Sneak has been wading through the witless wisdom of crowds on display at Dell’s IdeaStorm, a kind of chimera created by splicing a blatant copy of Digg with a blatant copy of the Halfbakery. The concept is for Dell to get some market research and new product brainstorming done for free, by allowing customers to suggest their half-baked ideas for new products or services, and then letting the users digg (sorry, vote to promote) the best suggestions. That’s the concept - the dreary reality is countless suggestions that Dell should offer pre-installed open source software (as if nobody at Dell had ever heard of Linux).

So far, the best idea Sneak has seen is a suggestion that the IdeaStorm site should allow visitors to nix as well as endorse existing suggestions. A moderator wouldn’t hurt either.

Then again, maybe there is a moderator, and their job is not to remove the dross and highlight the gems, but the reverse. After all, if a punter were to suggest something truly groundbreaking, would you leave the idea up there for all to see, or grab it, hide it and send it hotfoot to your labs?