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340

Give us our points back

340 points posted to IdeaStorm by badblood 10/26/07

Last night for some strange reason many of us lost lots and lots of points. No reason has been given. Are you a victim of salesfarce.com.
Dell give us our points back.
Also tell us what you've done with dell_admin1. We are concerned. Thanks

badblood
10/26/07		 Don't forget that jervis works with the police or something like that. Or he's an excon. I can't remember, but he has some experience with the law.
benjesuit
10/26/07		 Usage tax. And I think it was a regressive tax.

You didn't think your points were exempt from taxes did you?
badblood
10/26/07		 Well they are probably tax deductible given that this is a charitable venture on our part.
benjesuit
10/26/07		 Could very well be. Make sure you save those receipts and stubs. After Dell's audit earlier this year, they're going to be sticklers over such things.
badblood
10/26/07		 Well there's the rub. Dell has all my records. You know it was a kind of hand shake agreement. I know, I know you don't need to tell me. But if you can't trust Dell, who can you trust......
jorge
10/26/07		 I think more importantly we need an idea merge points clarification.
dell_admin1
10/26/07		 Thanks to all who have reported the points issue since last night. I have been looking into it and wanted to have some info to report.

Here's what's going on:
On Thursday evening, we deployed a site update to address several bugs that had been reported over the past week, and to address the performance issues the site experienced this week. Unfortunately, this deployment introduced a bug in calculating the stats. We are aware of the issue and we know that the numbers are all off today. The development team is urgently investigating this.

Meanwhile, we still do plan to update the 'personal points' system - but I will provide notice before that happens. At this point, the development team' s focus has been - and will continue to be - on bug fixes. After these are resolved, we'll continue moving forward on the features and functionalities you've requested and we've reported to be 'coming soon'. Thanks for your patience, and I'm sorry for the confusion and points chaos.

I'll keep you updated as I learn more. And I'll have a moderator update go live about this in a few hours.
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Admin 1 I need all my points back "lost earlier & yesterday"....;)
jorge
10/26/07		 @dell_admin1: how about fixing the count, wait a couple days or more and then the new scheme, don't do both at the same time or all h-e-l-l will break out.
davmcn
10/26/07		 Made a idea also :)
dell_admin1
10/26/07		 I have an update on the points/votes calculation bug that was introduced last night:

As I mentioned earlier, we have been urgently working to address the issue with the calculating of stats on IdeaStorm. As you know, the bug produced a change in many people's stats (# of ideas, votes, comments, and “personal points”). And we’re very sorry for the confusion this caused.

As cosh has pointed out, the reality is that the user stats calculation was incorrect even before this recent issue – users’ stats were higher than they should have been because they were not being recalculated to account for idea merges and/or removal of ideas or comments.

The development team has identified the user stats calculation error that existed before, as well as the bug that occurred in the last 24 hours.

On Monday afternoon, we will be deploying a fix for these issues, and the user stats will “re-set” to their correct numbers. Because the stats will account for merges and removals, most of us will see our stats (# of ideas, votes, comments, and “personal points”) change. But the good news is that the numbers will be correct at the time of the code release.

The bad news is that they won’t be correct for long. The development team is working on the larger fix for the bug that causes the stats to get “out of sync” in the first place. Right now we don’t have an estimated timeframe for when that will be fixed, but it’s the team’s #1 development priority right now.

At the same time, as I’ve mentioned before, the team is working on the code to have the “personal points” (and the top contributors list) reflect demotes negatively and promotes positively. (Right now all votes, whether up or down, make a person’s points and rank go up.) We don’t have an estimated timeframe for that fix, but I will provide advanced notice before it is implemented, since it will affect your points and rankings.

Thanks for bearing with us as we work through these issues! I appreciate those of you who have reported these bugs immediately upon seeing them.

Because of the fairly technical nature of these issues, we thought it would be good for you to hear directly from our lead developer at salesforce.com. (You all already know I’m not a developer!) You’ll be hearing from bathow soon, who is with salesforce.com – and he can provide greater detail for those of you who are technical experts and are interested in learning more. The team is committed to continuing to improve IdeaStorm and address bugs quickly, so I hope you'll welcome bathow to the conversation!
bathow
10/26/07		 Hi everyone. I'm one of the people that works on the backend of this site.

Sorry about all the bugs. We try to keep things tested and clean but we clearly do miss things. I'm here to answer any questions you guys have about the issues that occurred in the last few days.

I'll also be on the salesforce thread. Feel free to ask me questions over there about general stuff.

Thanks for being part of this site. I know there've been some bumpy times but I am really proud to point to this site and say I helped build this thing and that ya'll are using it.
jervis961
10/26/07		 bathow - Hope you have thick skin because you're gonna get ribbed about working on the site's backend. ;D

So what caused the fiasco this time? When is the demote takes away points update? Will we ever see separate tallies for promote and demote on ideas? Oh yeah, the site sucks on my wm5 phone, I have to use opera to vote an IE mobile to post anything, its really a pain in MY backend.
jorge
10/26/07		 So when someone demotes your idea it takes points away from you right, not add like it does now? Who ever forgot that simple plus/minus algorithm with the vote? Isn't that the whole basis of voting?
jervis961
10/26/07		 I wouldn't buy any accounting software from salesforce that's for sure.
jervis961
10/26/07		 @#$&* double posts. had to switch browsers just to edit this comment from my mobile phone.
bathow
10/26/07		 @jervis: haha i know. don't worry i'm pretty used to these boards. We probably won't be supporting mobile browsers anytime soon. Its interesting that you do use it on a mobile phone tho. I someitmes access it on my blackberry too. As far as the stats, it sounds like some of you guys already know, but the cached stats are a bit out of sync w/ the actual stats. This was exposed during a code patch recently when some users' stats were refreshed. So. Some of you guys have the new stats, but everyone isn't recalculated. So actually if you saw your score change, that is the right data. (or closer to right). It exposed the error which has been there for a while, about the stats gradually parting ways w/ the real scores. We'll need to comb through to find out where the deviations are happening and get them righted. we'll do demotes takes away points at the same time we get this fixed. HOWEVER one thing to think about is that taking away points for ppl demoting your idea is a sucky thing and might make ppl more hesitant to post new ideas. what about just not 'adding' it to the point total. so the points would be 'the number of positive votes you've gotten, without subtracting the negative votes'. something to think about...

@jorge: originally, our site used to be up-vote only. At that time, it made sense. down voting was implemented in a hurry for various reasons and while we've had this separation on our to-do list for a long time.
jervis961
10/26/07		 Bathow - no points for demotes sounds better than giving points for a demote. We've had some people exploit the demotes for points flaw by posting ideas they knew people couldn't resist demoting. Your way would save me a few points I would have lost from the polls I posted.

as for the mobile phone, I have WM5 and its a pain to view the site correctly but at least I can check in when away from home. Its also nice when waiting for my wife to finish shopping in the mall. :) I don't think I'm the only mobile surfer on the site either.

just had to switch back to IE mobile to post this. :(
jervis961
10/26/07		 one more thing. Even though my points dropped a couple thousand my idea count stayed the same, can you explain that?
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Hi Bathow,

I would like to appreciate your works for developing Dell Ideastorm. Anyways, your explanation of "combing operation" to find out the bugs is really not convincing.

My question is, why should demotes take away points of the Idea producer?
why dont you give us "Star ratings" symbolizing people who promote and " duck ratings " symbolizing people who demote "Next to the Idea" rather than the score display right now?

If you want Ideastorm Forum to be used for a presentation on behalf of the "Dell Commuity Organizational Contribution".....go ahead to display a particular link leading to a "Beautiul Powerpoint presentation displayed like a forum " wherein:

- Only the Ideas need to get displayed with star ratings AND not the entire forum ie "NOT with the threads"

- IF there are NEW ideas in the THREAD, then go ahead to separate the idea from the thread and display it "as a Separate Idea"

- Our Ids need to be hidden with a pseudo name

- More and Most important is that....."ONLY" the implemented ideas need to get displayed, and highlight ONLY the NUMBER of "ideas not implemented" as for eg. "Ideas waiting for implementation ...is 100" ( this is done to prevent ideas being imbibed by other competitors, you can decently quote it as "As per Organizational security measures, we are not letting out the Ideas not implemented...." )

- Dell can Breathe easy when displaying It's Forum during a presentation as "Dell Listens" and Let the world know that the bondage strength of the Dell community and how go ahead to stand for the good cause of developing the Organization / how we stand for the Social causes of the society / how Dell does contribute to the welfare of the country/

Let Ideastorm stand Unique from the rest of the forum...;)

Will this be fine Bathow? I require your response plzzz...;)
bathow
10/26/07		 @jervis: I agree. I was actually talking about the new algorithm. Points for promotions you get, but no points for demotions.

about the idea count thing. I don't know. that does seem strange. we'll have to do the scan to see where the points were being tallied wrong to really say....
davmcn
10/26/07		 seems you guys are havinbg a good discussion :)
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Bathow I require your response..you have to really tell me as what has to be done for the benefit of Dell...so that we go ahead to give you ideas .....I require your response for my comment above...;)
sugarbear
10/26/07		 @bathow, there shouldn`t be a reduction of points for demote. The demote button should be left intact, just not counted against a person. I`m glad you could take the time to talk to us. The better communication makes for a better site.
davmcn
10/26/07		 Merged Idea originally posted 10/25/07
After Moderation was done my points went down by 1000!
sugarbear
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/25/07
ouch, that`s alot. Was this due to ideas being merged deleted or did they just vanish. I`ld give you my few points if I could.
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/25/07
I lost a couple hundred, there goes my toaster.
badblood
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/25/07
I lost 880 points.

I lost 5000 the last time they did whatever it is they do.

dell_admin1 why did we lose points?
cosh
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Lost a hundred. Bah I didn't care about them anyway.
cosh
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
You know what's REALLY STUPID? I've lost points but it still says I have 37 ideas. But my index site says I have 27. And indeed, I do have 27. Flaming idiots.
cosh
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Okay everybody - an ALL NEW BUG!! I can no longer edit comments.
badblood
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Me too cosh. It seems they refreshed the point count but not the idea count.

You'd think this was the first web site ever made....
jervis961
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
I lost over 2000 points this time. I thought I was going crazy or something for a while last night when my points dropped to 1 then shot up to 8000 then dropped back to 7300. I thought maybe they made a change so demotes took away points but if jorge only lost a couple hundred that cannot be the case. :D
badblood
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Where's dell admin anyway in the midst of this panic....
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
I don't know about 'moderation' ... but my points dropped by at least 200 overnight.
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
I blasted thru a comment on a thread (by cosh?) regarding editing comments... and ran into -a- problem this a.m. wherein a "save" got me a message to the effect that the comment box was empty (which it was not, of course). Tried a few more times before it worked... bug? timing????
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
I think the bugs around are very hungry.....and it ate away...no no...it actually engulfed all our scores....
Life is full of sweet sweet things and we do some testing...hooray hooray ...la la la...;)
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
:) ... well, it's good to laugh at it all through the frustration... I'm sure there are a few web programmers in our group who COULD fix this if they were allowed to get their HANDS on it!!!
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Hey now ..hey now...hear what I say now..happiness is juzz around.the corner ....the Ideastorm Bug is comming and everybody is jumping...New York and SanFranscisco..the Intercity disco...so if you like to party..common lets ask the Dell_Admin1.....la la ...;)
premcv
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Lost about 150+
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Paul- I've juzz modified a song to juzz beat the "bugging" attitude of the the bugs around...I mean the "bugs" (not sure human / computer).....;)
mkmaster78
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
lost quite a bit of points myself.
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
...wonder if we'll ever hear why... or course, do we ever hear ANYTHING...
premcv
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Never heard much, so can't expect to hear any more!
badblood
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
the user 'agreer' points went up last night unlike the rest of us the points went down. Maybe they are embezzling our points.
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
but we have heard something..... dont we?...."your ideas will be deleted"....& "this is your first warning...."...and so on and so forth.

...Sorry I dont have the habbit of forgetting anything in life...my mum has nicknamed me an "elephant' for that character of mine...becoz "elephants" tend to keep everything in their mind and when it is their turn "it will show it's strength"....until then it will remain a sweety baby dumbo....;)
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Well, I don't see any of my suggestions missing.
And, I only see counts on suggestions -increasin- (FROM yesterday)

So, that hardly accounts for a drop in my total.
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
...unless there was/is a bug in the software to begin with... which, based on what we see in editing comments and other 'anomalies' there apparently ARE (bugs)
diytuner
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
That bites... Why should I lose points because the idiots at Dell can't put together a decent search system.
phubert
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
well, since this is 3rd party beta software (according to others' comments here), it's not directly Dell's issue. IOW, it ain't DELL code and DELL apparently has no access to _modify_ the code.
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
well then need to hunt those third party bugs....;)
mkmaster78
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
(in Elmer Fudd voice) Shhh!!!! Be berry, berry quiet, we're hunting Salesforce bugs!
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Ga Ga ...better hunt those bugs...by the way is it a toy gun?...;)
mkmaster78
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
nice image badblood
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
by the way..did you trace any bugs Ga ga?...;)
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
This isn't the first time we've lost points, I suspect some of the merges on to the big ideas being the cause (like last time), we had much bigger losses last time (or at least me), maybe I didn't get too many merges into other ideas this time? Any chance cosh's site can do a re-count? Those two sites have always been different as in regards to the points and other data on there. I like cosh's stats because I have better rankings over there, ha!
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Jorge... all your demotions would have eaten away your points....;) Isnt it?
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Hey, why don't you go and count all my votes and prove or disprove if your statement is true? Thanks! Everyone will thank you too, go, come on everyone is waiting.
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Yeah I had a look at your stats..you have 8112 votes...;)
well it juzz states "votes"...."juzz Votes"...it doesnt reveal whether you have demoted or promoted...so how can you substantiate..your generosity in demoting ideas?....;)
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Go count, come on, what are you waiting for, nobody believes that readable points listed on the dash, you need to go hand count them, right now.
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
hand count them?.....well Jorge...I'm in the "machine age".....;)
dell_admin1
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Thanks to all who have reported the points issue since last night. I have been looking into it and wanted to have some info to report. First of all, the issue with the points is not related to merges or deletes - it is a bug.

Here's what's going on:
On Thursday evening, we deployed a site update to address several bugs that had been reported over the past week, and to address the performance issues the site experienced this week. Unfortunately, this deployment introduced a bug in calculating the stats. We are aware of the issue and we know that the numbers are all off today. The development team is urgently investigating this.

Meanwhile, we still do plan to update the 'personal points' system - but I will provide notice before that happens. At this point, the development team' s focus has been - and will continue to be - on bug fixes. After these are resolved, we'll continue moving forward on the features and functionalities you've requested and we've reported to be 'coming soon'. Thanks for your patience, and I'm sorry for the confusion and points chaos.

I'll keep you updated as I learn more. And I'll have a moderator update go live about this in a few hours.
sugarbear
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
I was hoping after yesterday`s Statesman newpaper announcement about more layoffs at RR, that the bug wasn`t because we had lost Dell_admin1.
premcv
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Here's what sugarbear was talking about.
cosh
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
dell_admin1 - "numbers are all off today"

Most of the numbers have always been off.
sugarbear
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
@premcv, thanks for adding the link, I meant to and didn`t.
premcv
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
Hey no problems!
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
@petzy: You don't want to support Dell or ideastorm if you don't want to count them.
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
@premcv: No info if the FreeDOS dept was let go! Keeping my fingers crossed!
premcv
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
LOL! I was about to ask about that idea! I think it was them!
davmcn
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
dell_admin1 - thanks..glad i wasn't the only one that noticed that :)
dell_admin1
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
all - I have an update for you on this bug. But we have multiple ideas going here, and I'd like to keep our discussion of this issue on one thread so we can all see it.

@davmcn - badblood also posted an idea about the points bug... and his is an idea and contains info in the body... unlike this one. Although yours was posted shortly before his, I'd like to merge yours into his and then continue the discussion over there. Ok with you? (By the way - don't worry about what the merge does to your stats - once this points/votes bug is fixed I assume we won't need this thread anymore.)
davmcn
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
fine with me.
jorge
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
How about an explanation as to why we won't need this thread anymore?
davmcn
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
they jsut want to merge it...even though i still want it here but i have no opinion and it's normally done anyways so.. .wtvr..
petzymathuram
10/26/07		 Merged Comment originally posted 10/26/07
@ Jorge...of course my 100% support is for Dell and ideastorm..I have left an idea for Bathow...check it accross plzzz..
jorge
10/27/07		 I refuse.
bathow
10/27/07		 @petzymathuram:

thanks for all of the ideas. Its clear you've thought a decent amount about these things. As w/ any sort of discussion I agree w/ some of them. I disagree w/ others.

Speaking just for myself, I think not penalizing demotions sounds like a good idea. Otherwise i can see how I might second guess myself and decide not to post an otherwise good idea b/c I want to preserve my points. On the other hand, its definitely a good idea to disincentivize ideas that are deliberately destructive to the community. So its a balance. I am not certain where the line is. In fact, it probably differs based on the community.

As far as locking things down and only showing ''implemented ideas", I think most of the value of this site is the type of back and forth that goes on in the forums to discuss the nuances and see how they evolve based on other people's perspectives.

Maybe you can post your ideas on the site and see what everyone else thinks!
petzymathuram
10/27/07		 @ Bathow- I require more info on your statement......"Its clear you've thought a decent amount about these things".
jervis961
10/27/07		 petzy - bathow is just saying that based on your comments you seemed to have spent a lot of time thinking things through before posting. please don't keep asking the same things over and over again.
jervis961
10/28/07		 bathow - Just to clarify. Is the bug fixed yet? What is the final determination of demotions: no points or negative points?
sugarbear
10/28/07		 @jervis961. Can you explain to me about the point score. Is it supposed to be the same number as the promoted votes?
jervis961
10/28/07		 OK there are two scoring systems on the site one for idea votes and one for your overall points. When someone promotes your idea it adds 10 points to the idea and when they demote it takes away 10 points from the idea(I'm sure you already noticed that part). The points awarded to your idea have a half life of 4 days so each 10 points awarded to an idea decreases to 5 points after 4 days then 2.5 points after another 4 days but depreciation stops when the vote is only worth 1 point to the idea. now we can move on to your user points(as in your total points shown in your stats at the top right of the page).

How the system was set up originally was for people to vote for the ideas they liked or not vote on it if they didn't like it. For every vote someone cast on your idea you would receive 1 point to your user points stat. Then they decided to add a demote button (due to popular demand) but did not change the point set up. Now when someone demotes your idea you will still get a point because they voted on it. You can have several ideas in the negative score but be on the top contributor list. Some people exploited this and posted ideas that they knew people couldn't resist demoting just to gather points.

When this is finally fixed there will either be no point given for a demote or it will take away a point from your user score and should be retroactive.
jorge
10/28/07		 Agh come on you're kidding me right. First off the half life scheme only works on the Popular Ideas tab and not very well, no point is ever taken away from an idea (hence the point total listed on it), hence the scheme no one can count on as its not a real indicator of an ideas popularity just a scheme to allow ideas to surface if only for a while if its really popular, as we all know the really popular ideas are no longer listed on the popular tab but still remain the most important no matter how much ideastorm adds to the voting scheme to hide them.

Who has exploited the demote vote count? I think what you may be implying is some people fell slighted that others are listed near the top even though they have used IdeaStorm to prove points to Dell by introducing ideas which people hate and are part of the Dell product scheme. So blame Dell not the vote scheme, if Dell would do what the site was intended for no one would have to go and prove to them that the paying customer does not want the junk their pushing, as can be seen by most of the negative ideas with a current Dell product.

All in all, everyone has left out the fact that if and only if the voting matters Dell would only act on the ideas with the most votes as those are the ones which the Dell customer wants to buy or have on a Dell product. Why are the negative ideas acted on? Why do they spend time commenting on them? Because Dell is only using the site to attempt to pacify the customer. Am I wrong? Then why are the most voted (motes) ideas left for dead? Or implemented in the most crippled way?
sugarbear
10/28/07		 Thanks Jervis961, that explains the difference I was looking at.
bathow
10/28/07		 Hi everyone, thanks for explaining my statement to petzy.
@petzy, Everyone is correct. I only meant to say that you'd thought about these things (the site and the features) a lot.

@jervis: Last time we spoke was friday night! We like our weekends too. :) However, as dell_admin1 may have already mentioned we did manage to get a patch out fri evening covering some of the simpler bugs. BTW great description on the half life. I didn't expect many people outside admins or the dev team to take the time to understand it.

Regarding fixing the scoring in general, there are other complexities on the design that someone brought up in another thread. I.E. What happens to merged articles? Do users who were 'merged in' still keep those points? After all, merging is a very subjective process where the admins must make tough calls. Maybe one was posted earlier but the latter one 'presented it better' so more people understood it. What if I was a good citizen and 'voted' and then added a comment as opposed to try to put up my own idea and try to get more points? The current system is a winner-take-all system where the mergee loses his points to the person it is merged to. b/c updates weren't happening it looks like the mergee keeps his points, but when we recalc the scores that data will be brought down.

@jorge, actually points are taken away. You'll notice that if you 'demote' an idea, the 'total visible score' decreases by 10. The popular page ranking is done based on the weighted votes, with negative votes decaying in the same way as positive ones. Your point about why we don't show the 'true score' used to calculate the popular page is a natural question. The reason is really historical and design based. Originally, thats exactly what we had. We'd show the true score. If you voted up, it'd get 10 points added to the current total, but if you came back later on, you'd notice the score had 'decayed slightly', indicating that some time had passed since you voted. It turns out ppl hated it b/c they would check out their favorite idea and see the score on an steady march down to 0 as all the people who saw the idea and liked it had voted. Watching scores march to 0 was just not very pleasant for anyone. Thats why we show the absolute score (positive points - negative points) instead. Besides, showing the popularity score is sort of redundant since you already know (if you're on the popular page) that one article has a higher score than another. This gives you another piece of info. How popular in absolute terms is it, and how popular it is now. I can assure you the scoring system is not BS (well I can tell you it wasn't intended to be BS :) ). We're designing this as a product available for all companies and non-profits to interact w/ their communities and it would not work if communities and companies felt that the ranking system was 'rigged' in any way. That would be a disservice to everyone (and suicidal for the product!). The reason why the ranking thing is there is just to keep the ideas cycling through and to keep things fresh.

Also, thanks for participating in this community. The fact that you are here voicing your opinion is proof that you haven't quite given up hope, and you believe speaking up here does make a difference. I think you and everyone here do make a big difference. That makes the products better and that will literally affect millions of people around the world. To me, that is awesome to think about. AND it is awesome to be providing the software to make that happen. It is a tiny part of the whole thing, but its certainly the biggest contribution I've made so far to the world.
petzymathuram
10/29/07		 Hi Bathow,

I'm extremely sorry for misunderstanding your statement. Kindly excuse me, I shall take care that I don't do this mistake in the future.
jervis961
10/29/07		 bathow - I figured you were off for the weekend and would answer Monday when you returned. I had just returned home from my trip and was trying to catch up with things I may have missed. I was going to respond to jorge but it seems you took care of that part. :)

Looking forward to seeing the end results of the bug fixes and demotion point changes. I suspect I will have a further drop in points coming since I have deleted many ideas over time or asked for them to be merged into others.
phubert
10/29/07		 Now, if they'd just change how they display the counts BY the suggestion (net, promoted, demoted all displayed).
petzymathuram
10/29/07		 ;)
cosh
10/29/07		 @bathow: The scoring system is still compromised because when it changed to have two separate scores, one which just has the sum of the votes (displayed), and the other which has the decayed vote score (used for ordering the popular ideas), you forgot to update the one thousand or so ideas which had already been posted. So they now display a partially decayed and partially not decayed score.

Whenever the online news sites used to buzz about IdeaStorm, I saw them either criticising the vote system, or getting it wrong. Most of them thought that an idea with a score of (for example) 124,218, had received 124,218 votes. Others had tried voting and saw that the votes had a weight of ten points, and said how shifty it was that eight tenths of a person had promoted it.

We still have 941 ideas with these shifty semi-decayed scores, and likely lots more that are semi-decayed but end in a 0 anyway so we can't tell. It's a bit unfair on them, having their scores generated by a different system to all the newer ideas.

We're used to it though.
jervis961
10/29/07		 True cosh I forgot about that until I was looking at your site to counter jorge's comment.

@jorge here are some that were obviously submitted to get demoted. http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/66402#idea_content
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/65759#idea_content
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/73957#idea_content
jorge
10/29/07		 @bathow: I was replying to jervis961's comment on the half life count not the overall vote count, not sure you're following along, everyone else seems to be.

@jervis961: You're missing the point, look at these

http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/66052
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/68283
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/68352
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/65990
jervis961
10/29/07		 I got the point jorge but my point is that SOME ideas were posted only for point harvesting not that ALLl negatively votes ideas were. I thought the whole point of a protest was for it to be supported by numbers to prove your point. A negatively voted idea only shows that people are against your views even if you word it to work that way. The reason those were not supported ideas by the community was because they were against the way the protest was done. They may believe in the cause but they didn't like the delivery. Perhaps posting a solution instead of complaining about a situation would get better results. If you haven't noticed jmxz has posted many protest ideas and many of them get promoted. Why do you think that happens?
phubert
10/29/07		 Then there are those like my "Proof that..." entry that were voted against because of their title... meaning, they were simply misunderstood.

Voting, itself, is of limited value, I think.
jervis961
10/29/07		 True phubert a poorly worded or misunderstood idea can get demoted quickly also. I'm really thinking no points given for demotes instead of taking away points would be the way to go. It would still stop people from submitting ideas just to get points from demotions but not penalize someone like jorge for his protest ideas. Yes jorge would loose points he currently has from demotions but only 1/2 the amount he would loose if a demote took away points.
phubert
10/29/07		 I think I like that one, jervis. Put it to a vote???? :-D
jorge
10/29/07		 The protest or proof of failure ideas are to show Dell, that we don't want certain things, if its demoted greatly it should mean that Dell should not do those things or proceed with that product not to continue or that its popular. Lets take one idea for example, my idea on if Dell should back/support Microsoft in the fight against the OpenSource movement, its greatly demoted meaning people don't think Dell should back Microsoft in its (Microsoft's) fight against the OpenSource movement. How much clearer can one get? I could of worded it differently but I wanted to poise Microsoft in a positive way but sarcastically and it proved my point, don't you think. I could of said "Support the OpenSource Movement against the rebel Microsoft Conglomerate", which would of gathered motes and given me more positive points but would of just had people saying, oh its another OpenSource/Linux idea, bla bla and ignored. Well maybe not, but its much funnier at any rate and hopefully made a few people laugh and enjoy their day since Dell isn't going to act on their ideas.
phubert
10/29/07		 Not necessarily, jorge. After all, if someone submits a product idea that many like and many hate, Dell doesn't LOSE anything from those who dislike it, but could gain SALES from those who love it.

Site ideas, of course, are a different matter... but there's more to that discussion as well!
jorge
10/29/07		 Come on we're talking the obvious majorly demoted ideas with a few motes. The ideas with an extreme high voting count with both demotes and motes are a whole other ball game and not a part of what we're talking about.
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