Joyce! Wins! This! Week’s! IdeaWarz! Round! With! TeeWrapz!

Like milk and cheese, The Wisdom of Crowds can sometimes go bad.

Blue writes:
Seriously, what are you guys thinking? Are we to blame? Is this a case of bad parenting? I feel like one of those single mothers that is trying to improve the quality of life for her teenagers by working two jobs, then the teenagers get involved with the wrong crowd anyway.

Cambrian House has witnessed some great ideas pass through its IdeaWarz filtering mechanism. We admit our current system is not optimal, but up until now it was fairly accurate in separating ideas worth thinking about, from those already implemented, impractical or terribly obvious.

Here is this week’s winning idea:

A shirt wrapper w/ a body of a flexible material having a cartoon/vinyl/plastic fillers and a pair of end flaps that fold up from the sleeve part way over the top of a stack of shirts. A first rectangular side flap folds up along one side and entirely over the top of the stack of shirts. A second side flap folds up along the other side and at least partway over the top of the stack of shirts. A bottom pocket in the base receives a bottom stiffener sheet. A top stiffener sheet of substantially the same size as the bottom stiffener sheet is received in a pocket in the first side flap. A velcro/belt joins the side flaps in folded condition over the stack of well folded shirts. It also comes with free t3fold* innovative clothes hanger.

…and that’s the latest iteration. It was already receiving up-votes when it was simply a collection of tiny undecipherable diagrams…

Great.

So what happened?

Cambrian House encourages members to promote their ideas. Good for us… new members grow the community. Good for idea submitters, as their idea gets more exposure and feedback.

Oh, and you might get more votes too. Your friends will probably vote up your idea. In fact, if you ask them to sign up, and vote up your idea, you can be guaranteed you will get lots of votes.

What does recruiting all your friends to vote up your idea prove? You have lots of friends. Great. You’ve got 20 friends, and I’ve got 2. Your friends vote up your ideas… my friends vote down my ideas and steal my milk money.

Cambrian House is going to treat any members who vote as a mob as a single voting entity. That means less voting power for each member of a mob. We will also be further obfuscating voting data, so idea submitters are less likely to associate votes with members and retaliate against down-votes (or return up-votes).

And, a Viking fist will come crashing down on one unlucky community member each week! Yes, inspired by the BBC show Weakest Link, whoever submits the lamest ideas, comments and forum posts will have their member account closed!

The next rev of Cambrian House (affectionately referred to as CH 3.0) will offer better mechanisms by which the community will be able to police itself. Until then, enjoy the show as Blue and Gord go mad with power!

Ideas We Like

Feng Shui-izer by Gadsden

Sketch out your office space online and makes suggestions for improving the layout based on Feng Shui.

Cliff Notes of Youth Culture by Entreparent

Quick overviews of fads affecting your kids, fad history, what as a parent/adult I should know.

What Should You Do?

Don’t fret if your idea doesn’t win the first round its submitted. Accept the constructive criticism you’re given, and if you’ve decided your idea is unworkable, there is no shame in abandoning it. If you’d like to retract an idea submission, you can make your idea private.

Focus on crowdsourceable ideas, and ideas you can map out an implementation path for. We want to make things happen. If you are not sure about technical obstacles, why not ask others for their opinions first in our forums?

Are you serious? We’d rather hear about what you’d like to recruit a team to create, than what you’d like to see other people create for you. This is a crowdsourcing website, but you’ll still need some elbow grease to recruit an implementation team.

Are you high? Its surprising how many people admit to coming up with their ideas while they are drunk. We recommend holding that thought until sobriety kicks in. If it still seems like a good idea, then submit away!

Don’t comment on ideas unless you have something to say. Oh sure, at the moment we grant Glory Points whether the comment is insightful or not. But they’re sullied GPs, and you’ll feel dirty inside.

Were those points obvious? Possibly not. I don’t have hard-and-fast rules for ideas applicable to Cambrian House, and ones I know won’t go anywhere. Our winning ideas are all over the map. But if we recognize its the diversity of opinion which gives voting and feedback its value, we’ll continue to see interesting ideas rise to the top.

As individuals we each add value to this process. Mobs add no value.

So with that in mind, cast your votes wisely!

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 11:31 am and is filed under IdeaWarz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.