The new and much improved version of Ubuntu Brainstorm, Ubuntu’s site for receiving ideas from users and allowing other users to vote on those ideas, was launched today.

Since the day it came out, I have supported the concept behind Ubuntu Brainstorm and hoped that it would be adopted by other projects, although its adoption has been slow thus far. Unfortunately, a list of issues with the current version of the site has been building up. Among the complains are not being able to vote “0″ on ideas, not being able to change your vote, not having a good way of dealing with related ideas, and the site being very slow. I am please to say that all of those issues and more have been addressed in the new version of Brainstorm, at least partially. Bookmarking ideas is still a little slow and relating ideas is still a little rigid, but the new version is definitely an improvement.

The overall categories of ideas are displayed in a time line form with large buttons across the top. From left to right, these sections are “Idea Sandbox,” “Popular Ideas,” “Ideas In Development,” and “Implemented Ideas.” This is roughly the chronological ideal path of an idea. All ideas begin in the idea sandbox, where they await moderator approval. Once they have two approvals, they move on in to the popular ideas section. Here, ideas are publicly voted on and discussed. Ideas that receive a large number of votes or that happen to become a feature of a future release will likely then move in to the ideas in development section. From this point on, voting on ideas is closed. Finally, once an idea has been fully implemented, it moves in to the finished ideas section, which acts something like a showcase.

These sections aren’t the only ways to filter through the plethora of ideas, though. You can also sort by project (e.g. Wubi, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, OpenOffice.org, etc.) and by broader categories (e.g. look and feel). Once you have narrowed it down to the ideas you are interested in, you can select several ways of sorting them.

Individual ideas have changed, too, though. Now, the problem and the solution(s) have been separated. This means that several people can submit solutions to the same issue and they can be individually voted upon. Also, it is now possible to see the percentages of votes for +1, -1, and 0. And, of course, now you can vote”0,” meaning that you don’t really care or have an opinion.

Unfortunately, there are also some issues. For example, the site seems to be plagued by random log-outs (UPDATE: This should now be fixed if you clear your cache.). Usually clicking log in a few times logs you back in without needing you to enter your password, but this issue is still annoying. Worse, when you try to edit the default solution on an old idea (which just says that the idea was converted from the version before solutions were around and asks the idea owner to update it), everything appears to work, but the changes are not saved (UPDATE: The bug is now fixed.). This was a real annoyance, since I moved the solution parts of several of my old ideas in to the solution area and it turned out that those changes were not saved, so I had to recreate part of the idea. Another annoyance is that the bookmarking feature is still very slow, even though all of the voting features are quite fast.

Despite these problems, the upgrade to Ubuntu Brainstorm looks great and will hopefully encourage more participation.

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