This site is about ideas being shared and a determination of "most popular" (ie, getting the most votes). As I scrolled through 4-5 pages of ideas, I see many repeated ideas. For example I saw:
- 6 or 7 ideas aimed at legalizing marajuana
- 4-5 about single payer health-care
- several about ending torture (and using the correct word to descibe it... ie, "enhanced interrogation" vs "torture"
Comments (7)
We already have tags. Are you asking for user created categories?
Maybe they could be allowed to voluntarily combine their groups.
If the author of the less popular item is willing to give, and the author of the more
popular item is willing to receive, they can transfer and consolidate those votes.
I would imagine that there's some kind of moderator around here somewhere who could
approve the consolidation, as long as the items are reasonably similar.
Consolidating votes is a bad idea. Individual differences between proposals will make a big difference to people who know the domain well.
That's why you would get approval from all three.
If they agree that it's reasonably similar, it is.
The little guy isn't getting anywhere anyway,
and should be happy to join with the big guy.
It's not as though the original proposal will become law, as-is.
It's just a way to get a discussion going about the general topic.
People who want to legalize pot or reopen 911 or whatever tend to have the same arguments.
If there's a subtle but significant difference, they won't want to merge.
The people you really need the approval from are the people who gave the vote.
Unfortunately, that would make it easier for moderators to delete comments they disagree with
So you close the smaller one to new votes & comments and put a note at the
bottom, "The votes from this Idea #1234 have been merged with Idea # 5678,
at the author's request. Please see --link--."
At the same time, put a similar message in the bigger thread, with a link back.
Other than that one-issue group of trolls, I can't see how anyone would mind.