Topic: Feature request sub-forum? (Read 7881 times)

6233638 · « **on:** July 08, 2015, 11:48:15 am »

Quote from: JimH on July 08, 2015, 10:30:47 am

Please post feature requests in one of the existing threads for that.

The existing feature requests topic is very long and can be confusing to read over when two or more groups of people are discussing separate features at once.

I would like to suggest that feature requests get their own sub-forum.
One request per topic, instead of big posts with multiple requests.

This way discussions will be contained to a single topic and be far easier to refer back to in the future.

flac.rules · « **Reply #1 on:** July 08, 2015, 11:52:39 am »

Quote from: 6233638 on July 08, 2015, 11:48:15 am

The existing feature requests topic is very long and can be confusing to read over when two or more groups of people are discussing separate features at once.

I would like to suggest that feature requests get their own sub-forum.
One request per topic, instead of big posts with multiple requests.

This way discussions will be contained to a single topic and be far easier to refer back to in the future.

Thats actually a great idea, many feature request persists over several versions of the program as well, and topics can be closed on implementation.

rlebrette · « **Reply #2 on:** July 08, 2015, 11:57:06 am »

Quote from: 6233638 on July 08, 2015, 11:48:15 am

The existing feature requests topic is very long and can be confusing to read over when two or more groups of people are discussing separate features at once.

I would like to suggest that feature requests get their own sub-forum.
One request per topic, instead of big posts with multiple requests.

This way discussions will be contained to a single topic and be far easier to refer back to in the future.

+1 it would be a pretty good alternative to a dedicated tool

rudyrednose · « **Reply #3 on:** July 08, 2015, 12:04:58 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on July 08, 2015, 11:48:15 am

I would like to suggest that feature requests get their own sub-forum.
One request per topic, instead of big posts with multiple requests.

Great idea !

Gatherum · « **Reply #4 on:** July 08, 2015, 12:11:58 pm »

Throwing my hat into the requests subforum pile.

Vocalpoint · « **Reply #5 on:** July 08, 2015, 12:16:51 pm »

And mine!

VP

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #6 on:** July 08, 2015, 12:56:03 pm »

Quote

I would like to suggest that feature requests get their own sub-forum.
One request per topic, instead of big posts with multiple requests.

+1 the amount of lengthy feature requests i've contributed to jriver all seem to get lost as time passes... sub forums would be stellar for us users who take the time to give ideas, and for jriver to look back upon when they're sick of the everyday grind, and want to hammer out something different.

A feature for subforms stating solved/ or feature now added, with the ability to lock that sub topic once completed would be nice too... many times new features get added but are toggle type options (meaning one has to goto settings to enable) by having topics, with icons of completed (or now a feature) users then would hopefully not double post, and could skim through all feature requests topics to see if such feature has been implemented or not.

mjcrhbsh01 · « **Reply #7 on:** July 08, 2015, 02:05:42 pm »

rec head · « **Reply #8 on:** July 08, 2015, 03:36:41 pm »

Al ex · « **Reply #9 on:** July 08, 2015, 03:42:07 pm »

Quote from: rudyrednose on July 08, 2015, 12:04:58 pm

Great idea !

+1 for this suggestion.

Fangio · « **Reply #10 on:** July 08, 2015, 03:42:51 pm »

Magoo · « **Reply #11 on:** July 08, 2015, 03:50:00 pm »

Bccc1 · « **Reply #12 on:** July 08, 2015, 04:44:23 pm »

ferday · « **Reply #13 on:** July 08, 2015, 04:47:47 pm »

lobo85 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 08, 2015, 04:50:46 pm »

This would be a lot more efficient. Great idea! +1

JonnyRedHed · « **Reply #15 on:** July 08, 2015, 04:52:24 pm »

Sounds like a good idea.

Grenache · « **Reply #16 on:** July 08, 2015, 05:11:11 pm »

Great idea!

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #17 on:** July 08, 2015, 05:21:38 pm »

Got some time to kill so I'll contribute my two cents to this idea. The problem is, I believe, such a forum section would become inundated by requests constantly if it were allowed to be opened all the time. So, here's what I'm thinking;

1. Have the forum section open to the public only during certain times when the development team is actively looking at requests, e.g. during the transition period between major MC versions.
2. Have one feature request per-topic requiring a good description of the request along with why you feel such a feature is required.
3. Enable voting for each topic - the more requests with yes votes may be considered more than requests with less votes (though exceptions can be made, obviously!).
4. Have three forum sub-sections - one for Windows, one for Mac and one for Linux.

mattkhan · « **Reply #18 on:** July 08, 2015, 06:24:23 pm »

Why is it a problem if ideas/requests can be submitted at any time? It seems like more a question of organisation than an actual issue tracker (iirc they have said they are not interested in having an issue tracker)

hoyt · « **Reply #19 on:** July 08, 2015, 07:25:16 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on July 08, 2015, 06:24:23 pm

Why is it a problem if ideas/requests can be submitted at any time? It seems like more a question of organisation than an actual issue tracker (iirc they have said they are not interested in having an issue tracker)

Agreed. I work for a company with 2k engineers, thousands of clients, and we have an open forum for this (granted the forum was written to accommodate this process vs an online bb like this, but still...). Our clients submit enhancements, other clients can 'vote' and comment, multiple of us review and edit the titles to organize, then we review as a group weekly. At that point we decide if it's something that will be done and sent to engineering for full scoping, should be delayed for more input from clients, won't be done, etc. The discussion are then updated with tags so they can see what is declined, being worked on, or recently delivered. It works very well, is transparent to our clients and I'm pretty sure they really like it. Makes it very easy to organize what's happening for these small type of requests.

JimH · « **Reply #20 on:** July 08, 2015, 09:04:29 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on July 08, 2015, 06:24:23 pm

Why is it a problem if ideas/requests can be submitted at any time?

I think it would create a greater workload for us, with no certain benefit for our customers.

A voting system is democratic, but

A. JRiver isn't a democracy
and
B. An idea may be wildly popular, but exceedingly difficult to implement.

We must always think about cost / benefit.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how it would improve things, and I think there is a lot of potential to create false hopes and expectations.

6233638 · « **Reply #21 on:** July 08, 2015, 11:16:30 pm »

Well people can add to the "Feature Requests" topic at any time too, it's just that having it split into a separate forum with a topic for each request, instead of throwing it all into a single linearly organized topic (as opposed to "threaded" discussions on sites such as Reddit) is a lot easier to manage.

And people already do vote on topics with their +1 posts.
If that was a poll, it seems like that would be quicker to gauge popularity, since it keeps track of the total.
Even if that voting is just a poll with an option for +1 rather than a yes/no vote, it avoids cluttering up the topic with "+1" posts too.
It's not like you can't comment on topics with things like "a nice idea but too complicated for now" etc, similar to what you did in this topic. (not that you would be required to)

I don't think it necessarily changes the expectations or workload at all, just makes it easier to keep track of requests.
It's not like we're asking for a public bug tracker here, just a feature request sub-forum.
I find it difficult enough to go back and find my own requests sometimes, let alone other people's in that big topic.

flac.rules · « **Reply #22 on:** July 09, 2015, 01:21:35 am »

Quote from: JimH on July 08, 2015, 09:04:29 pm

I think it would create a greater workload for us, with no certain benefit for our customers.

A voting system is democratic, but

A. JRiver isn't a democracy
and
B. An idea may be wildly popular, but exceedingly difficult to implement.

We must always think about cost / benefit.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how it would improve things, and I think there is a lot of potential to create false hopes and expectations.

A request can be popular but not implemented today also? And anybody can post requests at any time. To me it seems like the same amount of "work" (read feature requests), will just be sorted in an easier to manage matter?

mattkhan · « **Reply #23 on:** July 09, 2015, 03:42:54 am »

Quote from: JimH on July 08, 2015, 09:04:29 pm

I think it would create a greater workload for us, with no certain benefit for our customers.

A voting system is democratic, but

A. JRiver isn't a democracy
and
B. An idea may be wildly popular, but exceedingly difficult to implement.

We must always think about cost / benefit.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how it would improve things, and I think there is a lot of potential to create false hopes and expectations.

I think it's worth separating 2 things here, one is having a dedicated subforum for feature requests and the other is ways to ranking/categorising those feature requests. You don't have to do both, you could just have a forum that contains all the assorted ideas in one place to make it easier to search for things.

I think your stance is pretty clear on how you handle these sorts of ideas so that could just be a sticky in the forum and/or something inserted in the "post new thread" form for that forum. I don't see an obvious downside really, the same content gets posted today but is distributed across the boards so, as others have said, you're not changing what is posted, just where it is posted (which might even reduce the no of threads).

hoyt · « **Reply #24 on:** July 09, 2015, 11:46:40 am »

Quote from: JimH on July 08, 2015, 09:04:29 pm

I think it would create a greater workload for us, with no certain benefit for our customers.

A voting system is democratic, but

A. JRiver isn't a democracy
and
B. An idea may be wildly popular, but exceedingly difficult to implement.

We must always think about cost / benefit.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how it would improve things, and I think there is a lot of potential to create false hopes and expectations.

I don't think anyone is suggesting it be a democracy, or that votes should supercede the scoping process for difficulty. In the example that I mentioned before, the 'votes' are merely used to help us gauge interest. Client interest is one of several reasons used to evaluate an enhancement. It is not the end-all-be-all.

The improvement that people are suggesting is to organize the requests and provide some clarity to the process. I'll be honest, I don't look at that feature request thread because it's huge, disorganized, and several conversations happening at once. Having a topic per idea would solve that.

kstuart · « **Reply #25 on:** July 09, 2015, 05:01:08 pm »

Regardless of the voting issue...

... Separate Feature Request threads for each Feature Request would be MUCH easier for JRiver staff and for customers.

JonnyRedHed · « **Reply #26 on:** July 10, 2015, 01:05:13 pm »

I'm not sure how many of my ideas would get votes, because most are UI styling and progressive interface ideas (Appearance and Ease of use). I'm a firm believer in pushing forward with UI ideas. All smoothly animated and adjustable. I don't have the skills to suggest deeper functional ideas so stick to the visual. When looking up at a 50-65inch TV screens with massively high resolutions, the visual is what its all about for me and others who use their large TV's for day to day computing and MC use.

Magoo · « **Reply #27 on:** July 10, 2015, 05:20:55 pm »

Quote from: kstuart on July 09, 2015, 05:01:08 pm

Regardless of the voting issue...

... Separate Feature Request threads for each Feature Request would be MUCH easier for JRiver staff and for customers.

AGREE!

6233638 · « **Reply #28 on:** July 13, 2015, 06:56:29 am »

From the feature requests topic:

Quote from: JimH on July 13, 2015, 06:31:38 am

For discussion, please use another thread.

This is why we need a sub-forum with one request per topic.

Micromecca · « **Reply #29 on:** July 13, 2015, 07:26:52 am »

+1 from me on this whether we have the ability to vote on requests or not.

Just being able to see feature requests sensibly rather than the endless threads we have at present would make it worthwhile surely $:-\$

M

6233638 · « **Reply #30 on:** July 14, 2015, 02:37:52 pm »

Please create a separate forum instead of merging everything into one topic.
It's impossible to follow the discussion now.
Just yesterday, you asked that the discussions were posted in separate topics, and it felt like the discussions today were actually productive.

JimH · « **Reply #31 on:** July 14, 2015, 02:47:24 pm »

I'm aware of your request.

kstuart · « **Reply #32 on:** July 14, 2015, 03:16:11 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on July 14, 2015, 02:37:52 pm

Please create a separate forum instead of merging everything into one topic.
It's impossible to follow the discussion now.
Just yesterday, you asked that the discussions were posted in separate topics, and it felt like the discussions today were actually productive.

+1

mattkhan · « **Reply #33 on:** July 14, 2015, 03:16:27 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on July 14, 2015, 02:37:52 pm

Please create a separate forum instead of merging everything into one topic.
It's impossible to follow the discussion now.
Just yesterday, you asked that the discussions were posted in separate topics, and it felt like the discussions today were actually productive.

This is why I commented (in http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=98726.msg682923#msg682923) that it gives the appearance of not wanting feature requests to be raised, i.e. if it looks like the request is going into a black hole or if it's just plain confusing to interact with (that merged thread is now thoroughly impenetrable) then why bother raising it at all. I have no reason to disbelieve JimH when he says my perspective is not the case, nevertheless I do not understand his approach to this problem at all. Modern software is about an engaged community isn't it?

kstuart · « **Reply #34 on:** July 14, 2015, 03:20:22 pm »

If the requests are all in one thread, then discussions ABOUT the requests are confusing, because there are dozens of discussions in the same thread.

If the requests are separate threads, but in the MC20 Forum, then they dominate the MC20 Forum, making other discussions less visible.

So, a separate sub-Forum for requests, is the ONLY rational and workable solution.

If there is another solution, please state it.

If there is ANY drawback to a separate sub-Forum for requests, please state it.

JimH · « **Reply #35 on:** July 14, 2015, 03:40:45 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on July 14, 2015, 03:16:27 pm

This is why I commented (in http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=98726.msg682923#msg682923) that it gives the appearance of not wanting feature requests to be raised, i.e. if it looks like the request is going into a black hole or if it's just plain confusing to interact with (that merged thread is now thoroughly impenetrable) then why bother raising it at all. I have no reason to disbelieve JimH when he says my perspective is not the case, nevertheless I do not understand his approach to this problem at all. Modern software is about an engaged community isn't it?

I'm glad you're engaged. I personally read every post (of any kind). When I see something we can or should do and I think we have the time, I send it on to Matt.

JimH · « **Reply #36 on:** July 14, 2015, 03:45:14 pm »

Quote from: kstuart on July 14, 2015, 03:20:22 pm

If there is another solution, please state it.

If there is ANY drawback to a separate sub-Forum for requests, please state it.

It's one more thing to manage and it throws fuel on a fire that is already hot enough.

An idea occurs to you, and you write it down. 30 seconds later, it's done.

That idea may take us 10 minutes or 10 days, and it's added to a queue that is already around the block.

So why don't you listen to a little music or watch a movie and let us work for a while?

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Feature request sub-forum? (Read 7881 times)

rlebrette