I have lots of ideas and, not expecting them to be unique or profitable (or knowing how to profit from them), I discuss them online, expecting the information to be helpful to others or expecting others to help me develop them further.
Later, I've found very similar ideas patented at a date after my public discussions. (Not that I think they directly copied me, it was likely just multiple invention.)
Considering I'm not going to spend money trying to defend something I never intended to profit from in the first place, is there anything I can do to invalidate the patent so no one has an exclusive right to it, or at least help weaken it?
These are probably weak prior art, though. (Postings on forums or now-defunct wikis, Google Docs, etc., all seen by only a handful of people...) How much detail would my postings need to be considered prior art? What if, in private, I had sufficiently detailed the workings to constitute prior art, but my public postings didn't contain enough detail?