[umbrae]

jcnnghm, you should check out Kindling. (Disclaimer, I'm the founder - but I still find this problem very interesting.)

What we've done is provided each user with a set number of votes - by default 10 per room - and each user can put as many votes into one idea as they'd like. This forces them to make hard choices about which ideas are the most valuable to them.

This economy of votes has worked out surprisingly well for us in practice, and people become very thoughtful about how many votes they want to expend on an idea. I'd be curious your thoughts.