The Idea & Innovation Hub

The plan is simple: we use this space to pool our best concepts. Post your idea here first to claim ownership and lock in your credit, 😁 then we can work on it together if you're open to collaboration.

There are two ways to play this: brand new ideas or digging up those old gems buried deep in the Reddit archives. Credit belongs to the people who revive the classics, too. Take the study groups, for instance—originally a concept from a straight shooter, brought back to life by Life on Mars, and now being driven by badger, if I'm reading this right.

I’ll go first and throw out two ideas:

• Lexicon. Remember those school yearbooks where you'd answer 20 or 40 random life questions just to have a keepsake? I'll outline how this would work in a separate thread.
• The second is reviving a brilliant old thread from 2003 by Sudden Sid—Newsflash corner. It was genius.

Drop your suggestions here.

Comment on specific ideas right here in this thread.

Reddit Interview Series

A series of interviews with interesting Redditors. Even if they aren't interesting, an interview is still something. 🙂 A partial coming out from the shadows... Peeking behind the curtain of online anonymity is always a curiosity grab. 😲 Who’s brave enough? How much are you willing to reveal?

I think this colleague’s topic is actually pretty relevant
octagon

What was the actual deal with the debate club? Which PDF did it end up in? I know the whole thing never really took off, but I was actually scrolling through the archives yesterday, and while debating with Lastan wasn't exactly the most productive experience—and I mean that in the best way possible—I still thought the core concept was pretty solid.

Especially with everything going on in politics right now, why not just throw two stubborn badgers into a ring with a specific topic and let them go at it without any moderators or penalty cards? We could have a closing statement, a public vote, and then hand out some laurels to whoever comes out on top.

Should we bring back that legendary squid thread? 😁

Is there a place on Reddit for product reviews? Like, if I pick up some total junk from Top Shop and want to post that it’s garbage—or, on the flip side, if I find an amazing, high-end chocolate bar and want to tell everyone it's worth a try.

I've got two little new topics for us to chew on.

First topic:
Let's grill the moderators.>
I have to admit, I’ve always been a bit skeptical when it comes to any kind of authority figure, haven't I? My past run-ins with the police, military personnel, inspectors, sheriffs, and customs agents haven't exactly left me with a glowing reputation of them, so don't blame me if I instinctively lump the moderators into that same category by default.
Luckily for us, this site actually allows us to talk about the moderation team without facing any immediate repercussions, right?😁>

Maybe we could structure this thread so even the average user gets a chance to push back against the administrative machine. What if we picked one day a week where a moderator is essentially at the mercy of the community for two or three hours? For instance, every Thursday from 9:00 PM to midnight, Moderator XY would be subjected to a bit of "interrogation" by the regular users. We could throw out all those weird, uncomfortable questions about their life and work—ranging from which users they can't stand to how their parents used to ground them when they were kids, what sports teams they root for, what their favorite adult websites are, or just what they actually do for a living...

Initially, the moderators could volunteer for these sessions, but eventually, we could move to a rotation or even have them assigned by the owner. If a moderator fails to survive this "initiation" process, perhaps they should just revert to being a regular user?
It might feel a bit like a return to the Inquisition, I suppose, but we could follow up each session with a poll to see what kind of impression the moderator made during the hearing.

Second topic:
Stories of how you've outsmarted the government, state agencies, or federal officials.The premise is pretty straightforward, and I think there's plenty of room here for true stories, dramatic confessions, and various encounters or experiences involving the cops, local bureaucrats, or customs officers.

This falls under the category of forgotten ideas:

A few years back, Quorgyle actually pitched an idea right here on this subreddit about launching a dedicated science and tech sub-forum.

The feedback was pretty solid at the time, but—surprise, surprise—nothing ever came of it... Looking through a few different subreddits, I see some incredibly interesting topics popping up all the time that clearly hook people... If we could consolidate them, it might actually pull in a whole new crowd of users for deeper discussions. For instance, over on my main economics sub, a thread about shipbuilding just opened up—it’s mostly focused on the financial side, obviously, but there are some genuinely fascinating posts buried in there...

Unfortunately, Quorgyle hasn't logged in for six months now, so he can't really take the lead on developing the concept. But maybe we could gather some folks from various threads and build up enough momentum to make it happen.

Since we’re talking suggestions—I remember a good chunk of the History crew (myself included) asking for an alternative history sub-forum, mostly just for those "what if" scenarios. I also suggested that since the Film PDF doesn't have its own dedicated space, we should start a sub-forum specifically for individual film discussions. It would make the general topics on that PDF much easier to find and follow. So, anyway, here's me throwing those ideas out there again.

Interesting idea, I guess... but what's actually in it for us? What are the prizes?

🕺