Community Ranking of Submitted Suggestions

[agentcom]

I was going to propose something similar and searched and found this. Just another suggestion moved to "rejected" with no explanation and no coherent negative response whatsoever.

I understand your frustration. I think a few of us moderators share it. A system for determining which suggestions get implemented has been proposed a few times. In fact, back in the day, there was a priority system, where updates were ranked 1-5, 5 being urgent and 1 being unimportant. That didn't really work that well and was done away with.

Lack has also tried to publish a "to do" list, but that also didn't work out very well, apparently. This was all before I was ever even on the site, so I can't speak much to the specifics.

I also agree that suggestions get dismissed too often without much explanation. Those of you who follow this forum, know that I try not to do that. I'd say the biggest problem with this looks like it would require either (1) coding or (2) a manually kept list, which both would take more time than the admins/mods wanted to put in.

Behind the scenes, I can tell you that there is some discussion for making the suggestions process more streamlined and consistent. The main problem we've run into is that every mod (remember: volunteers) does things at their own pace, so simple discussions can literally take months.

Thanks for finding this though, I'll add it to my index of suggestions/list of things to work on.

[Woodruff]

I was going to propose something similar and searched and found this. Just another suggestion moved to "rejected" with no explanation and no coherent negative response whatsoever.

I understand your frustration. I think a few of us moderators share it. A system for determining which suggestions get implemented has been proposed a few times. In fact, back in the day, there was a priority system, where updates were ranked 1-5, 5 being urgent and 1 being unimportant. That didn't really work that well and was done away with.

Lack has also tried to publish a "to do" list, but that also didn't work out very well, apparently. This was all before I was ever even on the site, so I can't speak much to the specifics.

The problem in both cases was lackattack himself in my opinion, unfortunately.

[patrickaa317]

I think perhaps if the suggestions moderator had a ranking system, (s)he could use feedback received from the community to prioritize/identify the items and use a flagging system, similar to the flags in the create/join tournament area.

Perhaps something like:
Exclamation Mark = Hot one the community seems to like (i.e. should be higher priority)
Green Dot = Stuff lack is willing to admit is in progress or "approved" to be in a future release
Blue Dot = Some community support though not a lot
etc.

Or any other organizational method would work too. Just throwing it out there.

[agentcom]

In my opinion, there are two axes (as in plural of axis, not relatives of hatchets) that are important: Ease of implementation and Desirability of feature. Low/negative desirability, difficult fixes wouldn't be prioritized. Easy, desirable ones should. The other ones should be made as time permits and probably at the discretion of Lack/admins/mods/some combination. There are a couple of mods who have been talking about putting something like this together. We'll see how it goes.

As for a way of community rating of suggestions ... well I have a couple thoughts (1) the voices heard on the forum are a fairly good proxy for this; (2) up/down votes, unlike the current system don't allow things like "strong support" or "meh"; (3) systems that do allow for degrees of support/distaste get complicated. So, I'm not sure how much benefit there would be in a standardized system as opposed to people just reading the suggestion and feedback and getting a feel for how people view the suggestion.

[Woodruff]

In my opinion, there are two axes (as in plural of axis, not relatives of hatchets) that are important: Ease of implementation and Desirability of feature.

Indeed, this is exactly the case, in my opinion.

As for a way of community rating of suggestions ... well I have a couple thoughts (1) the voices heard on the forum are a fairly good proxy for this; (2) up/down votes, unlike the current system don't allow things like "strong support" or "meh"; (3) systems that do allow for degrees of support/distaste get complicated. So, I'm not sure how much benefit there would be in a standardized system as opposed to people just reading the suggestion and feedback and getting a feel for how people view the suggestion.

I think the community already ranks the suggestions to a degree. If I read through a suggestion, I definitely have a feel for what the community (that participates in this forum anyway) thinks about it.