<b>An open solution to categorization</b>

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An open solution to categorization

540 points posted to IdeaStorm by cosh 05/08/07

This was originally posted on May 8. Lots of people were saying IdeaStorm was cluttered, and that spam and duplicates were appearing, that we needed better categories and a search engine that returns better results, and that it was taking too long to get bug fixes and improvements.

I built a new system, a mirror of every idea on the site, to try and sort it out myself, and to demonstrate to Dell that when everybody is complaining, improvements should happen in days, not months.

It has a better search engine than IdeaStorm, and the ability to browse ideas based on the Dell-assigned tags. As well as demonstrating good potential features for IdeaStorm, it should prove useful as it is.

The link:» » New IdeaStorm Categorizer « «

Initially I was trying to get people to help sort the ideas into categories, but I'm considering adding a robot to sort the rest of them out automatically. Thanks very much to people who helped categorize ideas!

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premcv 05/08/07	That's a pretty good design, you've got there, cosh! Very neat and clean. Easy to navigate. Good categorization too. I think it would be what we've all been asking dell_admin1 to get around to doing for the past couple of weeks now.
cosh 05/08/07	That's the idea. Instead of just complaining, or watching others complain, I wanted to SHOW them how to do it!
jervis961 05/08/07	WOW cosh, Great job. It loaded my personal profile and ideas so much faster than the actual site. I like the break down of catagories just they way you have them.
akidan 05/08/07	How do we help categorize articles for this?
cosh 05/08/07	Thanks. Go to "Ideas by Type" --> "NOT YET CATEGORIZED" and it will list all the ideas. Just pick a few ideas from a topic or technology that interests you (you don't want to spend all day on it ^_^). Click the "[cats]" link on the right hand side and you can select the checkboxes from there.
dell_admin1 05/08/07	@cosh - very creative! I'm intrigued - can't wait to see what happens. [EDIT} Thanks for taking the Dell logo off the site!
cosh 05/08/07	No problem.
mistern 05/08/07	cosh: Very cool! Could you please add something like searching by user so I can try to categorize my own posts?
captainsensible 05/08/07	Haha love the site cosh.
cosh 05/08/07	@mistern: Hmmm. My database currently doesn't store the user for each idea (I think I've only 5 megs of database space so I have to be very conservative). But I'll definately consider it. If it seems worth it (and I get some time) I will add it.
badblood 05/08/07	This is MUTINY! But in a nice and interesting way....
mistern 05/08/07	cosh: 5 megs probably is not enough. I don't have any webspace but maybe somebody will step up and give you some?
cosh 05/08/07	You'd be suprised - I reckoned I could fit nearly 15,000 ideas in that, since I don't store anything other than the titles and categories at the moment. ^_^
captainsensible 05/08/07	but how did you get the titles/categories? some kind of web scraping?
badblood 05/08/07	Copy and Paste? Just a thought. Phew! I have exhausted all my computer knowledge!
premcv 05/08/07	Maybe Dell should get some of us, mostly cosh, to get around to lend a hand with the design of the Ideastorm. With the amount of Ideas that are "pouring in daily" it does look like we need to help them. IMHO, it looks like dell_admin1 needs a lot of help maintaining the site. I really wish there were more dell personnel out there helping dell_admin1 with this site. If there are, maybe they should interact with us to get a feel. What say?
badblood 05/08/07	dell_admin1 is an octopus, with a degree in computer science and a masters in public relations!
premcv 05/08/07	I agree, badblood! It does seem that way! Doing one hell of a good job too!
dell_admin1 05/08/07	Thanks - it's tough to keep up with you all! I am in the process of training some of my colleagues - they'll probably be dell_admin2 and dell_admin3. Because, yes, I do need the help. But the community's efforts to clean and police the site have been remarkable. Many of you have already made a remarkable difference. Sounds like this thread may lead to some more good ideas. I obviously encourage whatever solution is best for the community, and will keep this thread in my saved items to see what the latest is.
premcv 05/08/07	Great, dell_admin1, you have done quite a bit yourself. And we've tried our bit to clean up, by identifying duplicates and stuff, but there is a problem, the duplicates are piling up by the day. It is very hard to keep up with the "masses", so to speak. So, this idea suggested by cosh can help with : a) Maintenance b) Locating Ideas c) No clutter things some of us have been waiting for.
badblood 05/08/07	make sure that dell_admin2 and 3 are really smart, because one little teeny weeny contravention of the spirit of a discussion group and all hell will break loose.....or else we'll just get bored and get on with our lives. Keep them tightly reigned in. Encourage them. Give them an inch only! Make sure they speak English! Keep a gender balance. Warn them about thebittersea. Keep a wooden mallet handy to keep them under control. Pay them well, feed them. Make them proud to work at Dell! Make them proud to be our keepers!
captainsensible 05/08/07	Heey, any openings in that department? :P
premcv 05/08/07	dell_admin1: I agree with the part where badblood mentions about contravention of the spirit of a discussion group and how most of us would get bored if it happened. Moreover, they should work the same way you have worked here. Show the same kind of enthusisam to interact with us and mostly enjoy being here, like you do! :)
badblood 05/08/07	All except the bit where our ideas are deleted without an explanation
jervis961 05/08/07	OK, do you want to break down the notebooks into Inspiron and Latitude? Also under tech I don't see any audio options. I catogorized one of my Ideas real quick. Fun stuff cosh, like it alot.
cosh 05/08/07	I've put Audio under technology. Thanks. Not sure about sub-dividing the laptops. When they're properly sorted there should be few enough in the laptops section so that any model specific stuff can be determined from the title.
jervis961 05/08/07	Cool, thanks cosh.
akidan 05/08/07	@cosh: Thanks! I really like what you have. Keep it up, and keep us posted!
premcv 05/08/07	Like the logo! Better Idea platform (without corporate logo) :) Good one! Desktops could be divided into Dimension, Optiplex, and Precision Desktops and the Notebooks into Inspirons, Latitudes, and Precision Laptops! What say?
cosh 05/08/07	But so many ideas apply to all of their models, you know? For example, an idea talking about laptops in general. Does that go under every model category or just in the main laptops bit?
premcv 05/08/07	Ahhh, that's where you caught me, cosh!
badblood 05/08/07	cross reference it.
cosh 05/08/07	Hmmm. I might decide to make it so that ideas in subcategories always automatically appear in their parent categories. At the moment they do not appear in any category except the ones for which you explicitly check the box. Then new laptop/desktop groups could be created at will.
akidan 05/08/07	@cosh: That's a good idea. The ones I've been categorizing I've been doing the same manually, by selecting all parent categories for a given category node. The one parent category you might not want to do this for is 'Other', though.
jervis961 05/08/07	I guess there is alot more involved than what we thought. It explains why it takes so long to change the site. Gotta do it right, talk about it ect. Kinda reminds me of a book I read on change. http://www.ouricebergismelting.com/ Summary Our Iceberg Is Melting is a simple fable about doing well in an ever-changing world. Based on the award-winning work of Harvard's John Kotter, it is a story that has been used to help thousands of people and organizations. The fable is about a penguin colony in Antarctica. A group of beautiful emperor penguins live as they have for many years. Then one curious bird discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home and pretty much no one listens to him. The characters in the story, Fred, Alice, Louis, Buddy, the Professor, and NoNo, are like people we recognize — even ourselves. Their tale is one of resistance to change and heroic action, seemingly intractable obstacles and the most clever tactics for dealing with those obstacles. It's a story that is occurring in different forms all around us today — but the penguins handle the very real challenges a great deal better than most of us. Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on pioneering work that shows how Eight Steps produce needed change in any sort of group. It's a story that can be enjoyed by anyone while at the same time providing invaluable guidance for a world that just keeps moving faster and faster. I'm not trying to derail the topic, I've just been relating the book to Dell's current situation. The book wasn't the best in the world but it does open your eyes up to how you and others react to much needed change. Anyway back to the topic on hand.
cosh 05/08/07	Interesting jervis... especially the fact that it's penguins... I wonder, should "Social Media" go under "Promotions and Advertising" instead of "Other". Also, how do Americans spell "advertising"? Does it have a Z?
shooters 05/08/07	@ cosh, I think you just also add a "Mark as duplicate" link to your model, so we can put all the dupes together, it will be easier to administer that way...
cosh 05/08/07	Gosh not much left out of that 300 - perhaps I will add another load before people start clicking on the same ones and fighting each other.
premcv 05/08/07	Yes, Jervis, that's a good book you've quoted. Have read it and I think would recommend it to people who are averse to change. These situations can be used both in professional and personal lives. I have personally overcome issues with changes in the past. :)
premcv 05/08/07	@cosh: fighting each other I can see that happen. :) You have taken quite a pain toget these done, it is amazing what you've put together! Now, if only dell could implement your model! It would be a whole lot easier than have to go through tonnes of "ideas".
badblood 05/08/07	cosh is there any way to show the users and their stats in one of your category windows? Sorry if it's a stupid question..
cosh 05/08/07	@premcv: Fortunately I can take database backups quite easily, to protect the work. @badblood: No, I don't store any user information. Might be easier if I had a way to determine the user ids from this site - look around - it's all names - nothing I can sink my code into. I agree IdeaStorm's current "Top Contributers" bit is not very helpful though, not least the extreme slowness of it.
badblood 05/08/07	too bad, I was hoping for a little more analysis of user behaviour. thanks.
cosh 05/08/07	That's it. They're all done and categorized. Time to take it up to 600 now.
premcv 05/08/07	How would it be possible to get a hold of all the users? If that is achieved, then running a script for the individual user under the Comments, Articles Submitted, and Articles Voted On, will give the user statistics. Could be to go through the top 30-40 articles and look through the people who have commented. Reverse Engineering?
cosh 05/08/07	While that would work, it would probably be easier to ask Dell to add such a feature - after all they don't need to write scripts to interpret HTML because the data are all just sitting there in the database.
premcv 05/08/07	Yep! I was talking about the hard part! When it does not happen! :) Databases, where would we have been without them? Writing scripts to interpret HTML I suppose!
cosh 05/08/07	Well as for being without databases, the database is now going to be without me. I've been nursing it for nearly six hours - now it's 4am and I'm going to bed. It's time for the database to grow up and become independant.
premcv 05/08/07	'Nighty, night, cosh! Set it free, and dream it grow! When you come back, you could be in for a surprise!
transit60 05/08/07	Great idea and design, cosh. I'm all for it!
cosh 05/09/07	Some changes and thoughts: 1) Ideas in subcategories now appear and are counted as part of their parent categories automatically. So, ideas should go only in the most specific sections which suit them. E.g., Requests for preinstalled Firefox can go under just 1 section: "Software --> For Preinstallation -> Internet Browsers", but will be visible from the parent sections as well. 2) There are too many categories in it really - imagine if it was on the real IdeaStorm - a computer novice would be confused, or somebody who only wanted to make a simple suggestion would be very annoyed by the amount of checkboxes. 3) Being able to "better catergorize" junk and duplicates doesn't actually reduce the clutter - just the perceived amount of it as you have more places to put it. Ultimately it only delays the problem of clutter overload. Moderation and merging of related concepts is probably still required, unfortunately. 4) There's a bug on IdeaStorm - sometimes ideas can be associated with a tag multiple times. E.g., under the heading it might read "Servers and Storage, Servers and Storage, Servers and Storage". I don't know why it happens. Sounds like IdeaStorm uses a table of Idea_ID / Category_ID associations. If that's so you should make both those columns primary keys to avoid duplicate entries. My database uses a 512-bit integer to store category associations, so it's completely immune to that problem anyway. Just thought I'd point that out... ^_^
badblood 05/09/07	Please be careful what you classify as 'junk' I have a ratio of serious to funny ideas of about 1:4. Many people seem to have a similar ratio, so don't make the junk disappear, it is important for effective brainstorming.
shooters 05/09/07	cosh, couple of points: 1) Are you going to do a one time sync of all ideas with this site or sync every while and then? 2) What happens to ideas that are going to be deleted / merged on this site? Are they also going to be removed from your site? Can we mark ideas as duplicate also on your site, to reduce the clutter? 3) If you want the community to help out, we would need a way to reach the front page... 4) When you click on a link, to see the actual idea, the only way to get back to the categories is by clicking Alt-Left... 5) An idea can be in no categories (and therefore is lost?)... you should just make sure at least one category is linked to each idea.
cosh 05/09/07	1) Every while and then. 2) When they are deleted/merged on this site, they will not automatically disappear from my database, but I store the last_update timestamp for each one. Since they will miss the update, I can detect them and move them into the deleted/merged category. At the moment it's possible to move ideas into that category anyway, but that's a bug technically. There's currently no way to mark duplicates. If they're together in the same category it's fairly easy to see which ones are duplicates. But, I may add such a feature anyway. 3) I don't really have enough bandwidth for the whole world to help, stupidly enough. 4) You can click the back button, but I agree something more integrated is needed. 5) I know - that's kinda a bug... but they're still there in the database and I can resurrect them easily enough.
shooters 05/09/07	Other suggestion: 1) When you log in to the site, make the "NOT YET CATEGORIZED" list of items appear directly in the right box... easier to manage, I would just need to refresh, rather than go down the page to find that category everytime I want to reload it. 2) Also, I think you could do a full sync with Ideastorm now. By a full sync, I mean (1) Importing all ideas, (2) For all deleted/merged ideas, removed all categories linked to them and put them in the "Deleted/Merged" category only, (3) For all ideas that do not have a category, re-assign them to the "NOT YET CATEGORIZED" category, (4) would put each idea into the correct category (Coming Soon, Implemented, Under Consideration) [Make sure it only goes into one of these]. That way we could have a better idea of what's left to be done... When ALL ideas will be sorted, you could then do a "full sync" like once a day... That should be enough... Let me know what you think...
cosh 05/09/07	I don't want to load that whole list in by default because it wastes bandwidth, but I've added a quick link to it under where it says "Click a category on the left..." I did want to load in the lot at once. But then the size of the uncategorized list is about a meg for every single view. Too much bandwidth. WAY too much. When I can get time to add pagination to the list, then I'll import the lot. Thanks for your help! And suggestions. I wonder if Dell will find any use for this work at all?
shooters 05/09/07	Definitely, because finding duplicates and cleaning the clutter will become extremely easy... And we'll be able to focus on the main ideas suggested...
shooters 05/09/07	Other suggestion: Import the full idea list, but to save the bandwidth, make the "NOT YET CATEGORIZED" category only display the first 50 ideas in the list (and as we sort them the new ones will pop up). This way we will know exactly how much ideas are left to be sorted out and you fix your bandwidth problem...
phubert 05/09/07	looks pretty good... so are you offering it to Dell?? dell_admin1, where are you???
dell_admin1 05/09/07	Been here all along - posted on this thread last night. We have reached out to cosh to discuss. I am talking to the technical folks today to find out what we can do next.
phubert 05/09/07	...hmmmm... seems I miss too much of your involvement... SOME insist I am very PATIENT... others know I can be quite the opposite... My apology for my impatience.
foxconnians4life 05/09/07	I think we could all learn alot about computing from Geocaching.Com. Integrating content, commerce, and virtual culture into the computing community is a way to integrate real people, places and things.
premcv 05/09/07	@dell_admin1: We have reached out to cosh to discuss. I am talking to the technical folks today to find out what we can do next. It is really great that Dell has come this far to invite someone from the Ideastorm community to help with the site. It is a step in the right direction. Maybe we would get to see a lot more of these interactions from Dell & Us in future!
cosh 05/09/07	Frankly though all this misses the point - yes, I'm undermining my own work, and I'm putting it in red because it's important. I'd far rather Dell got on with giving us preinstalled Linux PCs, widely available, properly advertised and easily accessible from the website, than worry about tidying up the requests for it!
premcv 05/09/07	Well said, cosh! I think that is just what we've been waiting/demanding for.
badblood 05/09/07	you have demonstrated the technology, now it is up to Dell to use it or not, to take advantage or you hard work, your pain, your agony, your calloused fingers and blood shot eyes.
cosh 05/09/07	Heh heh! It wasn't hard... But I'll say it was anyway.
shooters 05/09/07	I agree, how are the discussions with Dell going? dell_admin1
badblood 05/09/07	dell_admin1 I have no programming skills at all. I do like to think of myself as an amateur psychologists and can add insights into the various emotional problems and mental illnesses of the contributors if that would help.
jervis961 05/09/07	badblood, some of us are beyond help.
dell_admin1 05/09/07	And to cosh's point, our focus has been more on getting the ideas implemented, and less on fixing the categories. Which is why we have said that you will see Ubuntu on Dell available in the coming weeks, among other ideas in action. And also why cosh creatively found a way to help with the categorization. On the cleaning up the site side of things, I think we've figured out how to build on cosh's work! (Thank you cosh!!!) I was hoping there could be a button we could push and just import all the good work you all have done with the categories, but there isn't. The good news though, is that we can re-categorize the ideas on IdeaStorm based on how you have assigned them on cosh's site. Unfortunately, we won't have the ability for subcategories, but we will have as many categories as needed, based on your feedback on cosh's site. We'll also use the category titles that you choose. It will take some work, and some time, but will be well worth the effort in the end. This exercise is a great example of making this YOUR site to give Dell ideas. Organized by you, for you. And the easier it is to use the site, the more we hope you'll come back with your creativity and innovation. I had a meeting today with some colleagues to talk about how we incorporate your work into the site, and everyone was very excited to see the community taking the lead... keep up the good work!
cosh 05/09/07	@shooters: What discussions? I don't know what dell_admin1 meant by that. Hmmm... no subcategories dell_admin1 ... so I can build superior software to your "Salesforce.com"? I think I'll just let you corporate lot get on with it then. I did my bit. :P Now I bid you adieu.
badblood 05/09/07	the opensource development ethos is very exciting. Very confusing, but very exciting. You are a role model for us all cosh. Hopefully not like that complete lunatic Steve Jobs....but a role model nonethless.. thanks!
jervis961 05/09/07	I know I would rather have Dell working on the ideas than the site. I do love all the feedback from dell_admin1, it reinforces why we are all here.
badblood 05/09/07	I am here for the moment waiting for my CompuBeaver picture to be returned to its rightful place and proof that the person who removed it has been struck with 50 lashes of the cat 'o nine tails! I'll bet it was dell_admin2or3 practicing..... They should be flogged within an inch of their lives.
shooters 05/09/07	OK, we are done categorizing all the NOT YET CATEGORIZED ideas up to now (Total of 691). And thanks to the people who have been helping. What I do suggest: 1) Import ALL remaining ideas into the sorting site, and set a limit of 50 on the numbers of NOT YET CATEGORIZED ideas that can be displayed at once, so bandwidth is kept to a minimal. 2) Someone goes to all ideas talking about clutter, cleaning, duplicates, and the like and we ask people to come give us a hand. If everybody helps, it's going to take a very short amount of time to clean up all the dupes and stupid ideas, and all the interesting ideas will receive more attention from both the community and Dell. Any comment would be appreciated. Thanks
cosh 05/09/07	Wow thanks for your help! I've taken a full database backup and am about to tell it to import another few hundred or so, so there'll be plenty to go around over the next few days for people who still want to help.
shooters 05/09/07	Cleaning up the clutter - Community Effort To clean up the clutter, cosh came out with a new categorizer. As of right now it's little better than the current IdeaStorm because not all the ideas are sorted out. We need the community to help out, like Wikipedia or something, to help put ideas into the correct categories. At the moment, over 14.5% of all ideas have been categorized, but we need your help. By correctly categorizing each idea, we will be able to find duplicates and ideas to be deleted much more easily, therefore making easier to promote and share the better ideas. If you are interested, simply look at this Idea: 67110 An open community solution to categorization and follow the link at the bottom of the post. Thank you.
shooters 05/09/07	Is that a good ad to distribute around so people start helping with the categorizer... any comments?
cosh 05/09/07	I'm not completely sure about the idea of bothering people with comments not relevant to their ideas. But if you did do that, I'd recommend something MUCH shorter. They can read the rest easily enough when they get here ;) E.g., If you are interested in helping clear the clutter from IdeaStorm, visit this idea: 67110 An open community solution to categorization.
badblood 05/09/07	Yep, too many words.
shooters 05/09/07	OK, I've posted cosh's revision to a couple of ideas talking about cleaning up the clutter. Hopefully, people will help us.
cosh 05/10/07	Some changes: 1) Some layout improvements (especially for low-res screens) 2) Now in pages - 15 ideas per page 3) The NOT YET CATEGORIZED group is deselected automatically after you edit the cats - the checkbox for it is no longer visible. 4) Number of votes and submitter displayed beside ideas. 5) You can now click the user names to find all ideas by that user - this more or less fulfils mistern's request for searching by user, once you find at least one idea they added. 6) Accented or non-Latin language characters are now stored and displayed correctly in idea titles. 7) Protection against edit conflicts: If two people are editing the the same idea categories at once, the second one saved will no longer silently overwrite the first. A message will appear explaining it and displaying both edits for review.
shooters 05/10/07	cosh, other suggestions: - Have a way to mark post as duplicate. For instance, maybe just add a "Dupe" button next to the "Cats", that would ask "Duplicate of which ID?". When an idea is marked as a duplicate, you could simply change the colour used to display it in the list (i.e. from blue to red). Also, we would need a way to print a report to submit to dell_admin1... with that and community support, we should be able to do a complete cleanup... -Have a way to suggest ideas for deletion (Maybe a delete button or a "To be Deleted" category... many ideas request deletion, but dell_admin1 doesn't seem to see them.... - Some ideas have been deleted/merged, but your sync didn't pick them up and there isn't any deleted/merged category anymore...
hjwasson 05/10/07	Excellent concept, cosh! You've really created some excitement on this! We should all promote it where it seems appropriate. Side note: Why is it that people who demote ideas very rarely leave a comment about why? None of the 5 who have demoted this idea so far have left comments. If people don't like an idea, they should explain why. That's what makes a discussion, and allows for consensus!
shooters 05/10/07	@ cosh, good improvements you did with the # of votes and submitter, any comments on the 3 suggestions I posted 2 posts earlier?
cosh 05/10/07	Well, I'll consider the duplicate thing. But I'm not sure how to implement it in an easy-to-use and non-tedious way. Entering ID's is fine for geeks, but not for the vast majority of the population. I've already created sub-categories for some of popularly repeated ideas. I can easily create more. I don't want the ability to suggest other people's ideas for deletion - that would be unfair. I discussed that on another idea which was suggesting deleting ones after a certain threshold of negative votes. As for the deleted/merged category, I took it away for now because it wasn't useful. The underlying code wasn't in place. As you say my sync didn't pick any up. But to be honest, why do we want to keep deleted and merged ideas? If they were deleted or merged for the right reason then they'll no longer need separate entries.
shooters 05/10/07	OK... For the merged/deleted thing, the way I would implement it would be by creating a binary field DELETED in your table that would be set to true (1) when a post isn't picked up by 2 consecutive syncs... Then, it wouldn't display in any of the categories, but only in the deleted/merged one... That's not to hard to implement... (keep the entries for DB integrity, in case a dupe links to them, and to see how many were actually deleted/merged) As for deletion, many suggestions are requested to be deleted... these posts would need to go somewhere and might need to be flagged for dell_admin1 to review them appropriately (the point was NOT to delete ideas I didn't like...) As for duplicate, I would implement it by creating a duplicate field in your table that you'd have the ID of the parent (main ideas),,, A dupe CANNOT be a duplicate of a dupe, but would be a duplicate of the parent of the other dupe... Even though entering the proper ID might be a hard, it would allow us to do a good first clean up of duplicates and to submit the report to dell_admin1 afterwards (you should implement it only as a temporary solution, until we find something easier to do, but otherwise like 25% of ideas are dupes, and if we don't start cleaning them up, we are going to have thousands to clean, because people have the bad habits of submitting already submitted ideas)....
badblood 05/10/07	dell_admin1 who does cosh's idea-sorter belong to?
shooters 05/10/07	depends on how he distributes it... GPL / proprietary According to the terms of service: License You grant to Dell and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive fully-paid up and royalty free license to use any ideas, expression of ideas or other materials you submit (collectively, “Materials”) to IdeaStorm without restrictions of any kind and without any payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. The license shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known. The license shall also permit Dell and its designees to use portions of the Materials you submit, rerecord or modify any audio tracks or visual images you provide, rewrite any Materials you submit, and/or incorporate other materials, either created by Dell and its designees or licensed from third parties, with the Materials you submit. Any such works shall be deemed Materials owned by Dell and shall not be subject to your approval or payment by Dell of any compensation to you. You agree that the Materials you submit: (i) are original with you and accurate, and (ii) do not violate and will not violate the rights of any third party or any local, state, national or foreign law, including any right of publicity, right of privacy or any other proprietary right. You acknowledge and agree that the relationship between you and Dell is not a confidential, fiduciary, or other special relationship. We shall have the right, but not the obligation, to use your name, likeness, biography and other information about you in connection with any use of the Materials you submit. By making a submission, you acknowledge and agree that Dell and its designees may create on their own or obtain many submissions that may be similar or identical to the Materials you submit through IdeaStorm or other channels and means. You hereby waive any and all claims you may have had, may have, and/or may have in the future, that the Materials accepted, reviewed and/or used by Dell and its designees may be similar to your Materials. Option to Purchase Dell shall have the exclusive option to purchase from you and acquire all right, title and interest, including, without limitation, any copyrights and other intellectual property law in and to the Materials you submit, which rights shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license and apply for copyright registration for any or all of the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known. The option shall be exercisable by us from the date you submit the Materials until 1 year from that date. If we exercise the option, you agree to accept payment in the amount of $1000 USD or value in kind at Dell’s discretion, and you agree to execute, acknowledge and deliver such other instruments consistent with an assignment of the intellectual property as may be reasonably necessary to carry out or effectuate the purposes or intent of the assignment of the Materials.
shooters 05/10/07	But according to the license only the idea and the material submitted to ideastorm (i.e. only the idea that the community should sort the ideas with the categorizer, and NOT the code of the program itself or the categories cosh created) is subject to the license, therefore the code of the Categorizer is cosh's sole property and its rights will solely depend on the license he gives to it.
badblood 05/10/07	shooters do you work for Dell?
shooters 05/10/07	no, just my opinion
cosh 05/10/07	Lmao, you're all taking my lil old idea so seriously. I feel like a king. ^_^ @shooters: You're database ideas are excellent. Actually, the "deleted" column is already in there because I was trying out that method the other day. I didn't try out that thing for the duplicates though - my problem was how would you stop circular references and keep the virtual "chain" of associations in the table from getting out of hand. Every search would be complex because you'd have to check every idea for other associates. But of course - you're suggestion changes the topology of it to a single root node with all the others hanging from it. So finding the duplicates of an idea would take a maximum of two queries - one to find the root node, and one to find the others connected to it. I can't implement it right now, but I'm keeping track of everybody's suggestions. I've added the Delete Requests category to sync with the one that's just appeared on IdeaStorm; however I have protected it so people can't put other's ideas into it. Mistern's request for searching by user may be the next new feature by the way.
shooters 05/10/07	@cosh For the duplicate, suppose B is a duplicate of A. 1st check, I make sure A is not a duplicate of anything else, if it is, request denied (easiest way to implement). 2nd query, update all dupes that have B has parent and set the new parent to A. So for example if C is dupe of B. and now I want B dupe of A, then I put B,C dupe of A. Therefore, you avoid any problems with circular references (i.e. C dupe of B dupe of A dupe of C) Hope this helps...
badblood 05/10/07	shooters do you work for salesforce or some affiliate of theirs or Dells?
shooters 05/10/07	No, just an open-source enthusiastic wanting to help clean the large number of ideas submitted on this site.
shooters 05/10/07	Total number of ideas in the index: 1140, submitted by 655 different contributers. So far the community has sorted an incredible 1140 ideas, or 100.00%. ==> NEXT WAVE plz.... Thanks
cosh 05/10/07	Another 360 imported. ^_^ I've made a change to the import of new ideas - I've turned off the thing that imports the default IdeaStorm categories for an idea. This is because there are far too many ideas being indiscriminantly added to the "Desktops and Notebooks", "Dell", or "IdeaStorm" categories when they are oringally posted, and the IdeaStorm categories don't match up with the ones on The Better Idea Platform and so don't have quite the same meaning. JUST AS AN EXAMPLE, requests for bringing back Windows XP or whatever, will probably get the Desktops and Notebooks and Dell tags when added on here, but on the other site, there's the separate category for Windows, within the one for Computer Operating Systems, and obviously Computer Operating Systems applies to Computers, which includes the Desktops and Notebooks categories. And obviously Computers applies to Dell, so it doesn't need to be duplicated there either. Plus sometimes, people just add ideas to everything. Really, the category import was more trouble than it was worth. I'm hoping turning it off will make categorisation easier rather than slower, and make it more accurate in the long run.
shooters 05/10/07	I agree with you, much better now... Thanks

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