Improving the suggestions forum

Alpha1

Well-known member
This suggestions forum is going to explode. In no time it will be just as hard to oversee the suggestions, as vb.com its suggestion forum.

IMHO a forum is not optimal to handle a large number of suggestions. Software like uservoice is much better, as it asks members to review suggestions and to vote the most wanted suggestions up.

If you do proceed with using the forum for suggestions, then I'd like to suggest the following to get a bit more order and overview in this forum:
- merge all threads that discuss the exact same suggestion.
- either add more sub-forums or add prefixes to designate what part of the software the suggestion refers to.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if something to handle suggestions better is in the works but hasn't been gotten around to yet (similar situation to the bug tracker, which is said to be coming sometime soon).
 
I've kind of wondered why they haven't been merging threads. Maybe that functionality isn't done yet? They seem to just be closing the duplicate threads rather than merging them.
 
Nah, i saw kier break apart a thread - floris's signature thread. so the merge thread must be there since it has the break apart function.
 
Why not just close repeated suggestions? They only need to hear the same suggestion once. :P
 
That makes little sense if the objective is to measure the popularity of the suggestion. Plus a mass of duplicate threads clutter the forum.
 
That makes little sense if the objective is to measure the popularity of the suggestion. Plus a mass of duplicate threads clutter the forum.

Measuring the popularity of a suggestion based on replies is not accurate. And reading all replies to a thread and tallying up the support is not efficient. So it's as equally ineffective to leave closed but duplicated threads as it is to merge dozens of identical requests into a single thread.
 
That makes little sense if the objective is to measure the popularity of the suggestion. Plus a mass of duplicate threads clutter the forum.

But with the close you would obviously post a link to the superseding thread. That is if it seemed to be a popular subject the first time it was posted.

It's just, if you merged all the duplicate threads, it would seem like a lot of the posts in each thread would just be the same question over and over getting asked by different people. :P
 
Measuring the popularity of a suggestion based on replies is not accurate. And reading all replies to a thread and tallying up the support is not efficient. So it's as equally ineffective to leave closed but duplicated threads as it is to merge dozens of identical requests into a single thread.

If a suggestion has a lot of replies, it is more likely do to a debate about whether the feature should be in by default or not, or how it should best be implemented. It is rarely due to people just agreeing with the suggestion.
 
If a suggestion has a lot of replies, it is more likely do to a debate about whether the feature should be in by default or not, or how it should best be implemented. It is rarely due to people just agreeing with the suggestion.
Hence my remark that measuring a suggestion's popularity based on reply count is totally inaccurate. ;)
 
There are 264 suggestion threads now. There will be thousands. Many thousands. I cant imagine how to keep overview on that in a forum.

I agree that reply count is inaccurate. But in forum that seems the only option there is. Something like uservoice is perfect for this. Then popularity doesn't have be measured upon reply count. Here is a Uservoice demo:
http://initech.uservoice.com/forums/1155-initech
 
I've kind of wondered why they haven't been merging threads. Maybe that functionality isn't done yet? They seem to just be closing the duplicate threads rather than merging them.

Actually we have been merging threads that discuss the exact same subject. Other threads we have closed for one reason or another, and pointed them to the thread that discussed what the OP originally posted. ;)
 
I agree that reply count is inaccurate. But in forum that seems the only option there is. Something like uservoice is perfect for this. Then popularity doesn't have be measured upon reply count. Here is a Uservoice demo:
http://initech.uservoice.com/forums/1155-initech

Do you work for this company? ;) :p

No, I think it's a good idea but I don't think a paid, third-party solution is the way to go. They could easily create something similar by implementing a thread voting system:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/thread-voting-feature.363/
 
Thread voting system for the software itself to be included or just to use on here to sift out the mess? Also looking at that uservoice thing, it looks simple enough, i bet kier and mike could whip something up like that in one afternoon.
 
Thread voting system for the software itself to be included or just to use on here to sift out the mess? Also looking at that uservoice thing, it looks simple enough, i bet kier and mike could whip something up like that in one afternoon.

Both. It would work well here, and I would be able to make use of it as well. :p
 
Do you work for this company? ;) :p
LOLOL! No I don't work for that company. I just like the feature that you can see at one glance which suggestions are most wanted. Unfortunately a thread voting function is not quite the same, unless it funnels users trough the suggestions and lets them vote on them. one by one. Facebook is third party.
 
Both. It would work well here, and I would be able to make use of it as well. :p

The thread voting addon should definitly be install here if it makes anything easier for the devs but for comming default in the public software i don't really see the need for it. The average user won't really have the need to sort threads by total number of votes anyways. The like system is simple yet elegant and that's what the devs are trying to accomplish for the software. Simple yet practical :)
 
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