I've been thinking about this for the last couple days, but prompted by some shit that happened in the last 12 hours I decided to put it in writing to see what various users' thoughts might be.

Of course, I know that anything I or anyone else has to say about the issue is most likely never going to be taken seriously by anyone in charge here, so all this is purely hypothetical.

Here are my three main points:

1. Only flash artists and experienced audio reviewers (defined by having submitted a certain number of helpful audio reviews) can vote zero. The purpose of the Audio Portal was, face it, always just to support the flash. So to keep with NG tradition and to keep random or malevolent users from outrightly bombing tracks out of the sights of talented flash authors, this is probably a good idea.

2. If an Audio Track in one genre is presently ranked above the highest ranking submission of a voting Audio Artist, any votes cast by that artist that would lower the score of the voted track beneath the voting artist's highest ranking submission are voided by the system. This would largely prevent artists from competitively bombing each other's tracks to climb through the first page.

3. After any user votes on a single track more than five (I'm pulling a common number out of my ass here for example) times, the user must write a review for the track. This review will replace any previously submitted review for said track, if applicable. The score shown will directly reflect the user's votes cast on this submission. Not only will this encourage a little more constructive criticism on the Audio Portal (which is severely lacking, as I think you'll agree), but it will force repeat voters to defend their positions with their name attached. That way, those who go out of their way to repeatedly bomb (or 5, for that matter) a certain track will have to go out of their way to explain why before they can continue to vote (Is that really too much to ask?). Any retaliatory bombing against a well-reasoned and thoughtful low review will of course be subject to the same rules, thus this factor in any track's score will also be severely diminished.

Those are my thoughts at the moment. Feel free to tell me I'm full of shit ;-]