

Best Buy makes its idea-gathering application engine free and open source. - benhedrington
http://bbyidx.com/

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pringle
It's a cool implementation, but I see one major flaw: unlike HN and other
social news/submission sites, its popularity ranking doesn't seem to factor in
when items were submitted.

Hence, if you take a look, the top three items there were submitted 3 months,
4 months, and one year ago, respectively. That might work for Best Buy's
intentions, but generally that wouldn't make for a very sticky/relevant site.
Would really like to see them incorporate date of submission into rankings.

~~~
jefflin
There is a half-life decay algorithm built in, so ideas lose points over time
if they are not voted for. We can always improve this, but it does look like
the top ideas do indeed continually get votes.

~~~
pcantrell
Furthermore, once you've voted for an idea, you can't re-vote for it. You get
one vote one time for one idea, and its value decays exponentially over time.

So to remain at the top, an idea has to keep getting new votes _from new
users_.

The ideas at the top of the list have been there for a long time because
they're good ideas, and they having staying power.

(Note that you can change the vote decay rate depending on whether your site
is more interested in what's hot now, or what's popular over the long term.)

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alex1990
... Isn't this just a support ticket tracker?

~~~
benhedrington
I guess to some degree... we just thought if it was worth it for us to build
vs. buy we'd share what we made with others choosing that road to get them
started. Our site is here: <http://bestbuyideax.com>

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DanBlake
Affero :/

~~~
naner
Eh, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

~~~
DanBlake
I'm not. I have no use for this but I feel bad for the guys who coded it,
having to release it under this. Its like killing it before it lives.

[http://teddziuba.com/2010/01/i-love-the-gpl-except-when-
it.h...](http://teddziuba.com/2010/01/i-love-the-gpl-except-when-it.html)

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CoachRufus87
how do i download this?

~~~
jamesbritt
<http://bitbucket.org/garykoelling/bbyidx/overview>

~~~
CoachRufus87
i caught that much. i'm just unfamiliar with "hg clone", i usually use "git
clone" ... to google I go

~~~
benhedrington
The team was going to publish this on github as well but never got around to
it, I'll see what I can do.

~~~
CoachRufus87
awesome, thanks

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benhedrington
From the site:

"BBYIDX is a free and open source idea-gathering application written in Ruby
and distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License. It's the basis of
the Best Buy IdeaX website and was created by and supported by Best Buy
Enterprise Services Inc and Bust Out Solutions, Inc. The standard release is
known as BBYIDX and features the ability for users to simply post, tag,
comment and vote on ideas. It also features the ability for administrators to
moderate incoming ideas and comments as well as assign work-flow to certain
ideas for further exploration. It also offers the ability to group ideas by
"current" or category to create new "currents" which serve as problems or
issues to be solved by comments and moderation. It also features read and
write APIs that can be used to make access to an instance of BBYIDX via
another website or mobile application."

~~~
spicyj
Forgive me for asking, but what was the point of reposting the first paragraph
of the page?

