why the need to make people feel ashamed?

Yes! It would greatly increase the "amusement value" of the site ;-)

Not only would it add amusement value .... it provides valuable lateral-thinking fodder! A "worst idea" might be quickly turned into an ingenious idea simply by bouncing it off a wall or two!

I would be VERY interested to read the worst rated ideas. Certainly "Hey guys, maybe the world is a sphere and not flat after all..." Would have made the worst idea list (if there was one) back in the day.

Think hardest on the ideas that bother you most.

Nate

I have a lot of ideas...but I never really know which ones are good and which ones are bad until I throw them out in front of the WN crowd.

Sometimes I learn it's just a matter of poor communication, other times I learn about technical obstacles. (Though those should be reasons to vote against, IMO.)

This web site is not only a great resource for people with busy hands and active brains, it's also a great place for people to tune their communications and judgement skills.

I think most people would feel ashamed to see their ideas reach "unpop culture" status, and might even delete them. That would be a very bad event.

There's an unpopular idea out there about banning SUVs. There may become a time when a critical mass of people would consider it worth taking such a "drastic" action. If the author deleted the idea, people might forget about it as a possibility. (Yes, I think that's unlikely, but it's still possible, in principle.)

There's also an unpopular idea about a "fat tax." I myself voted against that idea. But there may come a time when a critical mass of people would be in favor of that action.

Finally, there's the possibility that a person, once or twice so shamed, may not contribute to WN at all. Think about that for a second...suddenly, WN becomes a sort of clique where the readers police the site for people whose ideas are generally unpopular. (Sorta like Slashdot.) While community solidarity can be a good thing, I don't think it's worth throwing out additional brainpower.

Dunno Mike. Suppose someone posts an idea that everyone thinks is one of the worst they've heard, and that person also has such a thin skin about it that they delete it and leave. That doesn't seem like such a great loss to me.

Perhaps not a worst rated idea as ideas are only bad in RELATION to better ideas. So for example the world has too many people and one solution would be to murder 75% of the population another would be forced birth control. Well both are bad but one is clearly worse!

So perhaps a sliding scale of bestiness.....which I believe is already on the site!

"Good" or "Bad" would depend if you were in the 25% or in the 75%.

Here's another idea- post our "idea score" next to our username, the way eBay does with their feedback scores. Weight comments based on a critic's own score- thus a critic who contributes no ideas would influence the contributor's idea score less than someone who has contributed many acceptable ideas (I can think of a couple of particularly nasty critics who have made no contributions of merit).

it will be really interesting to see what are this ideas that sucks, it will be entertaining to see. Maybe people here would be able to innovate this ideas to make them better and after all we are here to share ideas. in addition why dont we make a list like a "The best of the WORST ideas top 10"

The first poster here wrote: " ...to list the worst rated ideas to compliment the best rated..."I don't think that "compliment' is what the poster meant!!

You do mean "complement", right?

It would probably just end up being the best named bad idea. The one with the most people looking at it, which is obviously bad.

you can take the names off the ideas and the people would just know it was them, no one else, unless they spoke up. if that's not good enough, they should maybe grow up.

Doesn't seem very worthwhile, encouraging or productive...

I agree with ThinkedAloud. Why waste time focusing on the negative?

This sounds like a bad idea. In fact, it sounds like one of the worst ideas on this site ...

make worst idea contributors anonymous

That would surely be a lot of fun to watch.

It would be productive in the fact that people might think twice before posting something already manufactured like "let's make a touch screen that you can write on" or something as unrealistic as "let's make special glass that doesn't require windshield wipers."