Voting on Ideas like in Ubuntu Brainstorm project

[JDW]

An extension to the forum where users could submit ideas, and voted on by the community would bring very interesting debates on the forum, and more fun. Just like Ubuntu Brainstorm, this could lead to very creative, and sometimes very useful, ideas.

Of course it doesn't mean that the developers must implement the most popular ideas. If the developers feel that an idea is too far-fetched then they can halt further voting on that idea with a proper notice on why they did it.

It will help in increasing activity among fans of the game, after all, a community project is only successful if the community is involved. For those not familiar with the Ubuntu Brainstorm project,

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

I can't confirm this, but I think the source code for the project is available for derivative work.

[BunkerBlaster]

viewforum.php?f=30

[Zarel]

This is a pretty good idea - I think Buginator suggested it on the ML a few weeks ago - I don't know what happened to it.

What do you think, Marketer Chris?

[JDW]

Actually I can confirm that it's available for derivative work, a little googling got me this result,

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/17028/

So the entire IdeaTorrent project code is licensed under the GPL ,

http://www.ideatorrent.org/

https://launchpad.net/ideatorrent

Isn't that great?

Now everybody, debate pls...

[Christheturtle]

I think it's a fantastic idea. It will involve the community more in the future of the project. In my eyes, go for it.

[BunkerBlaster]

This is a pretty good idea - I think Buginator suggested it on the ML a few weeks ago - I don't know what happened to it.

Thought this wasn't a democracy. Would voting be just for statistics to aid developers on which idea to possibly implement first if accepted?

[Christheturtle]

Although the developers word comes first at the end of the day, this is a community. Many members here have been here from the start and share the same passion as the developers. Their voice should be heard amongst the developers voices.

And on another plus, it doesn't look too hard to implement.

[Zarel]

Thought this wasn't a democracy. Would voting be just for statistics to aid developers on which idea to possibly implement first if accepted?

Neither is Ubuntu. Shuttleworth's position is literally Dictator for Life.

"Not a democracy" basically means we won't guarantee that a feature will be implemented simply because it's popular; however, knowing which feature requests are popular will certainly influence our decisions for what to implement next.

[JDW]

The quality of ideas feature requests will improve, since everyone will want to maintain high "positive votes received" statistics (also doubling as the fun quotient). So members will think more than just twice before posting an idea/solution. This will help weed out all the rubbish that developers do not need to waste their time on.

[Christheturtle]

The quality of ideas feature requests will improve, since everyone will want to maintain high "positive votes received" statistics (also doubling as the fun quotient). So members will think more than just twice before posting an idea/solution. This will help weed out all the rubbish that developers do not need to waste their time on.

Pretty much yeah. It works well for both parties... People get to voice/vote their opinions on what should be implemented in the future, and the developers get a no-crap way of sifting through it to better evaluate the results.

[Safety0ff]

It'd be nice to have something like that in trac for bugs (then we could comment about it being underutilized.)

[JDW]

I've noticed that many popular ideas, that have been rejected months ago, get mentioned in a new post over-and-over in a span of a few weeks or sometimes even days. I'm sure all developers are aware of this phenomenon.

I have a possible suggestion to overcome this duplication:

When a member wants to 'post' a new idea, he should be 'forcefully' presented with a Search box asking for the summary of his idea, then perform a search based on the keywords and display previous posts with similar ideas. So only then can they proceed to posting an entirely new idea, or add their idea to a previous topic as another 'Solution' if it is related to his idea.

As a result, in case of rejected ideas, the member will get to read comments and reasons given by developers on why an idea was rejected. Much more efficient than having the developer team and contributors to repeat explanations.

For a more better understanding, please have a look at how the KDE project bug tracking system tries to minimize duplications,
https://bugs.kde.org/

[Crymson]

I've noticed that many popular ideas, that have been rejected months ago, get mentioned in a new post over-and-over in a span of a few weeks or sometimes even days. I'm sure all developers are aware of this phenomenon.

I have a possible suggestion to overcome this duplication:

When a member wants to 'post' a new idea, he should be 'forcefully' presented with a Search box asking for the summary of his idea, then perform a search based on the keywords and display previous posts with similar ideas. So only then can they proceed to posting an entirely new idea, or add their idea to a previous topic as another 'Solution' if it is related to his idea.

As a result, in case of rejected ideas, the member will get to read comments and reasons given by developers on why an idea was rejected. Much more efficient than having the developer team and contributors to repeat explanations.

For a more better understanding, please have a look at how the KDE project bug tracking system tries to minimize duplications,
https://bugs.kde.org/

That can't be done in this forum software, or trac, they would need better software.

[JDW]

That can't be done in this forum software, or trac, they would need better software.

Correct. And I wasn't talking about reducing duplication on this forum. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, but my suggestion was an expansion to the main idea that i had proposed which is explained better on the first post on this thread

An extension to the forum where users could submit ideas, and voted on by the community would bring very interesting debates on the forum, and more fun. Just like Ubuntu Brainstorm, this could lead to very creative, and sometimes very useful, ideas.

Of course it doesn't mean that the developers must implement the most popular ideas. If the developers feel that an idea is too far-fetched then they can halt further voting on that idea with a proper notice on why they did it.

It will help in increasing activity among fans of the game, after all, a community project is only successful if the community is involved. For those not familiar with the Ubuntu Brainstorm project,

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

As you can see, I mentioned extension, which may as well be a separate entity from the forum. The source code for the better software is also available as I had mentioned earlier

Actually I can confirm that it's available for derivative work, a little googling got me this result,

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/17028/

So the entire IdeaTorrent project code is licensed under the GPL ,

http://www.ideatorrent.org/

https://launchpad.net/ideatorrent

Isn't that great?

Now everybody, debate pls...

As for the "Forced Search and browse old posts before posting a new feature request" part , I guess the code may be available from KDE bug tracking system, which has implemented this perfectly. I couldn't find any information to confirm this however. But this feature is highly efficient in weeding out duplicates. KDE bug tracking system has lots of duplicate bugs being filed each day and they are doing a good job in becoming more efficient

https://bugs.kde.org/

[Crymson]

I did see this http://sourceforge.net/apps/ideatorrent/wz2100-vault/ so it looks like that is in the plans.
It pays to be nosey when devs post links.