Conquer Club

• The Suggestions forum is a splendid method for incubating community-generated ideas to improve the site. However, not all site updates pass through this mill, and sometimes this leads to changes which are not welcomed by all with equal enthusiasm. (The recent changes to the Game Finder with respect to tournaments is the most recent example.) Feedback prior to full rollout of such changes could smooth their entry into the world at large.

• Create a new forum called Proposals where new topics are created only by admins, describing future updates in detail. The community could then review and advise on these topics, hopefully casting light into areas not fully examined by those developing the updates.
• This could either be a top-level forum of its own, or a subforum of Announcements, or even a sub-forum of Suggestions, since that area already draws the attention of those interested in such things.
• This suggestion is in the same vein as Make CC API Updates Public, but goes further, as there are changes to the site that go beyond the API and affect more users than just scriptwrights.

• Updates to the site will be met with fewer cries of anguish and outrage and more shouts of praise and gratitude, improving the mood of all and sundry.

Victor Sullivan wrote:Interesting proposal, ender. While I like the idea, I feel this is already accomplished by implementing the update, then listening to the complaints of the community. I suppose this could theoretically save some time if the proposal is posted early enough in development, but can we really know the pros and cons without even experiencing the feature anyway?

-Sully

Metsfanmax wrote:I support this suggestion. In my mind the Proposals forum would also be a subforum of this forum. Topics could be placed there in one of two ways. The first is that the web developer(s) has an idea about a particular site feature and posts the broad brush-strokes of it in Proposals well before it is implemented, and the community is permitted to review it and suggest modifications. The second is that upon admin approval, a topic could be moved from Submitted Suggestions to Proposals, which is essentially saying that the admin does want to implement that Submitted suggestion and so they are notifying us that it is on their to-do list. This would clarify a lot of the confusion regarding Submitted suggestions, because people are often mistaken and think that a submitted suggestion is one that will definitely be implemented at some point.

ender516 wrote: I can imagine, though, that lackattack might be a little leery of a list of things "that will definitely be implemented at some point" as that gives users a ready-made list of things to whine about.

ender516 wrote:Concise description:

• The Suggestions forum is a splendid method for incubating community-generated ideas to improve the site. However, not all site updates pass through this mill, and sometimes this leads to changes which are not welcomed by all with equal enthusiasm. (The recent changes to the Game Finder with respect to tournaments winning team in round limit games is the most recent example.) Feedback prior to full rollout of such changes could smooth their entry into the world at large.

agentcom wrote:

ender516 wrote:Concise description:

• The Suggestions forum is a splendid method for incubating community-generated ideas to improve the site. However, not all site updates pass through this mill, and sometimes this leads to changes which are not welcomed by all with equal enthusiasm. (The recent changes to the Game Finder with respect to tournaments winning team in round limit games is the most recent example.) Feedback prior to full rollout of such changes could smooth their entry into the world at large.

Fixed.

Hopefully, there will be more communication in advance of site updates in the future. This is a similar issue that the Foundry has with maps made "behind the scenes" that don't get community feedback. The general consensus over there is that these maps are not as polished as the publicly made maps. As a result, the current administration has stated that such development will no longer happen. I am not sure whether public development of site features will be beneficial in all cases. But it is important that more than a couple people look at all the details of an improvement before it goes live.