Four amazing days have passed since the launch of brainstorm.ubuntu.com, and all we can say is Whoah! A couple of numbers:
- 10,000 registered users
- 2700 ideas (in comparison, Dell Ideastorm has 9000 ideas)
And the numbers keep growing! We had not expected such a success.
But this huge success has its consequences. As many users have pointed out, there are many duplicates, some spam, and the current ordering of ideas (most votes first) in the main page is not optimized for new ideas. Some quirks and bugs have also been found, thanks to your input on Brainstorm!
Quality over quantity is the goal. The objective of Brainstorm is simple: every idea posted on Brainstorm gets its share of attention. This allows the best ideas to be presented at the next Ubuntu Developer Summit. Some of the more pressing issues were dealt with this week.
For this, we created several new ideas lists:
- Most popular today
- Most popular this week
- Most popular this months
In these lists, the ideas are classified by a ratio of votes/(time since creation). With such a scheme, very new popular ideas will have a chance to stand out amongst the older ones. Random ordering, a feature requested by some, has also been included. Implemented ideas and ideas being worked on can now be browsed. Links to category listing have been added.
Two new roles have been created: the Ubuntu Developer role, and the Moderator role. A developer will be able to add a comment beneath an idea description and update idea status, while a moderator will be able to handle duplicate reports, and delete offensive or spam posts.
Lots of smaller fixes or features have also been implemented (see full list of changes below), but Brainstorm is not finished yet. A lot of new features/fixes remains to be done, and we are actively looking at your input on Brainstorm.
Stay tuned!
The Ubuntu QA Team
Bug fixes:
- Fixed 403 error pages when looking at page 2 or more of a contributor
- Fixed layout breakage with longs word and URLs
- Users are now able to edit their idea descriptions.
Spam handling:
- Limit the number of lines displayed on lists.
- Limit the time between submissions to one minute.
Roles:
- New Moderator role: able to handle duplicate reports, delete comments and ideas, change all the contents of the ideas
- New Ubuntu Developer role: able to fill the “Developer Comments” field of an idea, and change its status.
- Users of both new roles as well as admins are more noticeable on comments (bold + logo).
Advanced search page:
- Added random ordering.
- Added most popular today, this week, this month ordering.
Administration:
- Ability to change the front page description without SQL updates!
My ideas page:
- User are now able to see their ideas marked as duplicates, and their deleted ideas. No more disappearing ideas!