To the halfbakery crew,

I have an idea for a website to collect ideas. I am a member of your website HalfBakery.com, and enjoy the ideas presented there. But I get the impression that they are very much tongue-in-cheek. Why not create a website where people can present serious ideas, with a chance that it will be implemented? This is a very rough framework for a website that does just that.

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Concept level: -users submit concepts, vote +/- and comment on other concepts -this helps weed out the duds, and polish the rough edges off the promising concepts. -votes might need to expire, so that there has to be enough interest all at once for a concept to advance.

Idea level: -concepts with enough votes become ideas. -ideas are explored in more depth through discussions -limits and goals are established. -users continue to vote

Planning level: -Ideas w/ enough votes, and well established goals go to the planning level -realistic goals are set for the project -users volunteer for the project (volunteers may anonymously vote out others who are not contributing)

Prototype level: -volunteers produce a prototype, or proof of concept model for the idea. -donations for volunteers are collected and distributed.

Funding and deployment level: -the project is presented in a manner similar to kickstarter -people donate money to start the production or implementation of the idea.

Pros: -profits from the project go back into the site, to the volunteers, to the originator of the concept. -some goes to a lottery for users who vote and comment, because they helped to flesh out the idea, too.

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You guys already have a template for the concept level with halfbakery.

comments?
-- copycat042, Mar 12 2012

links http://www.halfbake...ditorial/links.html
A link to "links" (as noted by Alterother) [xaviergisz, Mar 13 2012]

http://www.quirky.com/ Probably the closest to what copycat042 is suggesting [xaviergisz, Mar 13 2012]

The USA recently changed its patent laws to encourage theft. That's because the old system rewarded "first to invent" while the new system copies the rest of the world's stupidity of "first to file". Therefore, US inventiveness is never again going to be like it used to be. And that's why your proposed web site won't work.
-- Vernon, Mar 13 2012


[copycat], some of the ideas here are very serious (I refer not to my own body of work). For more serious and less funning around, check out the HB links page.
-- Alterother, Mar 13 2012


Where is the tongue-in-cheek? I always thought this place was deadly serious all the time.
-- pocmloc, Mar 13 2012


I like what [Vernon] said!
-- xandram, Mar 13 2012


on quirky: I'm signing up now. thanks!
-- copycat042, Mar 13 2012


Exists in many varieties.
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 13 2012


I suspect very much that the limiting factor on the number of adults in the world is not the number of sperm or willing sperm donors, but a limitation on the number of people willing and able to receive said sperm, carry a pregnancy, give birth and raise the child to adulthood.

Likewise I suspect that the limiting factor on the number of profitable business ventures and products is not the number of ideas or people with ideas for business ventures and products. The term "seminal idea" is very apt.
-- bungston, Mar 13 2012


//Why not create a website where people can present serious ideas//

We can be serious. Some of our ideas are extremely serious, especially in their likely consequences.
-- DrBob, Mar 14 2012


The tongue-in- cheekiness is part of what makes this Halfbakery. Many of us have legitimately realistic ideas with clearly defined purposes and well-laid-out plans that never appear on this forum for exactly those reasons: they're real. [MaxwellBuchanan] does extremely complicated sciency-type things that would take me several liftimes to understand, but he rarely, if ever, discusses them here, because they're real-life breakthroughs and are boring as shite. [Vernon] has been awarded several patents, but he saves his really whacked- out stuff for us. [8th of 7] has done some cutting-edge work in the fields of stuff-that-blows- up-and/or-flies that I know he's proud as piss about, but this is a place where he can safely vent his insane felicidal urges. I myself invented a device for quickly installing and removing E- type couplers that I'm told is now used in railroad shops throughout New England. Why didn't I post it here? Because it's something I slapped together out of some 5/8" roundstock, a couple odd lengths of chain, and the cut-off end of a guage bar. There's absolutely nothing interesting or entertaining about it.

This isn't the Good-Ideas-That- Will-Work-ery. This is where the people who have those ideas go to bleed a little pressure off of the lunatic valve. This is the Halfbakery.

<Note to all Halfbakers who were not included on the list above: please do not take insult. It's late, I'm a little stoned, and I couldn't think of anyone else.>
-- Alterother, Mar 14 2012


I myself invented the colour "chartreuse" and am responsible for that uneasy feeling that you might have left the front door unlocked when you left on holidays.

The [Alterother] is quite correct about the reticence to put viable, possibly valuable, ideas out there on the HB or any other brainstorming website. I do have a couple ideas percolating which are not in any way related to my current businesses but that I may still try to develop. If it becomes apparent that personal inertia is about to triumph once again, only then will I put them on the HalfBakery or similar.
-- AusCan531, Mar 14 2012


Having both invented the phrase "persistence of hatness" and being responsible for the question now found on psych tests: "Do you wear your tinfoil hat shiny side out? or shiny side in", as well as a plethora of increased security measures in various places that we really don't need to go into in-depth at this time, I'm reasonably comfortable with being here.

However "good ideas that will work" is allowable in the Charter somewhere that you all signed... though "good ideas that will work until somebody actual tries it" is usually a bit more par for the course.

And if it weren't for its corollary "picking apart ideas that are bad or won't work", there'd be alot less annos and we'd be giving [V]'s pm and [beanie]'s whateverthehellhe'sonabout a hearty slap on the back.

When I post an idea that I believe have hefty veins of "good/workable" running through it, I'm confident that y'all will happily jump up and down on the parts that are a bit shaky.
-- FlyingToaster, Mar 14 2012


While there are plenty such sites in the links, they are notably less successful than this one. I don't know why it won't work but the evidence for that is clear from the likes of shouldexist.org, which seems to be dead.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 14 2012


//shouldexist.org, which seems to be dead.//

Seems recursive.
-- AusCan531, Mar 14 2012


Yes, I thought that too. Maybe it's because people prefer inspiration to perspiration.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 14 2012


I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that good ideas that will work and should be implemented have no place here (even though, taken literally, that is in fact what I said). Those ideas definitely do belong on HB, but not exclusively. I was airing personal (and partial) views which I have no expectation that others should share (unless they so choose).

We come here for many reasons. I come here for fun and to keep my brain spooled up between bouts of creating my latest literary masterpieces and stuffing many copies of said masterpieces into envelopes to send them off on the road to rejection. Much of the prose that I write is fairly dark stuff, so I enjoy reading and writing funny things during my all-too-frequent visits, but I have great respect for those who take it more seriously.

No, really, I do.

Humbly and Sincerely,

[The Alterother]
-- Alterother, Mar 14 2012



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