Very easy idea. Make it user optional by just adding a few more choices in how ideas are sorted on the list. Options like sort by week 1, week 2, most active by comments, most active by votes. Or rate them by a like/dislike icon.
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What would be really neat is every time an idea gets an X number of votes it moves up one slot on the list automatically. This way the things people are not quite so interested in get weeded out slowly but fairly. And after an X amount of time it drops down one slot on the list over and over until it gets the previous set number of votes to move it back up one slot.

actually, as of today, we do have 5210 submission in the pool.
yesterday we had 5050.

I agree this is a big problem. Lots of good ideas are getting buried too fast. I think as a start when you click on "Participate" it should then ask which category you want to participate in? Example: Kitchen, Toys, Home Decor, Lawn & Garden etc etc. That way people who want to participate can focus on categories they are knowledgeable or comfortable with. Using the current categories that would cut the pool of submissions into 10 separate lists at least. That would increase the odds of a good idea being noticed and within its own correct category.

I also think they should have "Most Popular" or "Most Votes" as one of the sort headings. Using "most Active" does not make since. If everyone who views your idea hates it and makes a comment to that effect you move to the top of the list.

What about "least active" as a (self-reduced) sort option?

for those who like to have a random list, try this:
http://www.quirky.com/participate?filters[]=random
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for those who like to have an alphabetical list, try this:
http://www.quirky.com/participate?filters[]=alphabetical

Wow, lots of ideas that I was not aware existed... A whole new world.

clickable links, to make things easier:
 
Random 
 
Alphabetical

yep...a new world...hope you can find some gem's out there... ;-)

They should really start to think of a better interactive system to keep people coming back.

They could do different rounds.
Round 1 - Free for all - vote on all that you like and
Round 2 - Q uses the info and picks the top 50. Members get 10 votes.
Round 3 - Q narrows it to the top 5. Members get 1 vote.

Votes don't have to matter, but if you vote for the idea(s) Q picks - you get influence.

@stazy, I am thinking along the same lines (add a "new entries" phase), but I don't think it can be as simple as that.
 
The problem with that suggestion is that still leaves ~180 new ideas a day to evaluate and now the burden is put completely onto the Q staff to select those 50. There should be a better way to involve the community.

The old system had a beginning and an end (one week). I thought that worked well. 30 days is way too long.

It really wouldn't be a burden on the staff since they supposedly go through all the submissions weekly anyway and pick ones for UC.

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I should have put this at the top, but here are some related topics in this forum (I'll edit this as topics are brought up):
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Directly relevant topic in GS, add your voice!!!
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In "Common Courtesy Question" there is a relevant suggestion by Clinton.
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Similar idea Brainstorm summary
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Brainstorm on similar ideas
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When is the best time to submit?
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Ideators vs. Inventors
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Ideators vs. Designers
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@stazi.
 
That is still 1200 ideas to deal with in a week, most of which would have barely been noticed by the community before these pop-up into the second phase. Regardless, we have to assume that as Quirky grows, the number of ideas will grow. Or, as happened last week, a tsunami triggered by press exposure.

How are you able to tell how many submissions in the pool? Is there a way to judge how many have come in in a given period? This is something I have been asking GS for (rolling submission counts, per week, etc.), and a time stamp for voting, demarked voting periods in the voted list, ways to rank choices in the saved list. They have been much less than transparent about the influence algorithm, and it is hard to know if you are "over voting". I have been fairly frugal in my voting, and I keep getting reamed on influence. It sucks.
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We should go through all the GS complaints and find everything that is related to this and post the links and start replying on ALL of them. All at the same time.

Ridiculous submissions:Time machine, cure for cancer are two that came in this month. And the anti-gravity skateboard, don't forget that one. If we did not have these, then what would we post in the Funny Submissions thread? I would rather see these every now and again that 100 entries for split blankets, dirty diaper detection systems, more electrical cords, finders of lost things, toilet seat lifters (or any potty related), or any of the other things we get at least 20 times a day. Filter THOSE. And put up a list at submission of things we DO NOT take: Apps, Medical Devices, industrial goods, B2B type stuff. That would cut down on traffic. The list of admissible categories needs to be made more clear, and add a NO list.

@EW, just a little bit of reverse engineering and statistics...
 
Submissions are numbered in ascending order, a lower numbered submission comes before a larger numbered one. Although numbers are mostly consecutive, there are holes in the numbering (perhaps because people quit in the middle of the submission process). So I just did a bit of statistics, the first 50 the last 50, what was the count error, and applied it to the whole count difference from first to last. And according to wunderlitch, I was only 6% off!
 
Interesting detail: while I found that 60% of the numbers were valid at the beginning, only 28% were valid at the end. This suggests that either a lot of people did not go through with their submissions a month ago, or a lot of the submissions were removed from the database.
 
The latter points toward a confirmation of my suspicion that the 'ending soon' submissions seem cleaner and less cluttered than the new ones....