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[Puzzlemaker]

I think it makes the most sense to just go through and clean - not purge, not reset, not clear - just clean: the multi-suggestions cleared and split, duplicates combined, the ones that have already been implemented having their votes cleared, and the irrelevant ones removed. It would be a one-at-a-time thing, rather than dealing with just the first fifty, or all at once. The eternal aspect gets saved, and everybody's happy. If there was a way to alert people that their vote had been cleared, that would be good, too - it's been ten years since DF was first created, and a lot has changed, but not all.

I am conflicted.  While this is a good compromise, there is a bunch of junk in there.  It would take a bit of effort to clean it up.  If Toady gave someone admin over it so they could help out and clean up the old ones, that would probably be best.

[Talvieno]

It would take a lot of effort, yes, but I honestly think what the poll needs isn't brute force, but some tender loving care. It'll be better for it when it's done, and a few hours of work will go a long way towards the next ten years.

[Adrian]

The next ten years? I hope the list gets revisited a little sooner than that.
Because right now there's little to no reason to ever recast/rethink your votes no matter how much has changed since casting them, which means that the order of the entries now is roughly the same as the order they were in six years/two releases ago when ESV was introduced.

So if we're not going to go with a full reset i highly recommend the votes get at least periodically cleared. Maybe after every major release, or every year. Or enhance the ESV script to remove votes that are older than X months.

[Talvieno]

I just listed that number because it's been ten years since DF was started.

[zwei]

Problem with non-purge is that

* People come and go - what was really hot topic for forumers 4 years ago would now be meh, but it can still retain 100s/dozens votes to skew results. We still have suggestion for doctors and hospitals.

* Community has done major progress with out of game tools and some very suprising stuff, making demand for some features in vanilla df low to nonexistent, but it still retains votes. For example remote public DF servers which actually exist.

* DF itself has came a long way. And new suggestions relating to it current state have little chance to upstart because people need to sacrifice one of their three votes.

All of top 10 topics are from 2008 and 2009
All but 2 of topics with 100 votes are from 2008, remaining two are from 2010
All but 2 of topics with between 100 and 25 votes are from 2008/2009, only two are from 2010
Pretty much all of topics with one or zero votes are younger than 2011.

No new ideas get promoted. And I do not think that we have ran out of worthy ideas five years ago.

---

My proposed change:

* Redesign ESV page to be prettier and match main DF page, put link to it somewhere visible.
* Allow multiple votes (with some fancy ajax thing so that you can go down the list and check want/do not want) so that you do not need to sacrifice support for old suggestion to new ones.
* Clear votes from accounts have have not been active for (x amount of time). Do this periodically.
* (Optional) Clear all votes
* (Very optional) Clear suggestions.

[dorf]

UPDATED on 07/28/2014.

Top three ranked options from the poll are:
Purge: unwanted/unnecessary suggestions are removed
Consolidate: similar suggestions are merged into a single suggestion, huge suggestions are split into multiple suggestions
Purge Zero: remove only suggestions with zero votes or are below a threshold

[Greendogo]

Hey Toady, I had an idea to improve the democratization of the Eternal Suggestion Voting.  You could reset the votes of all of the suggestions to zero and then randomly assign around ten to twenty Eternal Suggestions that each forum member is allowed to vote on, with a good distribution so no Suggestion has more or less that about the average number of randomly assigned forum members.

Lock forum members into their ten or so suggestions for about a week or two, post on the Blog about it, so by the end everyone has a chance to see what's going on and vote on their favorites from their personal assignment of suggestions (you could even use a ranked vote, since everyone has such a small number of things to vote on).  Also, don't show them how many votes each suggestion has just yet, to prevent follower-bias.

Then at the end of the time limit/when a good distribution of suggestion pools have been voted on, unlock it, and eliminate any suggestions with zero votes (or those ranked consistently near the bottom, if a ranked ballot is used).

This will give a lot of suggestions visibility that might be currently buried by older more powerful and well connected suggestions and revert to the current system, saving the votes accrued in the process.

[PeridexisErrant]

As long as the list isn't wiped clean, there's no chance of any significant change in it. It should be named "the 2009 voting, eternally preserved."

Three and a half years later, this is still true.  My vote is still to start with a completely fresh slate; new suggestions for a new version.  Anything worth recreating *will* be recreated, no worries on that front. 

[Dame de la Licorne]

Hiya,

I did a quick scan through the first few pages of the list (checking out those suggestions that have 100+ votes), and this is what I noticed (numbers are current rankings, but shouldn't change much):
#3 - Workshop material selection -> we can do this with dedicated stockpiles now, should be cleared of votes
#9 - Multithreading support -> will NEVER happen (from ToadyOne himself), should be cleared with an appropriate note telling people not to vote for it
#10 - Adventure Mode Skills -> most of the listed ones have been implemented, with more listed on the development page, so can probably be cleared
#23 - Retire a fortress -> implemented, needs to be closed and labeled as such

There are quite a few more suggestions below the 100-vote cut-off that I used which also need to be cleared, but for the most part they have less than 10, since they were apparently already cleared at some point.  Clearing the four I've singled out would already allow a number of folks to reallocate at least one of their votes to something else (and allow 3 suggestions to move into the top 10, possibly the following: Farming Improvements, Realistic Mining and Guilds).

So, I'm in favor of someone (I hesitate to name Toady or Threetoe, given that they have so much else to do, though they would have the best idea for what to remove as [DONE] and have the least likelihood of spawning arguments) going through the list with each major release and marking items as either "implemented" or "worked on" and clearing the votes from those specifically, but not the others.  If there is an announcement (e.g. on the devlog), then players could then go back and re-evaluate/re-assign their votes accordingly.  I think that was originally the intent behind the eternal voting system.

-Dame de la Licorne

[Adrian]

#3 - Workshop material selection -> we can do this with dedicated stockpiles now, should be cleared of votes

I disagree.
Because while dedicated stockpiles definitely help with material selection, they also screw up job orders.
For example: If you que up 10 iron battleaxes to be made through the manager, those 10 axe orders get divided over all forges. Including ones that have not been given access to a stockpile containing iron bars. This leads to manager orders getting only partially done and never actually completing, and job cancellation spam when the weaponsmiths can't find any iron for that workshop.

Dedicated stockpiles are not a panacea for material selection, so i think the ESV entry for Workshop material selection is still valid.

Also, has the discussion on wiping the list ended? Because i still think it's necessary to do. What with so much having changed since it's conception.

[Dame de la Licorne]

Adrian,

Note that for #3, I simply said it should be cleared, not closed/removed.  That way, anyone who felt it still needed work could vote for it again.  As opposed to fortress retirement which is clearly done (even though quite buggy).

-Dame de la Licorne

[Draco18s]

Unfortunately I don't control that one.

[Romegypt]

I noticed a few of the items on there are outdated. Retiring a fortress for example. You may want to remove that and give the players that voted for it their votes back.

[Areyar]

Just added a suggestion to limit fortress settling location options to a radius/exploration area that is civilization specific.
Bonus for added risks involved in expeditions outside of that range.   

[Draco18s]

I noticed a few of the items on there are outdated. Retiring a fortress for example. You may want to remove that and give the players that voted for it their votes back.

I'll offer you the same response last time someone mentioned that.

The ones I control (i.e. created) that are still in the top-20 are all still valid and I don't think any/much progress has been made on them.
(I have been clearing out votes on things I consider to have been "worked on recently" so other things can float to the top)