Idea #9299: Brainstorm Bucks

This idea is a duplicate of idea #2144: Limit votes and add wages.

-24

Written by flammon the 31 May 08 at 12:43. Category: Brainstorm.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

Brainstorm Bucks
================

The current voting system suffers from the following problems.

1. Unlimited number of votes. Voting yes to all the ideas is the same as not voting at all. Voting yes to most ideas is almost as ineffective as voting yes to all of them.

2. One vote per idea. Without the ability to vote more than once per idea, a vote can't express the value of the idea.

I propose a currency system. Everyone starts with 50 Brainstorm Bucks. You can spend them all on 1 idea or spread them over many. You can freely move your Bucks between ideas.

The limited currency will force people to prioritize their ideas and at the same time let people express the importance of each idea.

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[Report a duplicate and merge its votes to this idea]

Comments

glibik wrote on the 31 May 08 at 12:54

Tosser!

Vote = -1

jhoger wrote on the 31 May 08 at 16:46

+1,Innovative

This is an excellent idea since it will increase the quality of idea ratings. I proposed a similar idea.

But, sorry, everyone else is going to hate this idea. People think it is somehow undemocratic to limit voting in any way.

I think the model to think about is comment moderation systems like Slashdot. Only some people get mod points, and a limited number everyday. The goal should be to come up with some hack on that system where everyone gets votes, which is more democratic, but still limits votes available to increase the value of every vote.

Effectively you are creating a "market" system here, which is very good thinking.

aysiu wrote on the 31 May 08 at 16:59

I voted up the idea. Right now, you've got a few mediocre ideas that get the spotlight and then people vote them up because they see them being voted up and think those ideas have a better chance of getting seen if they get even more votes. It's like an avalanche.

The rest of the ideas get a few smattering of votes here and there and go nowhere, regardless of the quality of idea.

If we don't do a Brainstorm Bucks idea, we should definitely have an "I don't care" vote so that people can check certain ideas off their list without voting the ideas up or down.

glotz wrote on the 31 May 08 at 18:19

I think this is a good idea. It would create an interesting statistical indication of the quality of an idea, how many votes people have given an idea on average.

I think brainstorm is a rather interesting study in direct democracy altogether. A bold vision and daring experiments are critical to its success.

flammon wrote on the 31 May 08 at 20:41

A few good comments have been posted but unfortunately, even if they convince some people to change their minds, votes cannot be changed. And this is a big downfall in the current system. If a better idea that solves the same problem appears, the only thing that you can do is vote for it too! Now you've just voted for competing ideas. Insane.

Comments only affect future voters which I see as a negative effect because what might look like a good idea initially could turn out to be a very bad idea and vice versa.

Discussions and debates will bring the best ideas to the top and the current voting system is not leveraging this concept very well. A currency would would do a better job.

Along with this idea, we should have 50 Bucks to spend on comments ala Digg, with the important difference that you can move the currency around as the discussion progresses.

Craig73 wrote on the 25 Jun 08 at 16:11

Interesting - the only comments here are positive ones yet the vote count is negative???

I voted yes but from a slightly different angle

1) Not a yes/no but perhaps a 1-5 rating.
1=horrible idea
2=bad idea
3=Indifferent / I don't care
4=good idea
5=great idea

This
1) it still is a single vote count so a group of people can't over represent an idea
2) it allows you to cut all sorts of statistics (which some people will love)
3) it allows you to vote indifferent on ideas (like stated above) so you can get it out of your view (a new ideas view that only shows stuff you haven't voted on)

BTW - I can't help but want my thoughts to get more visibility. It would seem that with the negative rating on this idea prevents this and that I would be better off creating a duplicate. :-)

Richard.Kolodziej wrote on the 1 Jul 08 at 14:41

My idea is pretty similar to yours but is also getting voted down: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10519/

Are people really not seeing that there are major flaws in this voting system? I can't understand why people are saying that everything is great as it is right now.

flammon wrote on the 1 Jul 08 at 18:03

@Richard.Kolodziej

This is definitely the style that I was going for but like you said, this type of idea is getting voted down fairly quickly. Too bad the people who are voting down are not explaining why.

Here's my theory on what is happening:

-The fate of an idea is decided by the first 5-10 voters.
-The first 5-10 voters are the kind of people who are looking at a huge volume of ideas and they don't want to spend to much time thinking about their vote or managing their interests in the ideas. They feel like they have the greatest influence by voting for as many things as possible. I use the word things because half the "ideas" aren't even ideas, their problems like "Fix Suspend".

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with something new that will keep the early voters happy and to hopefully get on the popular for today pages.

I'm reading the comments and trying to get a feel for what we could do incrementally instead of all or nothing.

jhoger wrote on the 2 Jul 08 at 05:14

flammon: I think the problem with ideas like this is:

a) complexity... voting yes vs. no is intuitive and simple
b) "democracy..." anything other than 1 man 1 vote is hard for people to understand and seems undemocratic == "bad."

Personally I think you're right. Essentially the idea is to add scarcity and weighting to create a more natural "market" for ideas.

But I think that kind of thing is not going to happen on BS. Probably someone will have to go and create it elsewhere to show how it works and that it can be easy and simple too.

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