You got my blessing :-)

My problem with this idea is that it doesn't force any allocation. You can set everything to 5 stars.

To me, we need a way to let/make people make hard decisions about which things are more/less important.

BLANKET STATEMENT: I learn toward a 'market-like' approach. I'm American. From a 'people-watching' standpoint, I'm wondering if Americans are more disposed to a 'market-like' approach than say, Europeans. Not that I'm trying to label anyone, I'm just curious.

Is this about deciding which idea to implement first? Wouldn't such a ranking be borne out of allocating preferences?

@2 Craig:
You are right that some people wouldn't pay much time on careful considerations, but others would. But if someone always would promote with 5 stars, all his promotions would have the same weight.

I would give only 3 grade. This way, the "always the highest" voters wouldn't displace the result to much.

Every approach I can think of, which includes a restricted amount of some currency ($, points, stars), would mean a lot of administrative work for the workers:

If it would be a fixed amount - like Ben proposes - what should the user do, after he had spent all his $? He would have to redistribute already spent $. This would require him to decide, from which ideas he should take points away. I don't like the idea to browse to all ideas (probably 100 to 1000) I have voted on...

If I got a limited amount of $ every week or month, what should I do, when time is left, but no $? Redistribution again. Should be left over $ kept for the next interval? An idea posted in an time interval when few other ideas were posted (like 24. Dec - 31. Dec) could gather a lot more $ than when posted in a "rush hour" period. What with users just starting? When Idea Jam gets more and more popular, more users will vote. This would put more weight on new ideas to "historic" ones.

And finally, like Bruce (I believe) had stated: We have to make it as simple as possible for the users to vote - not harder!

@4 - I agree with your points. I'm not sure what best / least worst approach is.

I also believe that most users (on this forum) would be 'honest' enough to consider their vote. Following all (new) ideas is already taking up a some time, so you better do it good, and consider the importance too.

@4 You've articulated all of the reasons that I'm wary of the $ system.

I prefer the style of differentiation in this idea. The IdeaJam system is only a little bit broken by all votes weighing the same. It needs only a little bit of fixing. Weighted votes would let us distinguish important ideas from alright ideas, without adding a large cost in time and effort to vote.