low scorers or negative votes,
and you can vote on the same startup ideas as the others before you have already voted up.
Why cut out ideas (and manually at that), just because the search engine is not up to the task ?
Improve the search engine so folks can find the kind of ideas they are interested in, rather than getting a whole squad to manually sift through and remove ideas that other people would be interested in.
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aysiu
(Brainstorm moderator)
wrote on the 10 Jul 08 at 17:19
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It's not about interest or lack of interest.
It's about a lot of junk cluttering up so that people can't even vote on all the feasible ideas.
An idea with a low score may be a great idea that has a low score because no one has been able to see it among all the crap that gets posted.
An idea with a high score may not even be an idea. It might be a bug report, a vague "idea" with no practical application, or something against the Ubuntu philosophy.
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aysiu
(Brainstorm moderator)
wrote on the 10 Jul 08 at 17:20
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By the way, if you can create a search engine that automatically filters out garbage ideas that aren't feasible or are poorly formulated, maybe you should make that an idea. I'd vote for it if you had a prototype that worked.
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droetker
wrote on the 10 Jul 08 at 19:44
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start searching in the brainstorm search option for:
"add repos"
"repository"
"fix"
"!!!"
And you'll get plenty of ideas not being ideas or similar.
;-)
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Ansible
wrote on the 11 Jul 08 at 15:34
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How about a way for ordinary users to vote down ideas with a reason attached. There would be a bunch of standard reasons, like 'not an idea', 'this is incomprehensible' or whatever.
The advantage here would be that you could provide the poster with some feedback as to why their idea is getting downgraded. Also, you could filter out ideas based on thresholds of the various types, like 'don't show ideas with a 'not an idea' count over 5.
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I support this idea. Right now, Brainstorm is more a multitudinous psychological therapy group than a place to post ideas. Things like "Fix bugs", "Improve this" etc. are far too common and hinder the proper searching of actual ideas.
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Hellow
wrote on the 13 Jul 08 at 23:32
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+1, I would be glad to help filter all the junk in my spare time.
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nanotube
wrote on the 14 Jul 08 at 23:22
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i like this idea. there is just too much crap floating about right now.
there should be an input queue for moderators, and ideas don't get released to the "general public" until a moderator releases it.
extra bonus: since moderators will be checking whether an idea already exists, moderation will virtually eliminate duplicate ideas at the outset, so this will cut down on the "merge duplicates" activity that goes on.
given that we already have other ubuntu-related communities, it should be fairly straightforward to choose "trusted" moderators from the ranks of ubuntuforums, launchpad, etc.
this should be accompanied with a prominent notice on "sumbit your idea" page with guidelines of what constitutes an acceptable idea (specificity, ubuntu philosophy, etc.)
someone really needs to bring this idea to the attention of brainstorm devs. the longer we wait, the more cruft gets thrown in the pool.
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nanotube
wrote on the 14 Jul 08 at 23:24
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oh and another thing... given that the flow of incoming ideas is not /that/ great, we could even increase the objectivity of moderation by requiring some N>1 moderators to agree before rejecting/accepting an idea.
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nanotube
wrote on the 14 Jul 08 at 23:42
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and one more thing (sorry for comment-spam... but unfortunately there's no way to edit a post...)
even if an idea is about a bugfix or improvement in the upstream, as long as it's specific, i think it should still be allowed.
especially for improvements - there may be no other useful way to get these to the attention of the upstream, or at least none better than a highly-rated brainstorm idea.
and for bugfixes - same goes for bugfixes, or their backporting into the repos once they exist.
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tebibyte
wrote on the 21 Jul 08 at 21:36
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There aren't enough moderators to sort the ideas in time. The community must help, or else brainstorm would be slow. It could also amount to censorship. There is too much information to handle, but approving posts is not the solution.
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Droetker
has shown that the search engine can detect things which one may consider to not be an idea.
So just as it is easy to do a search that finds them, so it can be to do a search that leaves them out.
They are still viewable if you want to see them.
As nanotube points out, useful information like bugs, etc could still be sent on to the right destination.
Most company departments don't dump mail because it arrived on the wrong desk - they make sure it gets to the right recipient, even if the sender got it wrong.
The search engine, could do most of this sorting work automatically, which would make a big difference to the amount of "stuff" floating around.
But when things get so bad that we need people to manually read and sort "everything in a queue", then we need to seriously question the effectiveness of the automated system, and the visitor's ability to access the correct services for their task.
To a new user - it is only a definition of terms what a bug and an idea for getting rid of it are. With no links to these services on the Brainstorm web site, they are not likely to realize there is a better place to go - called launchpad (same for repository suggestions).
Brainstorm page could have a message like the following, in it some where;
"Brainstorm (here) is for suggesting ideas.
Go here to Launchpad to report a bug.
Go here to Launchpad to suggest a Program to include.
Go here to this forum to discuss Ubuntu community issues."
Or may be
"Place the following respective tags in your Brainstorm submission, and it will be sent to the correct department - you will receive an automatic confirmation of receipt by that department within X hours ;
Brainstorm = no tag
Bug = bug
Suggest a package = needs-packaging or np
Forum Topic = ft (you will be sent an email showing you the choices of forums that you can join)"
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-1 Terrible idea. This will make Brainstorm go the way of Wikipedia; being controlled by a small cabal of people who only let through ideas they approve of.
This idea might be alright if the moderation is transparent and reversible by the community, but I bet it won't be. I'm counting the days until a controversy arises due to the brainstorm cabal refusing to release a perfectly good idea.
Retro-active moderation is better, after being flagged by the community.
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Damn I was going to vote Up but accidentally voted down... know that you count with my support, if that helps :)
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+1 and a half
As long as the power isn't abused, I want intelligent moderators, and would love to be one myself possibly. I have seen too many a time, an idea being marked as a duplicate, when it is clearly not, an idea being marked as "not implementable" because of an opinion of one developer... It should be somewhat of a group mod. effort.
I am also incredibly sick of all this "internet talk". People with genuine intelligence should post their ideas, not some unintelligent, barely-typing-english-10 year old that thinks it's a good idea to do crazy, impossible ideas that they whipped up overnight.
It is also annoying when they "try" to explain their ideas in a profoundly stupid manner.
Example:
Title: udbuntu make better teh menu
Description: ya i think tat who ever makes the ubuntu should make the menu cool and awseome.
I'm sure a lot of you know what I am talking about. This is absolute non-sense, and to think that people will actually vote for this! You don't even know what menu he is talking about, he doesn't give an example, a good description, and what the crap does he mean by "cool and awseome".
I don't know if these are just my pet peeves or if other people here feel my pain also.
- sorry for the rant :)
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nand
(Brainstorm admin)
wrote on the 22 Aug 08 at 22:15
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Hey!
The feature can be seen at the open testing described in http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/24 .
Opinions? Is that clear enough for newcomers (help, FAQ, ...) ?
Thanks!
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Craig73
wrote on the 3 Oct 08 at 02:31
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Look forward to testing it... quite late for my thoughts but I think this is a great idea to solve the issue of way too much dups/non-ideas/etc
My only concern would be the 50+1 ways of stating something sometimes creates new ideas... or seeing an idea you previously rejected sparks new ideas...
(but perhaps the 'spark' will be solved with the new 'brainstorm-ish' design which I look forward to playing with)
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If submissions are going to be removed, for the reason that they are not an idea, then rather than trash them, it would be good for the information to get forwarded to where-ever it needs to go, and a templated message sent to the submitter, to let them know what to do in future.
If the moderators are able to select from a drop down list of common reasons, what the reason for "non-idea" is, then the same selection could also manage the automatic redirection of the submission to the correct destination.
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Migi
wrote on the 3 Nov 08 at 14:32
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What about this, we keep the system as it is and we give the mod team not only rights to "close" things, but also to "certify" things, aka marking them as a realistic, legal and unique idea.
A "certified" idea does NOT mean the mod thinks it's a good idea, only that it's realistic, in the correct category and not existing already.
Then, when browsing ideas, the "certified" ideas get shown first, then the normal/unmarked ideas, then the closed ideas, each time going from high to low in votes. Unless the user (eg. a mod) opts another ranking.
Benefits:
- Quality ideas shown first
- No more votes getting split between two equal ideas
- Locked votes shown last
- No delay until the idea is added
- Mods can take a break if they want to
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Migi
wrote on the 3 Nov 08 at 14:53
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Well, right after I hit the "Post your comment" button, I realised that my "certified" status is actually a different idea. So I added it:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15193/
There should be an edit button...
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