Improve voting on brainstorm

> * [are there more?]

Yes, at least one more which I have been involved in: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/196983

> My proposal:
> *I suggest we add a 'zero vote' button and that we alow votes to be changed.
> * We should also provide a sort view for ideas I've voted on and NOT voted on (a todo-vote list).
> * We should continue to show the current score on the front page. It's useful for those who are just looking. Adding the zero vote button should reduce the bias effect.
> * On the bug page itself we can add total +1, -1 and 'don' care' votes

I agree with and support all four of those proposals.

see also:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/6180/

Would it be possible to talk to the www.gnome-look.org people ?
Their rating is a percentage. How do they calculate it ?

If 'Hide the current score until you vote' gets implemented then 'Allow changing of votes' probably shouldn't because people could just randomly vote to see the score, and then change their vote to match their real preference.

I have some proposals for the following questions:
1. How could we fairly show the ideas ?
2. How should we rank the ideas ?
3. How to address the "hot-ideas" ?
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1. The brainstorm should count how many times an idea was show. Because that would make sure every idea was exposed the same number of times. If an idea is exposed less than others its voting is biased. So it would solve the problem of fairness giving every title its change to be read equally.

2. The users may vote only for positive or negative ( no need for zero-vote supposing we count the views ). But the rank should not be showed as Positive or Negative. It should rather be showed as a percentage: R = 100 * Vp / (Vn + Vp), where R = the rate, or rank, Vp = positive votes, Vn = negative votes.

3. When you see an idea with rank zero (currently) it could mean no body voted for it. But it could mean 50% voted positive and the other 50% voted negative. If we rank it percentually that problem would be solved. Further more when we reach the point when an idea have acceptance of 50% of the users this means that idea is somewhat conflicting or popular or in another context "hot", because it really divides the opinions!

I think we could give the high-conflict-opnion ideas a higher score so that it's more exposed giving it the chance to be solved (I mean solving by escaping it from the "uncertainty region" around 50%). This may be accomplished by this formula:

P = Q*[(-R^2) / (R^2 + K) + 1.0]

Where Q is the number of views balanced by R, the renormalized percentual vote rank, and K controls how fast the rank falls to zero. What this formula does?

a. When an idea have more consensus (far from 50% critical region at zero when normalized) it will have its rank attenuated.
b. When an idea is far form consensus it will have it's viewing rank closer to its real count.

Note that the voting rank(R) is different from the scheduling rank (P), the former is meant to show how accepted an idea is and the latter is meant to show ideas fairly and stimulate solving conflicts in hot-ideas!

We could use another scheme, it's just a proposal. The number of view could also be used for some aditional information in the future like answering (how much percent of the users comment out something and so on).

Thanks.

If there's a risk of people voting down duplicates even though they like the actual idea, then how about adding a "report duplicate" button right next to the voting arrows?