[SOLVED] Ubuntu Idea Storm?

[maynoth]

Wouldn't it be awesome if users could vote on their top ubuntu frustrations and constructive criticisms. What could be done better, what bugs can be fixed, what annoyances can be solved. Why not let the community help in prioritizing what needs to be done most. I think Canonical should let the users vote...


www.pligg.com seems to be exactly the thing... now to find a host.

[rennen01]

A knowledgebase would be nice, but that would be a long project imo.

[aysiu]

We already do something like this.

When a new version is upcoming, there's usually a thread about suggestions for the new version (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=285910). You can also post feature requests on Launchpad--which the developers take note of. Ultimately, though, it's up to the Ubuntu developers and Mark Shuttleworth to decide what gets incorporated into the new release.

Based on the specifications for Feisty Fawn (to be released next month), I'd say they're pretty good at listening to the users:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+specs

By the way, I've moved your thread to a more appropriate place.

[maynoth]

I think Ubuntu should have an entire page devoted to this... like ideastorm.ubuntu.com or what not. something for direct feedback and voting on issues.. The voting of ideas, the best of which float to the top is what would help prioritize goals.. From what I can see people make suggestions lots of them but you have to wade through 30 pages of forum threads to digest it all. That is kinda pointless. A ideastorm style interface where users vote on issues (or create their own) would help the users have more coherent focused and prioritized feedback for the devs etc. Harness the collective wisdom of users. I can only see good things from something like this..

[Brunellus]

I think Ubuntu should have an entire page devoted to this... like ideastorm.ubuntu.com or what not. something for direct feedback and voting on issues.. The voting of ideas, the best of which float to the top is what would help prioritize goals.. From what I can see people make suggestions lots of them but you have to wade through 30 pages of forum threads to digest it all. That is kinda pointless. A ideastorm style interface where users vote on issues (or create their own) would help the users have more coherent focused and prioritized feedback for the devs etc. Harness the collective wisdom of users. I can only see good things from something like this..
Take it up with sabdfl and the rest of the officials on launchpad and/or the wiki, then. We are not responsible for this.

[maynoth]

sorry to bother you again... do you have contact information or a link to a page that does?

[Brunellus]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications?highlight=%28features%29

[Stone123]

For me it is like this : They make a system , i try to customize it and change it as much as posible.
UUID in my fstab no way, Gnome gone ...and so on ....(no thats about it)

[MetalMusicAddict]

For me it is like this : They make a system , i try to customize it and change it as much as possible.
UUID in my fstab no way, Gnome gone ...and so on ....(no thats about it)

This is way off topic.

I kinda like the idea of a separate site though I think the guys do a good job at balancing users requests with what needs to be done at the core. :) Ill ask Mark about it the next time I see him on IRC. ;)

[maynoth]

http://www.pligg.com/

Pligg seems to be exactly what is needed. Would anyone here like to contact me about possibly setting up an Ubuntu Idea Storm using pligg. (lordmaynoth)xxxx(at)xxxx(gmail)

[Brunellus]

http://www.pligg.com/

Pligg seems to be exactly what is needed. Would anyone here like to contact me about possibly setting up an Ubuntu Idea Storm using pligg. (lordmaynoth)xxxx(at)xxxx(gmail)
it would be irrelevant. If it's not connected to the core devs or project leaders, it's as useless as any online petition.

[MetalMusicAddict]

it would be irrelevant. If it's not connected to the core devs or project leaders, it's as useless as any online petition.

Totally. It would need support from Canonical. Maybe this would be a good one for the Marketing team?

[Adamant1988]

Totally. It would need support from Canonical. Maybe this would be a good one for the Marketing team?

He's talked with us about it, and I told him I didn't feel a digg-esque site was a good idea and outlined the reasoning.

[MetalMusicAddict]

He's talked with us about it, and I told him I didn't feel a digg-esque site was a good idea and outlined the reasoning.

Which was?

Im not for a "digg-esque" site either but Im sure a similar concept to Dell's Idea Storm that fits Ubuntu could be done.

[maynoth]

My email to the ubuntu marketing list:

As you all know; Dell launched dellideastorm.com to get community feedback and suggestions. I think this move was brilliant on Dell's part, allowing them to get invaluable feedback that otherwise would have been too vast, overwhelming and complex to deal with. This " Web2.0" approach allowing users to vote and comment ideas, allows the most popular to float to the top, to "separate the wheat from the chaff" so to speak

I purpose that Canonical follow suit with a similar "idea storm". A web2.0 approach similar to dell's ideastorm, for ideas on how to improve ubuntu , suggestions, constructive criticism and annoyances. A place where people feel their opinions can actually be heard, rather than ignored.

It has been my experience that developers while brilliant and technically capable lack the ability to see the perspective of the "average Joe computer user". It has also been pointed out that the forums and lauchpad allow for users to give feedback, however both of these lack the spirit that the " Web2.0" approach gives. Launchpad is imho too technical for most users, and the forums really don't provide an easy way to harness the collective opinions of ubuntu's user base.

I can see only good things coming from harnessing the collective wisdom of users, such as allowing for coherent, focused and prioritized feedback for the developers.


Sincerely,

Matthew Wight


Adam's letter to me:


Hello Matt,

We spoke briefly on IRC. Again, I'm more in favor of collecting the information from inside of Ubuntu if at all possible ("Click here to take Ubuntu surveys") so that the absolute largest number of users can send feedback to us, as well as suggestions. I think that the web 2.0 approach you're suggesting adds unnecessary technical strains. I am more in favor of polls and surveys being added to the Canonical site and linked to from inside of Ubuntu.



My Followup:


Hi Adam,

Why not do both? I see each approach as bringing something unique and useful to the table.

I think that the web 2.0 approach you're suggesting adds unnecessary technical strains.

Setting up a site similar to Dell's Idea Storm, specifically for Ubuntu, would be rather easy using pligg http://pligg.com/ It is still in beta but seems to be a completely usable platform.

I am more in favor of polls and surveys being added to the Canonical site and linked to from inside of Ubuntu.

I personally do not fill out surveys, they seem like such a chore and hassle, and I feel as though no one reads them. Poll's are nice within the options they provide, but what if the user has an opinion or idea outside the scope of the poll's choices? Also I would think it would be harder to manually gather statistics, maybe there is some software for manually sorting suggestions?


The reason I love Dell's Idea Storm so much is it allows the most popular and agreed upon suggestions to float to the top. I can look and see how the community resonates with my idea. When I send in a survey I have no idea if anyone else shares my opinions, and honestly I don't want to take the time and effort to complete one. The " Web2.0" approach holds much more appeal to me as a feedback mechanism, than polls, forums, surveys, or launchpads ever could. I think all methods of feedback are useful, but I believe the Web2.0 approach would wield the most power for polishing ubuntu's rough edges for end users.

[Brunellus]

"Web 2.0" is just the marketing name for "Hype 8.20RC20."

Web 2.0--and Web 1.0 for that matter--are excellent tools for spreading information and permitting communication among dispersed individuals. That should come as no surprise--that's what the network is for.

What has been less demonstrable is the ability of this distributed horde of commentators and contributors to add anything productive to the phenomenon they are attempting to criticize.** "Web 2.0" is an echo chamber: it lets you get the word out to people who are interested in hearing you. It's most certainly not a guarantee of actual development energy.

The development model that exists for Ubuntu and its constituent components depends on user input, yes--but it depends more on actual developer action. Comments posted on some independent forum, no matter how hype-compliant, will not reach the eyes of the developers that need to read them. Consequently, those features will not be implemented. The HypeBoard Echo Chamber will once again ring with the howls of Web 2.0 flamers, who decry the insensitivity of the developers.

These flamers will conveniently ignore the fact that there are structures already in place for dealing with user input and feature requests.

It is, of course, useless to point this out to dedicated flamers, because their community instincts have already been satisfied by posting their flame on their Hype 2.0 compatible structure.


---
** Note, for instance, the so-called revolutionary effect of political bloggers and blogging. I am not yet convinced that anyone can tell me of an instance where blogging literally turned an election. Moreover, I continue to suspect that, had people bothered actually participating in the existing, formal structure for politics (you know, elections!), they might have accomplished more than simply venting their spleen on the internet for the consumption of more like-minded spleen-venters.

[chavo]

Yeah great idea. maybe we could call it Launchpad!

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu

[aysiu]

Anyone know whatever happened to the Ubuntu Forums Ambassadors idea?
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/forum-ambassadors

[maynoth]

Launchpad feels more technical for developers and such... not for end users.

[Brunellus]

Launchpad feels more technical for developers and such... not for end users.
The wiki page I pointed you is end-user editable, and project devs pay attention to that.

The dev mailing lists are open; but tend to be more technically-oriented.

The bug trackers and Launchpad seem technical because, let's face it, bug-tracking is technical work. But that is also the accepted and preferred way of making feature requests.

[maynoth]

well.. from my perspective as an end user (I am new to linux and only starting to understand the cli):

There are a lot of rough edges for new users. Lots of little annoyances, ones that never seem to get addressed, then thrown on the back burner and never properly addressed.

You can voice your opinion or ask for help but most of the time you are met with sarcastic flames from the gurus. "Get your money back if you not happy", "If you need a newer version of a program to fix a bug wait six months or switch to gentoo", "linux isn't windows stop relying solely on gui and learn the cli".

For the most part the opinions of the end users, the new users to linux are often thrown out the window and disregarded, if not at times met with hostility.

I myself use automatix2, and have installed it along with edgy on about 20 computers for friends and family. I have never run into any issues using it but if I were to mention this fact I would get flamed into submission about how I was encouraging people to blow up their computers. I have never actually heard of anyone blowing up their system with the newest version of automatix2, and it seems to me more like FUD(fear uncertainty and doubt). A lot of the more technical users need to be honest with themselves and ask why such a project even exits and is so popular if the opinions of the end users were actually being met with the current feedback model.

I think Dell's ideastorm model is near perfect for non-technical users to post their suggestions, ideas, opinions, annoyances, etc. I feel this model most accurately represents the philosophy of Ubuntu itself as a feedback mechanism.

[Brunellus]

well.. from my perspective as an end user (I am new to linux and only starting to understand the cli):

There are a lot of rough edges for new users. Lots of little annoyances, ones that never seem to get addressed, then thrown on the back burner and never properly addressed.

You can voice your opinion or ask for help but most of the time you are met with sarcastic flames from the gurus. "Get your money back if you not happy", "If you need a newer version of a program to fix a bug wait six months or switch to gentoo", "linux isn't windows stop relying solely on gui and learn the cli".

For the most part the opinions of the end users, the new users to linux are often thrown out the window and disregarded, if not at times met with hostility.

I myself use automatix2, and have installed it along with edgy on about 20 computers for friends and family. I have never run into any issues using it but if I were to mention this fact I would get flamed into submission about how I was encouraging people to blow up their computers. I have never actually heard of anyone blowing up their system with the newest version of automatix2, and it seems to me more like FUD(fear uncertainty and doubt). A lot of the more technical users need to be honest with themselves and ask why such a project even exits and is so popular if the opinions of the end users were actually being met with the current feedback model.

I think Dell's ideastorm model is near perfect for non-technical users to post their suggestions, ideas, opinions, annoyances, etc. I feel this model most accurately represents the philosophy of Ubuntu itself as a feedback mechanism.
I encourage you to post your concerns on Launchpad, and hope earnestly that your concerns are met by the people who actually can do something to help.

Merely setting up an external "ideastorm-like" site that has no connection to the developers, and can neither command (through persuasion) nor compel (through payments) their attention is an empty gesture. At the risk of sounding harsh, let me quote Travis Tritt-- "Here's a quarter--call someone who cares."

[maynoth]

let me quote Travis Tritt-- "Here's a quarter--call someone who cares."

Well everyone seems to share your attitude.. which is why linux is going to take 30+ years to become mainstream.. end users (who cannot program) are left out of the R & D loop. The things which should take top priority are never addressed, and instead we focus on things like beta 3D gui's. I would rather have a default gui to edit xorg, and fstabs... a device manager that actually manages not a device viewer. I could care less about eyecandy.

Don't get me wrong I mean ubuntu is wonderful, the advances it has made in a few short years is nothing short of amazing. I think out of all flavors of linux ubuntu is the best and easiest to use free distro. But there is a big disconnect between end users and developers, and the apathy isn't going to bridge that divide. It is getting there, but the priorities are way out of whack, and just about every end user I have talked to has made the same observation.

[Brunellus]

Well everyone seems to share your attitude.. which is why linux is going to take 30+ years to become mainstream.. end users (who cannot program) are left out of the R & D loop. The things which should take top priority are never addressed, and instead we focus on things like beta 3D gui's. I would rather have a default gui to edit xorg, and fstabs... a device manager that actually manages not a device viewer. I could care less about eyecandy.

Don't get me wrong I mean ubuntu is wonderful, the advances it has made in a few short years is nothing short of amazing. I think out of all flavors of linux ubuntu is the best and easiest to use free distro. But there is a big disconnect between end users and developers, and the apathy isn't going to bridge that divide. It is getting there, but the priorities are way out of whack, and just about every end user I have talked to has made the same observation.

Let me explain my Travis Tritt allusion even more plainly:

Here's a quarter: If you cannot commit changes yourself, or convince a skilled practitioner to commit change for you, then you're stuck. You could always do what we always do in capitalistic societies--offer to pay someone for his labor. But I'm betting you're not willing to stump up even a quarter dollar for that, so

call someone who cares. The developers have, as part of their development process, established means by which user feedback can be considered: Bug trackers. The bug tracker for the Ubuntu project lives at http://launchpad.net

Setting up a separate forum (no matter how hype-compliant) simply to call for feature changes is useless. Unless you are able to make the changes yourself or compel someone else to make the changes for you, your complaints are meaningless. Developers are not obliged to expend any more effort to go looking for them. They are busy developing software, paying the rent, or orbiting space in Russian Soyuz capsules. They have other things to do than google around for your gripes, or provide you with on-the-spot guidance.

If, however, you post feature requests and bug reports on the channels THE DEVELOPERS THEMSELVES PROVIDE, your complaints have a much higher probability of being read, analyzed, understood, and even acted upon.

[Lord Illidan]

My pet peeve is Totem :)

But regarding xorg gui and fstab editor, these are things which I believe are in development, and are already in some distros like SUSE.

[cowlip]

Well everyone seems to share your attitude.. which is why linux is going to take 30+ years to become mainstream.. end users (who cannot program) are left out of the R & D loop. The things which should take top priority are never addressed, and instead we focus on things like beta 3D gui's. I would rather have a default gui to edit xorg, and fstabs... a device manager that actually manages not a device viewer. I could care less about eyecandy.

Don't get me wrong I mean ubuntu is wonderful, the advances it has made in a few short years is nothing short of amazing. I think out of all flavors of linux ubuntu is the best and easiest to use free distro. But there is a big disconnect between end users and developers, and the apathy isn't going to bridge that divide. It is getting there, but the priorities are way out of whack, and just about every end user I have talked to has made the same observation.

maynoth, Ubuntu is already developing this with "SimpleXSelection", Xorg 7.3 (will require almost no editing of xorg.conf, + dual monitors), as well as a device manager. They're all on the wiki pages or google. I think your idea is interesting but these specific things are planned already.

[ubuntu_demon]

Anyone know whatever happened to the Ubuntu Forums Ambassadors idea?
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/forum-ambassadors

We had some discussions which resulted in :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ForumAmbassadors

The most recent development :

nominate yourself for Forum Ambassador
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=366253



We are happy to inform you that we are currently in a phase of the forum-ambassadors project where it makes sense to investigate who wants to become Forum Ambassador members / leaders.


(you can find the nomination thread also through the big forum ambassadors thread http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=278375)

Forum Ambassaor volunteers are welcome !

We will update you guys when there's something else to report.

[23meg]

Well everyone seems to share your attitude.. which is why linux is going to take 30+ years to become mainstream.. end users (who cannot program) are left out of the R & D loop.

The operating systems that are mainstream today did not become mainstream by caring passionately for the end user's every demand, let alone letting them in the R&D loop. Actually, you have far more of a chance of making a difference in the FOSS paradigm, if you're willing to learn how the social mechanisms work, adapt to them, and utilize them, instead of expecting them to bend to suit you. You stand next to zero chance of making any difference in the mainstream proprietary paradigm.


The things which should take top priority are never addressed, and instead we focus on things like beta 3D gui's. I would rather have a default gui to edit xorg, and fstabs... a device manager that actually manages not a device viewer. I could care less about eyecandy.

(emphasis mine)

Your repeating of this often refuted way of argumentation is another symptom that points to your poor understanding of how things work. There's no single, unified "we" that develops the software you're using; it's all coming from an extremely decentralized workforce, and being put back together by the core Ubuntu developers. The people who work on the "beta 3D GUI"s cannot, and/or do not want to work on what you think are the top priorities. Your line of thinking is flawed in multiple ways:

- You can't expect a low level graphics programmer to hack filesystems, or work on usability. You should regard it as a blessing that people who work on Beryl aren't working on filesystems in their spare time; they'd make such a mess. You wouldn't be able to clear it up yourself, and you would end up with an unusable OS, and indeed, it would delay the long awaited, glorious, irreversible overtake of the mainstream market by Linux by thirty years. There's a reason things work the way they do.

- You can't expect a developer to work on something they aren't interested in. Would you put thirty hours of seriously dedicated work a week into something you have no interest in, without payment?

- Completely beside the point, but just since it illustrates another common misunderstanding you share: the "beta 3D GUIs" in your wording aren't just meant as eye candy; the underlying structure they utilize is meant to let your GPU do the dirty work that's on the shoulders of your CPU at the moment. In the long run, this endeavor isn't so worthless as to be dismissed as "useless eye candy that I'd gladly forfeit in place of [insert popular feature / fix]".

And there are multiple technical reasons why the graphical device manager is just a device viewer, which have to do with how the kernel works, so on. In short, since you're new to the FOSS paradigm, you lack a thorough understanding of why certain things work the way they do, or fail the way they do, and it's to be expected, it's nothing abnormal. Those who know the system inside out started just like you; they weren't born with knowledge of how to do good bug reporting and how particular system components interact. They looked around, asked questions, read documentation, made workable, consistent demands, and got them implemented. They didn't need a Digg-like interface with a million visitors a week to make things what they are today.


Don't get me wrong I mean ubuntu is wonderful, the advances it has made in a few short years is nothing short of amazing. I think out of all flavors of linux ubuntu is the best and easiest to use free distro. But there is a big disconnect between end users and developers, and the apathy isn't going to bridge that divide. It is getting there, but the priorities are way out of whack, and just about every end user I have talked to has made the same observation.

Expecting results from a purely democratic survey in the vein of Idea Storm to have a binding bearing on development is completely unrealistic, and if it did happen, it would be a shortcut to catastrophe. Schemes such as the forum ambassadors idea are much better ways of dealing with the gap between the developers and end users.

Some of the above may sound harsh, but it's the only way I can put things, and none of it is meant as an offense to you. I don't regard lack of knowledge as something to be ashamed of, and I don't regard having a slight bit further awareness of how things work as a means to snobbery, so take what I say as not as a belittling of your position, but a neutral take on your points.

[Brunellus]

- Completely beside the point, but just since it illustrates another common misunderstanding you share: the "beta 3D GUIs" in your wording aren't just meant as eye candy; the underlying structure they utilize is meant to let your GPU do the dirty work that's on the shoulders of your CPU at the moment. In the long run, this endeavor isn't so worthless as to be dismissed as "useless eye candy that I'd gladly forfeit in place of [insert popular feature / fix]".

Off-topic: the underlying technical goal--shifting windowing to the GPU--is laudable. The current implementations, however, tend to focus too much on bling for my tastes. I'm hoping Metisse stimulates useful discussion and thinking on desktop user environments.

At the moment, Compiz and Beryl are like the famous Amiga "bouncing ball" demo--beautiful and impressive, and with exactly as much bearing on real usability as the Amiga bouncing ball.

[maynoth]

Here is an idea:

Use Pligg (www.pligg.com) to allow us to vote for our favorite ideas. The best ones float to the top, like ideastorm or digg.


This would help prioritize suggestions and feedback.


Honestly it just makes sense, look at the success of both ideastorm and digg.

[zacinator]

That is a great idea! Then developers could know which features they should prioritize!

+1!

[Mathiasdm]

This will bring the 'hip' ideas to the top (graphical things like Compiz and flashy programs), while architectural ideas will be noticed less.

Or at least that's what I think.

So I'm against it.

[maynoth]

I don't see why you cannot have the best of both worlds.

The forum could be viewed just as it is now.. by the date of the last post, or by most votes...

[aysiu]

While I like the idea of voting, if a voting system is implemented, people need to recognize those votes for what they are--popularity among forum users, not necessarily priority for developers.

Ubuntu is, in many ways, a community-supported distro, but it is not a democracy. I don't know if there are any operating systems whose development comes out of a strictly democratic (the most votes for a feature gets that feature implemented) process.

I would be curious, though, to know which ones are the most popular. That vote could inform the developers decisions but not necessarily mandate what they end up choosing. I agree with Mathiasdm that "this will bring the 'hip' ideas to the top (graphical things like Compiz and flashy programs), while architectural ideas will be noticed less."

Even as our current Idea Pool area stands, the most controversial ideas are the ones that keep getting bumped, while some really great ideas (and feasible ones) got lost in the shuffle.

[Lucifiel]

Yeah, I agree that voting sounds good but anyone can get their friends, etc. to try and sway the direction of the votes.

Furthermore, I also agree that many ideas have actually been left behind in the Idea Pool. It's kinda sad and although I spent quite a lot of time responding to them, I don't have enough time right now to keep replying. :(

[23meg]

maynoth had brought up this idea (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=383914) before as well.


Honestly it just makes sense, look at the success of both ideastorm and digg.

It doesn't make sense to compare the method of governance of an operating system that's developed in a distributed way to an online survey made by a hardware company, or a popularity-focused website like Digg. Dell Idea Storm was a good idea for Dell; for a company that sells hardware, it makes perfect sense to know in exact numbers how many people are interested in a certain product or idea. And weighing the popularity of various online phenomena against each other is the very function of Digg.


if a voting system is implemented, people need to recognize those votes for what they are--popularity among forum users, not necessarily priority for developers.

Exactly; but unfortunately, from my experience with the forums I'll have to say I don't think enough people would. There would be lots of broken hearts: "Why does nobody work on my idea? Look, it's at the top!"


That is a great idea! Then developers could know which features they should prioritize!

A purely democratic way of prioritizing work isn't in line with how Ubuntu works. It can only indicate what active forum users want the most, not determine what will actually get worked on.


Ubuntu is, in many ways, a community-supported distro, but it is not a democracy.

True; it's closer to a meritocracy. Details: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/governance

[aysiu]

This is not a democracy, it's a meritocracy. We try to operate more on consensus than on votes, seeking agreement from the people who will have to do the work. Mark Shuttleworth, as SABDFL, plays a happily undemocratic role as sponsor of the project. He has the ability, with regard to Canonical employees, to ask people to work on specific projects, specific feature goals, and specific bugs.

He also has a casting vote on the Technical Board and Community Council, should it come to a vote. This capacity is not used lightly. The community functions best when it can reach broad consensus about a way forward. However, it is not uncommon in the open source world for there to be multiple good arguments, no clear consensus, and for arguments to divide communities rather than enrich them. The argument absorbs the energy that might otherwise have gone towards the creation of a solution. In many cases, there is no one "right" answer, and what is needed is a decision more than a debate. The SABDFL should act to provide clear leadership on difficult issues, and set the pace for the project.

It is understood that the divisive use of the SABDFL's authority could weaken the project. For that reason the authority is used carefully, in the hope that it will create momentum in the best direction for the project, breaking stalemates where otherwise competing views would fail to reach consensus. What's SABDFL?

[23meg]

Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life, a.k.a. Mark Shuttleworth.

[aysiu]

Gotcha. Thanks.

[last1]

You gotta admit, even if it wouldn't be designed specifically to direct devs to prioritize certain things, enabling some kind of voting system would be a fun way to involve normal users and provide feedback to developers.

[aysiu]

You gotta admit, even if it wouldn't be designed specifically to direct devs to prioritize certain things, enabling some kind of voting system would be a fun way to involve normal users and provide feedback to developers.
I agree with that. It would just have to be "sold" properly so as not to give forum members unrealistic or just-plain-wrong expectations.

[23meg]

I agree as well; of course it wouldn't hurt to have a demographic as long as it's non-binding. I just don't think it's a good idea to integrate it into the forums. It can be realized as an independent project if there's enough interest in it.

[maynoth]

anyone here every thought about hosting a 3rd party website using pligg for ubuntu feature suggestions, bug reports, annoyances, etc...?

[gnomeuser]

What an awful idea..

Often it's better to allow people and developers to think big when it comes to solving problems. Users sledomly know how to solve things best and they are bad at saying what they really want, instead you get little bugs or things like "Make foo better" without having the how expanded.

I think Penn Jillette summed it up best: "Elton Johns Candle in the Wind is the most sold record of all time.... popular sure doesn't mean right". We have to admit that as users we have day to day experience with the system by we normally have little technical insight into how to solve issue and we suck at formulating what the exact problem areas are since we aren't good at thinking out of the box.

A direct democracy will never work for Ubuntu.

[maynoth]

um... lol...

Users don't know what they want! Especially if they are capable of running linux! LOLLLLLL

Hey dude! If we fellow Mensa members don't have a clue what we want... WhoTF does?

I quit watching television because the networks feel the same way as you.


LOL


Your arguments are nonsense...

This forum (Gutsy Idea Pool) exists..... so OBVIOUSLY someone cares about what the users think, otherwise it wouldn't exist.

Also allowing people to vote for their favorite ideas wouldn't force anyone to do anything.


Furthermore allowing voting in this forum would add extra functionality.. there wouldn't be anymore +1 nonsense... Idea's "could" be ranked by their popularity.


This could be invaluable user feedback which otherwise would be unattainable.

Bugs, annoyances, suggestions, ideas... all prioritized by votes...

It doesn't force anyone to do anything, it gives invaluable information and user feedback, its prioritized.

[justin whitaker]

Here is an idea:

Use Pligg (www.pligg.com) to allow us to vote for our favorite ideas. The best ones float to the top, like ideastorm or digg.


This would help prioritize suggestions and feedback.


Honestly it just makes sense, look at the success of both ideastorm and digg.

Fantastic idea!

[23meg]

This forum (Gutsy Idea Pool) exists..... so OBVIOUSLY someone cares about what the users think, otherwise it wouldn't exist.

Nobody said that nobody cares what users think; how could that be possible anyway? It's just that merely statistical data based on popularity does not serve for anything other than being an indication of the current demands and trends of a small group of people (who frequent the development forums). How and in what priority those will actually be addressed is beyond non-technical users who have little or no knowledge of how things actually get done.

The proven and indispensible way of giving Free software developers feedback is reporting bugs, making well researched, well stated feature proposals, and providing usability feedback from a non-technical viewpoint (that most developers are assumed to lack). Crowds raising hands in masses and someone counting those hands doesn't help much.



Also allowing people to vote for their favorite ideas wouldn't force anyone to do anything.

Furthermore allowing voting in this forum would add extra functionality.. there wouldn't be anymore +1 nonsense... Idea's "could" be ranked by their popularity.

This could be invaluable user feedback which otherwise would be unattainable.

Bugs, annoyances, suggestions, ideas... all prioritized by votes...

It doesn't force anyone to do anything, it gives invaluable information and user feedback, its prioritized.

To rephrase what I said in my first post, many people are already under the illusion that posting an idea thread or writing a spec alone puts an obligation or pressure on developers to do things, and if realized, your proposal would only reinforce that illusion.

Why don't you start a separate website if you feel very strongly about this? You can then announce it in the forums, and people interested in participating will do so. I'm sure many will; actually, if you announce it appropriately, probably more people than would if it were a feature integrated into the Idea Pool.

[gnomeuser]

um... lol...

Users don't know what they want! Especially if they are capable of running linux! LOLLLLLL

Hey dude! If we fellow Mensa members don't have a clue what we want... WhoTF does?

I quit watching television because the networks feel the same way as you.


LOL


Your arguments are nonsense...

This forum (Gutsy Idea Pool) exists..... so OBVIOUSLY someone cares about what the users think, otherwise it wouldn't exist.

Also allowing people to vote for their favorite ideas wouldn't force anyone to do anything.


Furthermore allowing voting in this forum would add extra functionality.. there wouldn't be anymore +1 nonsense... Idea's "could" be ranked by their popularity.


This could be invaluable user feedback which otherwise would be unattainable.

Bugs, annoyances, suggestions, ideas... all prioritized by votes...

It doesn't force anyone to do anything, it gives invaluable information and user feedback, its prioritized.



On a personal note I'd wish you'd argue on the facts rather than ad homiem attacks.

Popularity is no indication of importance nor is it a good indicator of the root of any issue. Something like HAL which didn't exist when I started using Linux, trust me only a few users knew we needed this, we saw a problem namely when we inserted a CD we had to manually mount it. It took Havoc Pennington to examine the problem and post a a long article to formulate the exact issues and how to fit it into our stack before someone even started implementing it.

If the developers had just provided a hack around to make mounting work, we'd never have had HAL today nor any of the things it now enables us to do. When HAL first came around there were a lot of disbelievers, it would never work and so on.. today they are few and far between. Often times it takes a visionary to turn ordinary complaints into the formulation of what the real problem is and how to create the car rather than the better horse the users are asking for.

I never said we should not listen to users but we should realise that when users complain over something, it pays off to examine why they complain - if we can design something to do what they really want better instead of fixing the small thing they complain about then I think that is a better idea. Users are not always right, e.g. did you know you wanted Upstart or did you ask for a faster boot? They aren't the same, I could easily give you a faster boot using the existing init but we would not see the benefits from a redesign, Scott knew better than his users.. period.

Another problem with voting is who is voting, will it be a fair representation of our userbase (especially now that Dell are our new bestfriends) or will it be a biased small group of people tipping the scale. It's easy to vote, it's not easy to explain why and have a meaningful debate on the facts. Will we see ballot stuffing or other kinds of tampering. How do we know a poll gives a valid result? Do we have the infrastructure and the means to get a representative view of our users, do we address the cause of a problem..

[maynoth]

The only valid argument you make against voting is ballot stuffing.


I would argue that it would not be as big an issue here. What agenda or ulterior motives do these users have? On digg and other sites cheating happens because of revenue from advertising on blogs.

[maynoth]

23meg,

I have been debating starting my own site, as you suggest. However if it doesn't have the blessings of the community (which by the sound of it, it doesn't) I doubt it would be of any use to anyone.

If the Dev's don't know, care or read about it, what good would it do? *sounds like some horrible zen koan*


On the long shot that it did become a hit, I would end up with the server bills I can just imagine getting /.ed or dugg... oi!


I may however go forward with this idea in a few months, I honestly believe it has lots of potential, despite what everyone else thinks.

[earobinson]

I think this is a great idea, the only problem is when the community demands things that cant be done in time or arnt in the scope of the ubuntu project.

How will people react when the top 3 things we voted for dont get done?

[maynoth]

I don't see this being an issue if a disclaimer was displayed everywhere which said that votes do not mean a certain idea or feature will be implemented (ever)

[aysiu]

I don't see this being an issue if a disclaimer was displayed everywhere which said that votes do not mean a certain idea or feature will be implemented (ever)
I agree.

[23meg]

I have been debating starting my own site, as you suggest. However if it doesn't have the blessings of the community (which by the sound of it, it doesn't) I doubt it would be of any use to anyone.

You're wrong to think that it doesn't; as a non-binding survey conducted outside the forums, it has mine, as I've stated before, and I'm sure most (if not all) others who raised and will raise similar concerns to mine will agree too.


If the Dev's don't know, care or read about it, what good would it do?

I don't know, honestly. Unless someone does something useful with the resulting data (maybe write an informational spec?), it's just a demographic to look at.


On the long shot that it did become a hit, I would end up with the server bills I can just imagine getting /.ed or dugg... oi!

You can ask for support from those interested in the idea. There are some sites that provide free hosting to FOSS projects as well.


I don't see this being an issue if a disclaimer was displayed everywhere which said that votes do not mean a certain idea or feature will be implemented (ever)

There's also the question of whether the forum admins will want a feature that takes up server resources and plenty of work to implement, but won't provide much useful outcome, and will clutter the forums. You'd perhaps have to make a very good case, describing what exactly will be done with the resulting data and so on. If you can, you may want to post to the Forum Feedback and Help forum with your proposal, if you haven't already.

[earobinson]

I don't see this being an issue if a disclaimer was displayed everywhere which said that votes do not mean a certain idea or feature will be implemented (ever)
I don't know look at dell, they have the whole suggest a feature thing. And when linux rose to the top people where up in arms when linux did not come imeaditly. I think it would be a great way to tell the devs what people want, but the devs seem to have a good handle on that all ready.

Also things like beryl are going to be at the top, when beryl is still in beta, and requires propitiatory driver support, now I know ubuntu has that, but the problem is a lot of the top requests are going to be complicated packages that require a lot of dependencies making things more likely to break.

Now that thats said I do think its a great idea, Im just scared of how sour the community will be when none of the top 10 picks are implemented.

[fluteflute]

+1

[frup]

Shouldn't this be something incorporated in to Launchpad... having a feature like this would also get more people familiar with launchpad. That has the bonus of things actually getting submitted properly, issues that need to go upstream directed there etc.

So next to the development priority could be a community priority (a ratio of yes/no). If the community priority is high and the developers priority low, it shows that the community should formulate their own solution if they really want it.

[brim4brim]

I think its not a bad idea but it should be limited to things like Beryl included default or somesthing like that instead of all projects for the same reason everyone else stated that architecture projects will just end up with low priority and you shouldn't develop using democracy etc... All good points.

[sicofante]

It keeps amazing me how fearful everyone "at the top" is about what people really want. Free voting has brought Ubuntu to Dell computers. It's pretty obvious it would have never happened the other way round, since people ruling these forums like to be so selective about letting people express their wishes.

When an organisation asks its target audience what they want and at the same time restricts the answers, it's not wanting to know, it's just wanting to check how their own agenda will fit the audience needs. It's not that I don't find that useful, but calling that an "idea pool" is almost sarcastic and pure cheating.

I have exposed my concerns (on another thread) about the procedures currently held at these forums [regarding user feedback]. The more I read moderator's opinions on this, the more I worry (because I believe nothing great is to be expected without having a very good knowledge of your audience wishes and needs). I have yet to read a solid argument against letting people just ask what they want.

[aysiu]

People can ask for what they want. They may just not get what they want. Someone can say, "Hey, I want Skype to be included in Ubuntu by default." It's not going to happen. If that person understood Ubuntu's philosophy (commitment to free and open source software), she'd know it wasn't possible. Someone else could propose that Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and Xubuntu all be on one CD. If that person knew the CD is only 700 MB, she would know that just can't happen.

Even if an idea sounds good in theory, someone has to make it happen. Either a developer has to take interest in doing the dirty work or someone else who is interested has to pay the developer to take interest in doing the dirty work. Right now, the main "someone else" in the Ubuntu world is Mark Shuttleworth. If you want to start paying developers to do stuff, then you can start demanding they do what you want. Otherwise, they will do what Mark Shuttleworth says... or what they themselves take an interest in.

As 23meg tried to explain in General Feasibility Guidelines for Gutsy Proposals (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=421256), Ubuntu has certain principles and goals. It is not all things for all people (no piece of software is). If people want something other than Ubuntu, they're free to choose something else. They're even free to fork Ubuntu and make their own version of Ubuntu that "listens to the people" and is fully democratic in its development decisions.

Ubuntu has never been a democracy from its inception. And not every idea has equal validity. Listening to suggestions doesn't mean complying with all suggestions. An idea pool is not the same as an implementation pool. It is simply an idea pool.

[sicofante]

People can ask for what they want.
As long as they're not shut up by someone else...


They may just not get what they want.Only the really naive expect that when asked to vote for the most popular feature.


Someone can say, "Hey, I want Skype to be included in Ubuntu by default." It's not going to happen.Why not? Maybe Mark decides someday it's worth it because two million of his users ask for it.



If that person understood Ubuntu's philosophy (commitment to free and open source software), she'd know it wasn't possible.As with closed drivers?



Someone else could propose that Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and Xubuntu all be on one CD. If that person knew the CD is only 700 MB, she would know that just can't happen.But a DVD might put them all in one place.


Even if an idea sounds good in theory, someone has to make it happen.That's what developers are for, right?


Either a developer has to take interest in doing the dirty work or someone else who is interested has to pay the developer to take interest in doing the dirty work. Right now, the main "someone else" in the Ubuntu world is Mark Shuttleworth. If you want to start paying developers to do stuff, then you can start demanding they do what you want. Otherwise, they will do what Mark Shuttleworth says... or what they themselves take an interest in.So there's no real reason to ask for ideas? Or is it?


As 23meg tried to explain in General Feasibility Guidelines for Gutsy Proposals (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=421256), Ubuntu has certain principles and goals. It is not all things for all people (no piece of software is). If people want something other than Ubuntu, they're free to choose something else.

But if they're asked and they still want a different Ubuntu, maybe Mark or someone else decides it's time for a change.


They're even free to fork Ubuntu and make their own version of Ubuntu that "listens to the people" and is fully democratic in its development decisions.It doesn't sound very polite: "Tell us your ideas, if we don't like them, go do your own stuff!!"


Ubuntu has never been a democracy from its inception. And not every idea has equal validity. Listening to suggestions doesn't mean complying with all suggestions.But it means letting people say them freely.


An idea pool is not the same as an implementation pool. It is simply an idea pool.

An idea pool is not a validation check for pre-thought goals. I already said that's quite OK, but then just call it validation check, not idea pool.

[earobinson]

Why not? Maybe Mark decides someday it's worth it because two million of his users ask for it. Chances are that he would recommend a fork, or maybe even fork him self look at gnubuntu


That's what developers are for, right? Most devs are unpaid for there work. I would love to be paid to program for floss.

I also thought it was important to point out marks IRC nick sabdfl (self appointed benevolent dictator for life)


As with closed drivers? Ubuntu was founded stating that they would use closed drivers in order to make the software work.

[aysiu]

As long as they're not shut up by someone else... If your thread is closed, it means discussion on the topic is done. If your thread is thrown in the jail or deleted, then it's being "shut up."


Only the really naive expect that when asked to vote for the most popular feature. And you think there aren't a lot of naive people out there?


Why not? Maybe Mark decides someday it's worth it because two million of his users ask for it. Then Mark will have a lot of people jumping ship.


As with closed drivers? Ubuntu has always included closed source firmware since the days of Warty. It wasn't some compromise that came along later. It was there since the beginning. Ubuntu is still committed to open source and free software and will use it whenever there is a version available for the same task. Since there are plenty of open source VOIP clients out there, there's no reason to include Skype by default.


But a DVD might put them all in one place. And a DVD already has. You can buy it on Amazon or download it. I believe it's also included with certain books on Ubuntu.


That's what developers are for, right? Yes, and that's why I explained about what motivates developers--either personal interest or money, not demands or a popularity vote on a feature.


So there's no real reason to ask for ideas? Or is it? Of course there is. A developer or group of developers may see your blueprint and then take an active interest in the idea. Or Mark might see it and say, "Hey, I know no one wants to do this, but I think it's a great idea, so I'm going to pay you to do it." Ideas are just that--ideas. You can't come up with every idea yourself, but you may take an interest in an idea someone else came up with.


But if they're asked and they still want a different Ubuntu, maybe Mark or someone else decides it's time for a change. Then Ubuntu will be forked, which is perfectly legitimate.
It doesn't sound very polite: "Tell us your ideas, if we don't like them, go do your own stuff!!" I didn't put it that way. A lot of politeness has to do with how you phrase your sentiments, not the sentiments themselves. For example, it is polite to say, "Would you mind not smoking here, please?" It is not polite to say, "Put out your damn cigarette now, or I'll put it out for you!"

Compare these two approaches:

Microsoft and Apple: "We will implement what we want when we want to. You have no say in the features of our operating systems. If you don't like the way it is now, don't buy it. We won't offer you any similar alternatives to Windows or OS X, though."

Linux: "We will implement what we want when we want to. If you are a developer, you can help contribute code, and we might incorporate it into our own software. If you don't like the way our software is, you can fork it and make your own off the code we already have. You can pay us money to implement a feature through the creation of a bounty. And if you don't like what we put out, you can also use any of our competitors' products (other Linux distros)."

You tell me which approach is "more polite."


But it means letting people say them freely. And I've already said that allowing people to keep talking about an idea that's not going to happen is disingenuous. It would be like a parent saying, "You children spend the next hour deciding where to celebrate Nicola's birthday. Then we'll go." Afterwards, the children have decided to go to Buster's, and the parent says, "How interesting. Well, I'd already decided an hour ago that we're going to Chuck E. Cheese's."

Wouldn't it have made more sense for the parent to just have told the children to begin with that Chuck E. Cheese was the celebration location without that hour of discussion?


An idea pool is not a validation check for pre-thought goals. I already said that's quite OK, but then just call it validation check, not idea pool. An idea pool is a pool of ideas. If an idea isn't going to be implemented, there's no point in continued discussion about it. Maybe if Ubuntu does take a different direction, old "closed" ideas could be revived, but Ubuntu is still on its normal course for Gutsy Gibbon.

[sicofante]

Call me stubborn, but I still don't see solid arguments from your side against letting people freely discuss, vote and whatever, after it's you who asked for ideas.


If your thread is closed, it means discussion on the topic is done. If your thread is thrown in the jail or deleted, then it's being "shut up."
Closing a thread is definitely shutting up people. If someone can't speak any further on a given topic, s/he's being shut up, no matter how pink you want to paint it.



And you think there aren't a lot of naive people out there?
I think there are lots of clever people out there, and you should never assume the opposite when deploying any type of popular consultation.


Then Mark will have a lot of people jumping ship.He'll deal with it.


Ubuntu has always included closed source firmware since the days of Warty. It wasn't some compromise that came along later. It was there since the beginning. Ubuntu is still committed to open source and free software and will use it whenever there is a version available for the same task. Since there are plenty of open source VOIP clients out there, there's no reason to include Skype by default.Maybe you believe Skype's features are perfectly implemented in open source alternatives. Many people believe the Gimp is a good alternative to Photoshop and there are even people who believe open source drivers for Nvidia are good enough. The point is, if you ask people's ideas/opinions, you must be open to hear every opinion/idea. Otherwise you're cheating.


And a DVD already has. You can buy it on Amazon or download it. I believe it's also included with certain books on Ubuntu.Then you just tell the poster and you're done. No need to shut him up.


Yes, and that's why I explained about what motivates developers--either personal interest or money, not demands or a popularity vote on a feature.If they're not motivated by demands or popularity of what their users want, I find it quite weird that they ask in first place...


Of course there is. A developer or group of developers may see your blueprint and then take an active interest in the idea. Or Mark might see it and say, "Hey, I know no one wants to do this, but I think it's a great idea, so I'm going to pay you to do it." Ideas are just that--ideas. You can't come up with every idea yourself, but you may take an interest in an idea someone else came up with.If you shut up ideas in these forums even before they're properly discussed not Mark nor the developers will get a chance to look at them.



Linux: "We will implement what we want when we want to. If you are a developer, you can help contribute code, and we might incorporate it into our own software. If you don't like the way our software is, you can fork it and make your own off the code we already have. You can pay us money to implement a feature through the creation of a bounty. And if you don't like what we put out, you can also use any of our competitors' products (other Linux distros)."I don't see a place for an idea pool in that picture. But if you want to put one there, just don't forget once you ask for ideas, you better listen to them instead of shutting people up, or all your politeness will vanish in the air in a minute.


And I've already said that allowing people to keep talking about an idea that's not going to happen is disingenuous.But you still fail to prove is harmful, while I've shown you how harmful it is to ask someone to shut up.


It would be like a parent saying, "You children spend the next hour deciding where to celebrate Nicola's birthday. Then we'll go." Afterwards, the children have decided to go to Buster's, and the parent says, "How interesting. Well, I'd already decided an hour ago that we're going to Chuck E. Cheese's."That's a very interesting comparison. I understand the forum rulers are the adults and the users are the children... By the way, this looks an awful lot like this pool of ideas: developers will do what users demand... as long as users demand what developers had in mind beforehand. (Sounds absurd? It is.)


An idea pool is a pool of ideas. If an idea isn't going to be implemented, there's no point in continued discussion about it.
If you're not ready to at least think of developing the ideas that become more popular, regardless of your prejudices, then you're not talking about a pool of ideas. By the way, in that case, asking for votes on what you're willing to offer/develop is much more productive and fast.


Maybe if Ubuntu does take a different direction, old "closed" ideas could be revived, but Ubuntu is still on its normal course for Gutsy Gibbon.
Then why close them? Just let them die by themselves or let them evolve into who knows what. Don't kill creativity. Let alone in a "pool of ideas".


Maybe our problem is you might be talking about "I want Ubuntu to make my breakfast" sort of ideas, while I'm talking about "I want Ubuntu to think of pendrives the same the way human beings think of pendrives" or "I want every administration task to have a GUI" sort of ideas.

[aysiu]

Call me stubborn, but I still don't see solid arguments from your side against letting people freely discuss, vote and whatever, after it's you who asked for ideas. If all ideas were closed, then I'd see your point, but not all ideas are closed. Some get implemented and only because they were brought up in the first place.

You seem to subscribe to the idea that it's all or nothing. Either developers listen to and give consideration to every single idea thrown out there (no matter how illogical, unfeasible, or irrelevant to Ubuntu's philosophy it is) or it listens to no ideas thrown out there.

As it is, some ideas will be implemented, so the idea pool is a helpful tool for getting ideas.

You can call me stubborn, but I don't see how your arguments are any more "solid" than mine. I don't know of a single business, corporation, educational institution, or non-profit organization that considers all ideas and suggestions from anybody to be equally valid in terms of consideration and implementation.

[sicofante]

If all ideas were closed, then I'd see your point, but not all ideas are closed. Some get implemented and only because they were brought up in the first place.

You seem to subscribe to the idea that it's all or nothing. Either developers listen to and give consideration to every single idea thrown out there (no matter how illogical, unfeasible, or irrelevant to Ubuntu's philosophy it is) or it listens to no ideas thrown out there.

As it is, some ideas will be implemented, so the idea pool is a helpful tool for getting ideas.

You can call me stubborn, but I don't see how your arguments are any more "solid" than mine. I don't know of a single business, corporation, educational institution, or non-profit organization that considers all ideas and suggestions from anybody to be equally valid in terms of consideration and implementation.
Show me a single line in my arguments where I ask for consideration of ALL the ideas. I'm just asking you to not silence ANY idea. BECAUSE silencing a single idea based on YOUR ideas is against the very idea of a pool of ideas. That's much too simple logic to try to explain it further.

EDIT: I feel I'm hijacking this thread. Just let's get back to "why not vote?". I say it's more inline with the philosophy you're defending. Since only some ideas are considered "feasible", why not vote amongst them? Since you won't allow free flow of every possible idea, why not at least allow the ideas that have passed the filter to be voted by the users? Aren't the developers and Mark himself interested in developing what users better like first?

[aysiu]

Show me a single line in my arguments where I ask for consideration of ALL the ideas. I'm just asking you to not silence ANY idea.
And I'm saying that if an idea is not even being considered to be implemented, there's no point in discussing it. You don't agree with that premise, but that's the basis for my argument that the unfeasible ideas be closed for now.

We have a fundamental difference in our assumptions.

We both agree there are ideas that are unfeasible for Ubuntu Gutsy. We both agree that ideas are good things. I think we both agree the developers shouldn't just do whatever users want, regardless of their own interests or monetary incentives (not sure you agree with me on this last point, though).

Where we disagree is in the value of discussing something that has already been decided against. I think it's a waste of time and keeps bumping up irrelevant ideas (and hence bumping down potentially relevant ones). You think discussion of any idea is valid, whether or not it could ever be implemented.

You also seem to think if an idea isn't valid that its thread will naturally die off. I've seen the opposite to be true. The more controversial an idea, the longer the thread gets. Perfectly valid ideas get a couple of posts saying
+1 and then they fade into obscurity, overpowered by ideas that will never get implemented but that keep getting bumped up because of arguments.

[sicofante]

And I'm saying that if an idea is not even being considered to be implemented, there's no point in discussing it. You don't agree with that premise, but that's the basis for my argument that the unfeasible ideas be closed for now.
Why oh why does it need to be CLOSED? Especially after you add that "for now"?


We both agree there are ideas that are unfeasible for Ubuntu Gutsy. We both agree that ideas are good things. I think we both agree the developers shouldn't just do whatever users want, regardless of their own interests or monetary incentives (not sure you agree with me on this last point, though).I absolutely agree on all of these (including the latter). The point is ONCE YOU ASK, you must listen. You can't go out and say, "hey guys, I want your ideas" and when you don't think they're right enough, you just close the discussion.


Where we disagree is in the value of discussing something that has already been decided against.No one decided against properly dealing with pendrives, did they? No one has decided against developing better admin tools, did they? Again: the problem doesn't lie in the obvious, it lies in the border lines. The thing is once you decided to draw the lines yourself you take the risk of destroying a lot of potential. No risk is taken by letting people discuss til absurdity.


I think it's a waste of time and keeps bumping up irrelevant ideas (and hence bumping down potentially relevant ones). You think discussion of any idea is valid, whether or not it could ever be implemented.Yes. Exactly. The idea itself might not be valid but discussion is, because it might lead to fruitful conclusions. It might enlighten other people, it might evolve into a better idea. You abort all those chances by deciding too soon.



You also seem to think if an idea isn't valid that its thread will naturally die off. I've seen the opposite to be true. The more controversial an idea, the longer the thread gets. Perfectly valid ideas get a couple of posts saying and then they fade into obscurity, overpowered by ideas that will never get implemented but that keep getting bumped up because of arguments.Part of the FAs task should be combing the forums to find the ideas they believe will be easier to escalate in the next developers meetings. That has little to do with shutting people's mouth.

[maynoth]

:D

wowzerz... I wonder if mark reads the forums... I would like to know his thoughts on a voting system for ubuntu... it seems to me to be inline with the philosophy of ubuntu...

[earobinson]

maybe like a digg this kind of button for the forums is what we need? I have never coded a vbullitin plugin so I have no clue how much work is needed for this.

That way people could look at the top dugg threads or just top dugg threads for a category.

That way we would get to vote, It would help the forum ambassadors a lot and it would not be to official.

Only for us it would have to be something to do with coffee.

Edit: Guess the plugin is not to hard since it would be something like this (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=122944). Or maybe this is enough.

[loell]

fine idea :popcorn:

but if ever it gets implemented , there should be a big note to remind these people
that the most voted idea doesn't mean its accepted, because more often, new users do not know how much resources needed to get the idea implemented.

[aysiu]

fine idea :popcorn:

but if ever it gets implemented , there should be a big note to remind these people
that the most voted idea doesn't mean its accepted, because more often, new users do not know how much resources needed to get the idea implemented.
Just about sums it up for me.

[TheMono]

I may be showing my ignorance here, but as I understand it, architectural changes are done for a reason.

Sure, in a voting system ideas like "symlink FileY to FileX and alter ScriptZ to link to FileY" will not do well.

But ideas like "symlink FileY to FileX and alter ScriptZ to link to FileY so the average computer will start ProgramV twice as fast" will do very well. I mean, what's the point of architectural changes that aren't made for a reason? And it is the reason that will sell the changes in a voting system.

[earobinson]

Well I know that there is a forum meeting friday, is that the right place to bring it up?

Do they have a wiki where I should add it in advance?

[23meg]

Well I know that there is a forum meeting friday, is that the right place to bring it up?

Do they have a wiki where I should add it in advance?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ForumCouncilAgenda

But it would be better to start a thread in Forum Feedback & Help (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=48) first. I don't understand why people who are so vocal about this idea still haven't done that.

[earobinson]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ForumCouncilAgenda

But it would be better to start a thread in Forum Feedback & Help (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=48) first. I don't understand why people who are so vocal about this idea still haven't done that.
Done http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2672118#post2672118

[vek]

Its generally a bad idea anytime you allow users to vote on features. Just look at the varios MMO's and other games for example, that have allowed users to change the balance or bowed to public pressure on changing game mechanics. (Just as an example).

You have to be very careful, because while the 'masses' may indicate that they want a certain feature, it merely means that there is a lack of being able to do that in the existing interface - not that the feature request is specifically what should be done.

Example: The top feature request of all time might be "add a button to x program that does y". Sure it has a bajillion votes, so people obviously want functionality y. It does NOT mean that you should literally do it by adding a button though. Seperate feature from interface and implementation. And y might be achievable more elegantly through other means anyway.

The popularity of something does NOT indicate the quality of it, merely the awareness of it.
Otherwise McDonalds would obviously have the best food in the universe purely because its the most popular. This is not the case.

[aysiu]

There are several distinct (yet related) issues that have been brought up in this thread with regard to a voting system:

1. Will the votes have any impact (directly or indirectly) on actual development? Should the votes have any such impact?

2. If the votes have no or little impact on development, do they serve some other valuable purpose?

3. Where should the voting system be hosted? Is this a third-party project or something officially supported by Ubuntu?

4. Even if "we" (the people participating in this thread) all agree a voting system is a good idea, who's actually going to implement it? And what would be the best tools for the job?

5. Supposing that the votes influence the developers either indirectly or not at all, would there be an effective means of communicating that fact to those voting? And, if not, what consequences would ensue?

[Auria]

I think if it is done there should be a 'status' short message with every popular/reviewd request to explain if it will be done, and if not why. Just so users know they are not being ignored, that it's not possible yet.

Of course I know this is not enough and many users will still complain... but these users will always complain for anything anyway so why try to please them at all if they can't read what is feasible or not?

[aysiu]

I think if it is done there should be a 'status' short message with every popular/reviewd request to explain if it will be done, and if not why. Just so users know they are not being ignored, that it's not possible yet. Or a link to the blueprint or spec on Launchpad?

[Auria]

Or a link to the blueprint or spec on Launchpad?

Perhaps. If it's too technical it may not work though.

If such thing i would personnaly dont mind spending some time reading the spec/blueprint and summarize something for the average user. just an idea though

[earobinson]

Should[/i] the votes have any such impact?
I dont think that the votes will or should have direct impact on the devs, but they will have an indirect impact, see question 2.


2. If the votes have no or little impact on development, do they serve some other valuable purpose? They would let forum ambassadors know what the community wants so they could communicate it in a way that is helpful to the devs.


3. Where should the voting system be hosted? Is this a third-party project or something officially supported by Ubuntu? Personally I would like to see it on the forums or launchpad but looking at my answer to question 1 I think the forums are best. + we don't want to serrate our community to much. If that wont work and we still want to go ahead with this idea I would be happy to host such a project.


4. Even if "we" (the people participating in this thread) all agree a voting system is a good idea, who's actually going to implement it? And what would be the best tools for the job? I like my thanks idea, that way it would work right with the forums as they are.


5. Supposing that the votes influence the developers either indirectly or not at all, would there be an effective means of communicating that fact to those voting? And, if not, what consequences would ensue? Isent that what the forum ambassadors are for?

On a side note I did make a post (http://earobinson.wordpress.com/2007/05/17/top-10-ubuntu-fourm-feature-requests/) about interesting idea requests that I have seen on the forums.

Edit: Did people want to put this on the Forum Council Agenda (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ForumCouncilAgenda) to talk about?

[23meg]

I dont think that the votes will or should have direct impact on the devs, but they will have an indirect impact, see question 2.


They would let forum ambassadors know what the community wants so they could communicate it in a way that is helpful to the devs.

To repeat once again, a voting system would have its uses, but the disadvantages outweigh them. Knowing what the community wants shouldn't be about looking at a few numbers, and as said before, those numbers are doomed to be misleading.


Isent that what the forum ambassadors are for?

Keeping telling people that what they're doing by voting isn't binding will be a significant extra burden, and it will cause plenty of drama that's uncalled for and that will further interfere with the whole process. And it would reinforce the already existing misunderstanding that all people have to do is post an idea thread or a spec and that will be it, someone will pick it up and start working on it at some point, and if they don't, they're at fault. And in doing that, it will make life harder for the moderators and ambassadors in the development forum, who are already overworked.

People already have a tendency to flock to the controversial and sensational proposals, and an implementation of Digg-esque sensationalism will only reinforce that, giving mere numbers an apparent lead over substance. Focus will shift further towards quantity from quality. The way systems are set up very much influences the kind of outcome that they produce, and online social collaboration systems are no exception; the medium is the message (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_Message). If you give people the impression that numbers count for something, they'll behave accordingly, and what you'll end up with will be closer to a popularity contest than a genuine collaborative environment, where forum users will be actively involved in the possible realization of the ideas they're putting forward. The latter is what we want to see.


Edit: Did people want to put this on the Forum Council Agenda to talk about?

If you do, you can go ahead and put it yourself, assuming you'll attend the meeting and make a case there.

[sicofante]

To repeat it again: people are not stupid and they know when voting has direct implications and when it hasn't.

While a deeper involvement for any proposal by the proponents might be sometimes desirable, despising ideas and proposals just because the proponent are unable or unwilling to undertake them themselves is idiotic. Criticism and discussion are very valuable and help the actual developers of the ideas to gain some perspective they won't be able to have otherwise. As a matter of fact, in many respects, it is desirable that the critic be a different person from a different environment than the developer of a particular proposal. This is far from being a misunderstanding. In fact, the misunderstanding comes from expecting that everyone who has something to say, also must have something to do about it.

@earobinson: if your blog is the result of forum combing to find the most requested features, you have done a terrific job that puts the bureaucracy of the forum ambassadors implementation to shame. If I were a developer I'd probably visit your top ten list instead of having formal meetings with the forum ambassadors. If your top ten list is just your personal favourites list, I suggest you make it less personal and it'll be a valuable resource indeed.

[23meg]

While a deeper involvement for any proposal by the proponents might be sometimes desirable, despising ideas and proposals just because the proponent are unable or unwilling to undertake them themselves is idiotic. Criticism and discussion are very valuable and help the actual developers of the ideas to gain some perspective they won't be able to have otherwise. As a matter of fact, in many respects, it is desirable that the critic be a different person from a different environment than the developer of a particular proposal. This is far from being a misunderstanding. In fact, the misunderstanding comes from expecting that everyone who has something to say, also must have something to do about it.

As I stated before (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2650626&postcount=75), I'd only like the "brainstorming", which is pretty much what's been done in Idea Pool, to be separated in some way from more active participation, or the two not interfering with each other. I'm not despising or ruling out general discussion and criticism altogether, and nobody else is; it would indeed be idiotic.


@earobinson: if your blog is the result of forum combing to find the most requested features, you have done a terrific job that puts the bureaucracy of the forum ambassadors implementation to shame. If I were a developer I'd probably visit your top ten list instead of having formal meetings with the forum ambassadors. If your top ten list is just your personal favourites list, I suggest you make it less personal and it'll be a valuable resource indeed.

Entirely out of coincidence, the Forum Ambassadors team happens to have incorporated all but one of the ideas in that list that were submitted before UDS-Sevilla and that weren't already covered in existing approved specs into the gutsy-forumideas spec (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/gutsy-forumideas), as well as attending its UDS discussion with three members, and that one exception (6) is an upstream job that would create a pretty big delta with GNOME, which the Ubuntu developers refuse to carry a patch for (not that the patch exists anyway).

[earobinson]

@earobinson: if your blog is the result of forum combing to find the most requested features, you have done a terrific job that puts the bureaucracy of the forum ambassadors implementation to shame. If I were a developer I'd probably visit your top ten list instead of having formal meetings with the forum ambassadors. If your top ten list is just your personal favourites list, I suggest you make it less personal and it'll be a valuable resource indeed.
My blog is well just my blog, I'm on the forums a lot and I kept track of the ideas that I thought where interesting. I have wanted to do the same thing with launchpad for a while but since I'm on it less I only have 4 so far.

Out of the forum ambassadors names that I recognize I have extreme confidence in them all (in fact some of my favorite posters are in that list and I got my membership at the same time as one of them), they do a great job on the forums and I'm sure they will do a great job as ambassadors for us all. I'm pretty sure that I have seen them post in every post in that list.

At the start of this thread I was unsure if voting would be a good thing or not and you can see what I said above.

[Hobbsee]

I don't know, honestly. Unless someone does something useful with the resulting data (maybe write an informational spec?), it's just a demographic to look at.

It'd certainly be an interesting demographic to see.

It'd be something that the developers would look at - the recent post on planet about the top 10 things wanted by someone from ubuntu was quite interesting.

But they'd be viewed more as suggestions - and I doubt that people would drop what they were interested in implementing, just to implement one of the suggestions. Unless they were particularly interested in it of course.

And the closing of threads was something I originally suggested (i think) - it's only to try and organise the threads into good ones, and ones that wont happen. This is needed if the idea section is to be a productive place. Of course, if you just want the section to be a free-for-all "put my idea out there", but never seriously read and thought upon by people outside the forums - go ahead. But then dont expect the majority of your ideas to be in ubuntu either - if they are, it'll have been because someone else thought of it, and put it somewhere useful and found someone, maybe themselves, who was also interested in it, to implement it.

[eksabajt]

Why not just allow everyone to rate threads again? This would be the most elegant solution. It wouldn't require anything new to be implemented in the forums. As it stands, the thread rating feature is so underutilized that sorting threads by rating is useless. Why was this restricted to staff in the first place?

[TuxMux]

Hi,

For some time now I have been thinking on a website around Ideastorm idea.
Two basic ideas :

Help users express their ideas/opinions about Linux software. The goal is to quantitatively assess the user base demand. I.e. having as much people as possible participating.
Help current developpers know their user base demand, and help prospective developpers find something fun to do that is widely asked.

I personnaly consider myself part of the second group of the second item :)

I have read something similar a few months ago on this forum [1], and I have already written a spec around this idea for launchpad [2]. I strongly believe such a website has some potential. You may or may not agree with me, i think the idea has already been widely debated [1].

Now I'm seriously considering starting the project.
Let's say I will start it!
Now i would like to start some brainstorming on this brainstorming website :) And some good wills wanting to join the project too!

Right now, my ideas (anything, in no order, even crazy ones):

Front page a la Ideastorm.
Separation of the concept of idea and opinion. Idea is something new, to create. Opinion is a piece of feedback on current software.
Submission of idea must be simple. Title and desc. Program name optional. Some part editable by users (e.g. program name) to let skilled users correct mistakes.
Not ubuntu-specific. It should be extended to whole FOSS area.
Ideas/opinions could be sorted by program. Sub-domains. E.g. amarok.xxxx.org. = Easy way for program to link to their "own" dedicated page.
A program (e.g. the amarok admin) could be asked to be added to the program list. Requires website admin approval. Maybe non-FOSS later, with a price to help finance the servers.
Administrative part for the admins of a program. They could use this to "answer" to ideas in a "official" way. (Not like current dell's answer, in the flow of comments).
Promote a way to add link to the website in the "Help" menu, under "report a bug" : "post a wish" and/or "give your opinion".
Put a way for user to add a bounty on a wish. Bounties could accumutate and make a big prize. (Not really fan of this idea, but i had to put it)
A webpage concerning a program, and where user can put opinion. Users should be able to evaluate parts of the software in a quantitative manner (e.g. 5 stars) and with a optionnal comment field.


Not sure at all about the "opinion" part, just trying some ideas to extend the ideastorm idea...

This is a small mess, but from it and from your ideas, i think we can come to something nice :)


[1] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=440244
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NicolasDeschildre/CommunityWishesAssessmentSpec

[gweaver]

Sounds good to me.

I'd say there are quite a few issues and requests that crop up repeatedly in the forums, but aren't being addressed by developers. A brainstorming website could really help bridge the gap.

Don't get me wrong - developers have addressed a lot of issues in Ubuntu Feisty for Ubuntu Gutsy, but there are still quite a few out there.

Here are some of my favourite issues, which I guess would be the sort of thing that might feature on a brainstorming site.


Automatic configuration of all mouse buttons - this one seems to run and run! A perennial annoyance for newbs...

Synchronisation with mobile (inc Ubuntu mobile!) devices - This is probably dependent on OpenSync, and is a good example of a feature that could require a lot of work from both Ubuntu and upstream developers to implement well.

Gnome based support for TV / PVR / DVB / EPG - Ubuntu is crying out for some media centre functionality including decent TV viewing, recording and editing software. Kaffeine and DVBCut are both good tools, but neither looks right in Gnome, and Kaffeine doesn't compare to the best windows based applications (Nebula DigiTV)

When are 32bit and 64bit going to get equal treatment? - 32bit always seems to be used as the lowest common denominator, despite the huge proportion of 64bit machines out there.


So while it might appear that I am hijacking the thread, are these the sorts of issues that you'd imagined might feature on a brainstorming site?

[gweaver]

Heres an idea for the site:

A really cool feature would be a monthly vote on a spec that users would like to see implemented.

Each month users would vote on a specification that they really need\want. Voting might alternate between short term (<3 month) and long term (>3 month) specifications each month.

A crack team of developers (The D-Team!) would then descend on the winning task and beat it into submission as quickly as possible!


Obviously the hard part is assembling and supporting the teams of crack developers. They could be hand picked for each project, or elite teams could go from one spec to the next, or a mixture of both. Multiple teams would be active on different projects at any one time.

This would really give users the opportunity to feel a part of the direction of Ubuntu, and would help Ubuntu address the needs of users.

[TuxMux]

Heres an idea for the site:
A crack team of developers (The D-Team!)

I like this idea ;)

Let's say the website admin would be able to rank some wishes as 'easy', 'medium', 'hard' with some notes on the work, then developpers (or teams of developpers) could apply for these tasks.
Easy would be really easy, it would be a good starting point for newbie developpers. Maybe here use a mentoring system like in launchpad.

Including the notion of "teams" in the website might be a good idea. It may be easier to manage who's working on what. It may create "D-Teams communities" ;) It might be a good starting point for those who want to start coding on FOSS. And when we develop, we like a bit of fame ("yeah, i did this!") so here "look I have implemented this and this wish"!

Others ideas?
Also some ideas on the means? I have still to find the software which require the less modifications...

[aysiu]

This idea seems to have resurrected in a new thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3495478#post3495478).

[Hobbsee]

could be promising.

However, the major problem is the lack of current developers, not the lack of ideas.

If you solve that one first, and *then* categorise the ideas, then it will work really well.

[TuxMux]

However, the major problem is the lack of current developers, not the lack of ideas.

Yes, that's true. I do hope the website could help prospective and potential developpers to find something (like students wanting to try their skill). I do believe that there are a large number of potential developpers just not knowing where and how to start...

[gweaver]

could be promising.

However, the major problem is the lack of current developers, not the lack of ideas.

If you can find them, maybe you can hire... The D-Team!


Maybe some sort of bounty/donation system could be employed to attract developers to working on the Brainstorm projects?

There are a lot of users with little or no development skills out there, and I'm sure some of them would like to give something back to Ubuntu. I for one would be prepared to make contributions to accelerate the implementation of certain specifications.

Perhaps corporate sponsors could even be found for some D-Team projects? Sponsored apps might even include the sponsors logo in the "About" dialog, so they get some publicity in return for their support.

It would be really good to see philanthropy come to Linux on a large scale. The only Linux philanthropist I am aware of is Mark Shuttleworth, and I think its his philanthropy that sets Ubuntu apart from other Linux distributions.

[TuxMux]

Maybe some sort of bounty/donation system could be employed to attract developers to working on the Brainstorm projects?


I'm not very confident with this option... While it may attract more people, the spirit will be different... I sense this as a damn-hot debate to come if the website is successfull ;)



There are a lot of users with little or no development skills out there, and I'm sure some of them would like to give something back to Ubuntu. I for one would be prepared to make contributions to accelerate the implementation of certain specifications.



The more I think of it, the more I think the team side is very important. The website would then have two goals : getting user input like ideastorm, and bringing potential developper to find a mentor/teammate and/or find something to work on.

I see a page with a list of team looking for a partner. And as a partner, it could be a mentor, a partner or a student (for mentor). And a theme for the teams, like "Xorg", or "network stuff".
If a team decide to work on a wish, there will be an icon "The team xxxx handles this wish!".
A wiki presentation page for each team. Two or three whishes max per team.
For each wish, there will be the main page as seen in ideastorm, and another tab to a wiki page for more precise and technical stuff. For example the wish is "I want my DWL-450 working on linux", the technical page would be "The DWL-450 has the following chipset. That and that work is required. This opensource project should be contacted."
It should be possible to affect a wish to a project (in a list).
It should be possible for a team to say on the page "I want to work on this, but i want another guy/a mentor with me".

In case the wish is not doable "port photoshop on linux" or already implemented, mark it as such. But hide only the already implemented stuff.

There should be a group of admin. Their task would be to rank the wishes "easy", "medium", "hard" for the teams. They should review and accept adding a project to the list of project (only foss projects). They should remove inactives teams from wishes.

Upstream projects member should have a priviledged access to their project. They should be able to add an 'official comment' on wishes.

My last ideas ;)



Perhaps corporate sponsors could even be found for some D-Team projects? Sponsored apps might even include the sponsors logo in the "About" dialog, so they get some publicity in return for their support.


Yes if the website can get so popular it would be very nice ;)

[KhaaL]

I'd love to see this breakthrough. And a bounty system is indeed against the spirit of ubuntu, and it might attract greedy programmers (or drive the existent ones into greed!), but it could also help the development of ubuntu, and FOSS in general, to really takeoff... I'd rather put my money into a bounty that everyone benefits from than buy a single-user license that benefits far less.

[gweaver]

Well, if not a bounty system, it would be nice to have some sort of reward.
Free travel and accommodation at developers conferences perhaps...

Tricky problem this, attracting developers without poisoning the spirit of FOSS.

[UbuWu]

And a bounty system is indeed against the spirit of ubuntu.

Ubuntu has had a bounty system almost since the beginning. Although it doesn't seem very active anymore: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/developerzone/bounties

[scotty2hott2k]

love the idea. Would really like a central place where users could put forward ideas (as long as they are well written and thought out), perhaps ideas should be vetted before they are accepted onto the site. Users can then signup to the site and place votes on ideas they want to see implemented (users have a limited number of votes they can place at any one time into ideas).

it would give the dev's a good idea what the community think is important and would allow Ubuntu as a distro to really be what the users want.

[veratyr]

I like this idea. lots of ideas get posted on the forums but sometimes they fall on deaf ears. A site where we know developers are taking note of would be a big plus in my opinion.

[KhaaL]

Ubuntu has had a bounty system almost since the beginning. Although it doesn't seem very active anymore: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/developerzone/bounties

This was intresting, but like you said it seems quite inactive (last bounty done was 2 years ago). Also I noticed the big price tags on the bounties, nothing that a mortal student would afford...

The ideal would be people "promising" money to certain bugs or suggestions in launchpad... Otherwise we could just gather enough people to chip in for one bounty at a time... that would be great. Anyone intrested? ;)

[gweaver]

Otherwise we could just gather enough people to chip in for one bounty at a time... that would be great. Anyone intrested? ;)

Thats more or less what I had in mind, so obviously yes I am interested...

[Kilz]

This idea would rely on the developers actually listening and putting value on the wants and needs of the users. Ask yourself, do you in reality see this happening? Remember this warning posted on the forum.

"Please note that developers aren't very active here, and will most likely not receive the feedback you post here."

What makes you think they would use some form of vote system when you cant even rely on them to be active in a development forum?

[American_Outcast]

:guitar::guitar::guitar:

(Here you go, well minus the intro to the song obviously, lol.)

The D Team (http://usa-hosting.net/ibanezrulz+theateamtheme.mp3)


The A Team By IbanezRulz @ Soundclick.com (http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=293609)

[aysiu]

There already are bounties:
https://launchpad.net/bounties/

[LaserJock]

There already are bounties:
https://launchpad.net/bounties/

The Launchpad Bounty system is going away. In fact I think they are in the process of removing all the UI traces of it. It was an idea that didn't work out apparently.

To be honest I'm a bit skeptical of this ideastorm proposal. It seems like a good idea for a corporate product (like Dell or HP or ...) but I have some serious doubts that'd work for Ubuntu (or many FLOSS projects for that matter). The problem that is see, as Hobbsee pointed out, that this hinges on things actually being done. Here are some relevant observations that I might make:

* The importance of a bug/feature is a combination of the number of people that will be effected and how critically they will be effected. The practical priority of a bug/feature is a combination of the importance and feasibility. An ideastorm-like site can really only address the "number of people" part effectively. Ideas that are critical to small numbers of people are generally not going to make it if they don't get backed by enough people. Feasibility will have to be assessed by people capable of implementing the desired feature.

* The usefulness of such a site depends on the most voted "ideas" being implemented. If say the top 5-10 ideas are not implemented within say the 1st release then the voters will start to become unhappy. After the 2nd release rolls around people start getting downright mutinous. And the interest in your site goes by the wayside. Not for a lack of what you did, but it's generally not a good idea to make some claim "Vote for your top feature so it will get implemented" without the control to back it up.

* This idea, and many others I've seen around the forums, seem to hinge around the idea the "problem" is that the Ubuntu developers don't know what to work on or how important it is to users. The vision I get is some uber-hacker sitting in his mom's basement thinking to himself, "dang it, I can't think of anything to work on!" I would like to propose that this is utter nonsense.

The majority of Ubuntu developers are volunteers and have day-jobs. Many have families and lots of obligations outside Ubuntu. If you look at the number of open bugs in Launchpad (just over 34k when I checked just now), the number of packages (somewhere around 20k), and then you realize that there are probably not any more than 50 really active developers (there are 97 total in Ubuntu) at a given time, that means for every active developer there is 680 bugs and 400 packages per developer at any given time. On top of that most developers spend time help upstream projects, working in other areas in Ubuntu, and/or helping to recruit new developers. There are already way more ideas than people to implement them.

Beyond just the sheer issue of available time, the plain fact of the matter is that the average user is not in the best position to understand the feasibility, consequences, and necessary components to implement features they are wanting. They just know they want it :-)

* I think also the "Developers don't care about us" attitude is also utter nonsense. I've seen developers sacrifice a lot, time, money, family, etc. to try to give users their best. Many developers do skim through the forums occasionally but it's very difficult to wade through with the limited time we have. The forums are not appropriate for development coordination or discussion and are really awful bug trackers. And I'll let you in on a secret, many developers don't say they are developers on the forums because they've been treated badly in the past. It's no fun pouring all your effort out for people only to have them tell you you suck and are an idiot. So they go about their work anonymously.

So, to end this with a positive note, I do think if you could get developer buy-in and made sure that the voters expectations where managed right that an ideastorm-like site could be successful for Ubuntu. My word of caution is that idea's alone aren't going to be enough.

-LaserJock

[23meg]

I too am skeptical, as I've made clear in the other thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=440244), due mostly to reasons LaserJock has illustrated far better than I could have. This idea is really unsuited to being a officially recognized and binding development mechanism for distributions in general, and a distribution such as Ubuntu in special.

It can, however, work at the upstream level if done well. People can get organized around certain shortcomings and common annoyances in software and attack them, or develop software for which there's a lot of demand "from scratch". Still, the key point would be mobilizing the people who will actually do the work. I could whip up an Idea Storm-like website in a few hours and people could start posting ideas and voting immediately; that's not where it's at, as the Idea Pool forum (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=253) has illustrated.

As the forum ambassadors team, we've been meaning to start a team of community developers (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=499142) for a while, but the effort hasn't taken off yet.

[Kilz]

* I think also the "Developers don't care about us" attitude is also utter nonsense. I've seen developers sacrifice a lot, time, money, family, etc. to try to give users their best. Many developers do skim through the forums occasionally but it's very difficult to wade through with the limited time we have. The forums are not appropriate for development coordination or discussion and are really awful bug trackers. And I'll let you in on a secret, many developers don't say they are developers on the forums because they've been treated badly in the past. It's no fun pouring all your effort out for people only to have them tell you you suck and are an idiot. So they go about their work anonymously.

So, to end this with a positive note, I do think if you could get developer buy-in and made sure that the voters expectations where managed right that an ideastorm-like site could be successful for Ubuntu. My word of caution is that idea's alone aren't going to be enough.

-LaserJock

I dont think that "Developers don't care about us" is what was written. But that they care little for the opinions of users in general. That a feature could be very popular, but that it may never get worked on. The reasons could be anything from the developer didnt have time, to the steps for how to get the idea from idea to working feature were not laid out. Other reasons could be waiting on Debian to implement it, because it would cost to much to do. Then it gets forgotten about because of some political fight in Debian.
Lets also remember that there is a warning that the developers dont look at the forums in this section. That speaks very clearly about how much value is placed on users opinions. After all why should they .
Developers work on what they want, they are not paid for their work. They are therefore free to work on what they want to. This is just reality. That the user finds the work useful and likes it is only a secondary thing.
Thats why a site like that is doomed to failure. With Dell it works, because the goal is to please the customer that pays. But that doesn't exist in the world of linux and foss. Its nice that a few do care, but I have a feeling there are just as many or more that dont.

[aysiu]

Developers work on what they want, they are not paid for their work. They are therefore free to work on what they want to. This is just reality. There are Ubuntu developers who get paid and others who don't. Not everything in the world of Ubuntu or Linux is volunteer.

[23meg]

Lets also remember that there is a warning that the developers dont look at the forums in this section. That speaks very clearly about how much value is placed on users opinions.

1) Users != forum members
2) Developers have limited time, and sifting through forum threads is time consuming and not very rewarding for what they're doing either. This has been explained many times in many places, including this very thread; it's just a choice of medium, and has nothing to do with the value placed on users' opinions.

[Kilz]

1) Users != forum members
2) Developers have limited time, and sifting through forum threads is time consuming and not very rewarding for what they're doing either. This has been explained many times in many places, including this very thread; it's just a choice of medium, and has nothing to do with the value placed on users' opinions.


No users != forum members, but it is one of the largest concentrations of users. 399,560 English speaking users. If this large population of users opinions are not listened to because of the format, What makes you or anyone think a different website that does the same thing in a slightly different form will be used?
Please enlighten me. Exactly how do the developers get the opinions of the users then? Please point me to the page that says that the developers value the users input and gives instructions on how to submit it. Then a few examples where the input was actually used.
Repeating an excuse for blowing off the place where tons of users are giving their opinions does not prove that the opinions are indeed valued. Prove to me they are valued.
Sifting through threads? Why they are in one section clearly marked as development. No need to shift through the questions of other topics. There is also a search function to narrow it.
Lastly if this medium isnt the one of choice , why does it exist? Why give the appearance that it may be a place for development Why even have this section?


There are Ubuntu developers who get paid and others who don't. Not everything in the world of Ubuntu or Linux is volunteer.

But in that case the person paying makes decisions. They then dont have to listen to users, but the person paying. Again reality.

[aysiu]

But in that case the person paying makes decisions. They then dont have to listen to users, but the person paying. Again reality. That's not at all what you said above. You said they don't get paid and just work on what they want.

Now you're saying they do get paid and the person who pays makes them do something (not necessarily what they want).

[Kilz]

That's not at all what you said above. You said they don't get paid and just work on what they want.

Now you're saying they do get paid and the person who pays makes them do something (not necessarily what they want).

Lets take a look at the whole quote, not just a part of it..

"Developers work on what they want, they are not paid for their work. They are therefore free to work on what they want to. This is just reality. That the user finds the work useful and likes it is only a secondary thing."

That statement was used to explain why work was done in some circumstances. That it wasn't done specifically for the happiness of users as a goal. That some work is done for hire does not make the idea that it is not done to make users in general happy wrong. In the paid for work it is done to make an employer happy, not users in general.

[23meg]

If this large population of users opinions are not listened to because of the format, What makes you or anyone think a different website that does the same thing in a slightly different form will be used?

Assuming we're talking about the official Ubuntu developers, nothing. I don't think they should waste time with yet another medium that will accomplish next to nothing.

And every opinion from every member of the general public simply cannot be listened to, nor is there any point in listening to all of it, regardless of the format. 399,560 users, ~4000 threads per development forum, 97 developers, ~34000 bugs, ~20000 packages; do the math.


Please enlighten me. Exactly how do the developers get the opinions of the users then?

In Ubuntu, in general, in order of importance:


Bug reports
Feature specifications
Mailing lists
IRC
Wiki comments




Repeating an excuse for blowing off the place where tons of users are giving their opinions does not prove that the opinions are indeed valued. Prove to me they are valued.

It's you who's coming up with the (over-generalizing) claim that "users' opinions aren't valued", so the burden of proof is on you.



Sifting through threads? Why they are in one section clearly marked as development. No need to shift through the questions of other topics. There is also a search function to narrow it.

I'm too lazy to do the "forums are inefficient for development" act for the 948343rd time; could someone find one of the "mailing lists vs. forums" threads and post the URL, or even better, do a variation of that? aysiu?


Lastly if this medium isnt the one of choice , why does it exist? Why give the appearance that it may be a place for development Why even have this section?



Discussing development-related matters and issues with other forum members
Evaluating problems before filing bug reports to make sure they're genuine
Helping people repair their broken development version installations to continue testing
Giving developers a fast way to get urgent feedback (Dev Link)
Giving users a pool to throw their ideas into (Idea Pool)


There's possibly more, but this much is enough to justify the existence of the forum section.

[LaserJock]

@Kilz
Yes, the development forum has:
"Please note that developers aren't very active here, and will most likely not receive the feedback you post here." but I've never liked it. Many developers to read the forum off and on. They are not what I'd call "active" for the most part, but many do skim/search for user problems, etc. The point should be that the forums is not the appropriate place to contact developers, file bugs, or write feature specifications.

Developer's do care about user's, in general, but they can't always do everything everybody wants. Creating a distro for hundreds of thousands of people, at least, every six months is very difficult. For me personally, and I don't think I'm anywhere near alone here, I simply don't know everything that's going on in Ubuntu development. I care *way* more about users than what I have the ability to change.

I can give you lots of examples of developers listening to users, sometimes despite their better judgment. Some immediate/notable examples are Network Manager, compiz, and tracker. I've personally seen the alsa maintainer go through the development threads look for users that are having problems. I'm also working on some backports for people because of the response I've seen in the Education & Science subforum.

The forums do take more time for a developer than other media (IRC, mailing list, bug tracker) to get the same amount of usefulness. I'm really not trying to knock or put down the forums here. I started out as an avid forum user. I'm simply saying that for development work it's not as suitable, so don't expect developers to start doing their work here. There is a lot of "sifting" that has to go on, even within a subforum (I frequent the development and Education & Science subforums almost daily). On a usual day I can get through about 1-2 pages of threads. I'd say 90% of posts are stuff I don't know about or what I'd term trivial.

@aysiu
Yes, it's true that there are the Canonical-paid developers. The are around 50% of the Core Developers (Main) and basically none of the MOTU (Universe). However, the Canonical employees, for the most part, work on approved specs. This is an already existing mechanism for getting developers to do what you want ;-)

General:
I'm really trying to look at both sides here. Part of me wants to scream "I spend every hour of spare time, and then some, trying to give users the best distro I can, and then they say I don't care?!?!" Another part of me wants to say "Yeah, we just don't get to enough. We don't fix enough bugs, we don't implement enough new features, we don't interact with users enough."
I'm all for constructive criticism, but I think saying "Heah, I had an idea and I'd like to help, what can I do?" or giving a word of encouragement when the developers fix something or implement something cool will go a lot farther. In the past I've almost quit Ubuntu completely a couple times because of things people have said on this forum. The reason I work on Ubuntu is because of users, and they'll be the reason I keep on.

I think I've said about all I can, so I think I will let you guys hash out this IdeaStorm thing and not interrupt anymore.

-LaserJock

[melaren]

A few weeks ago I went on the Artwork IRC channel and tried to suggest that we get the (grassroots) Ubuntu marketing team to collaborate with the art team. ...so for example, the marketing team could create some focus groups and collect feedback from people who are actually in our target market (if we even have one). I was told that this should be discussed on the forums. I responded by saying that the forums have not proven to be very effective, because the "higher-ups" never see the discussions. ...and for good reason, they don't have time to read everything that every Joe-schmo like myself has to say. My point is that we are wasting so much community feedback. If I have an idea that I post to the forums, and it sucks, people will tell me it sucks. ...and that's good. But if that idea is overwhelmingly supported by community members, it would seem logical that the idea find its way "up the food chain." But it doesn't seem to work like that. We need some sort of "Digg" system for ideas. ...not that the developers would actually have to implement the ideas, but at least the ideas would sorted and available to them. I think the AWN forums uses something like this: http://www.planetblur.org/hosted/awnforum/index.php?shard=forum

[TuxMux]

Hey, it's heating up here ;)

First thanks LaserJock for your analysis, that was the kind of input I was looking for.

Lots of discussion, and the main idea is beginning to come... Let's try to summarize.


First : why do we need another user feedback website? Why another medium?

I think we all agree a forum is not an efficient tool to get user feedback. We *do* get user feedback, but there is too much of it, and it is not organized. For a developper, there is no way to get the main lines at a glance. He has to read and read threads, he can't affort it.
In the contrary, user feedback in a bug tracker system is very well organized. But it does not gather enough data : The fact is, basic users from which we need input do not know bug tracking system. Only power user do.
So we have on one side a huge amount of data, but disorganized and unmanageable. On the other side, well organized data, but from a small portion of the user base : the power users.

Conclusion : we need something to have both advantages : having organized data and from a large portion of the user base, including simple users.



Main Concepts

I see two main goals for the website:
- Getting a lot of structured and organized user input data.
{to be refined}- Getting prospective developpers to form teams and find something to work on.

Ok, now let's say the website is created, ideas are submitted and the more popular are on top.
Now what?
Three possible things:
1- The current developpers of the application look at the more popular ideas for their application and say in an official comment that they will do it.
2- Prospective developpers decide to work on this idea.
3- Nothing happens.

1- As many of you have said, main developpers are already busy with more important tasks (bug handling, architectural changes), and may, or not, care about these ideas. But if they do care (and successfull project should), then they would have an invaluable high source of structured and organized user input here.
2- Here I strongly believe there is a lot of people out there who are willing to help, but does not know what to do. I have some skills, but what do I do? It is not easy to start. As Hobbsee says, "the major problem is the lack of current developers, not the lack of ideas." So the main challenge is to get prospective devs to get an subject and work.
{to be refined} Right now, my idea is around some kind of team framework (thanks gweaver!), where prospective devs could create teams, and tell that they are looking for teammates. Like in Launchpad, there would be a mentoring system.
3- Damn.



Ideas priorities : how to sort ideas?

I quote LaserJock : "The practical priority of a bug/feature is a combination of the importance and feasibility." and "The importance of a bug/feature is a combination of the number of people that will be effected and how critically they will be effected."
So concerning the number of people affected, no problem.
Critical rate : I think we can have some infos by asking some kind of category for the idea : "eyecandy" will have a low coefficient while "not-supported-hardware" will have a high one. This need to be discussed.
Feasability : Here the website admins and the projects admins(see below) would be able to put a "easy", "medium", "hard",... feasability tag and some technical information on the wiki page(see below) of the idea. I don't expect to see much of that, but there should be the possibility. This should help people choosing a idea to implement.




Some others concepts (still to be refined)


My idea is not to limit the whole concept to ubuntu, or another distribution. User could input *any* idea, as long as it concerns FOSS.
The idea writer should specify either a program name or a distribution name from a list.
The ideas concerning a distribution/program should be then accesible via a proj-name.sitename.org URL. www.sitename.org should contains all ideas.
A user could vote for/against an idea, like ideastorm.
The idea page should contain current Ideastorm items + a wiki page for technical information + an area for official comment from Upstream.
Upstream developpers could register themselves against their project, and do some extra admin stuff on ideas concerning their project.
{to be refined} There should be a way for people to say "I want to work on this wish. I look for partner/mentor." or "I work on this", with an status comment area for them. This idea of "teams" might be very good. You may say "i look for a partner/a mentor", you may start working on ideas.



Here are my main thoughts about the concept, but still a lot need to be thought about. Until now the brainstorming and issues raised on this thread have been usefull, thanks!

I'm still confident I will start working on this, and I'm still looking for some coding help (EDIT: in fact mostly graphics and design help ) :)

[Kilz]

In Ubuntu, in general, in order of importance:

* Bug reports
* Feature specifications
* Mailing lists
* IRC
* Wiki comments
* Bug reports - These have little to do with users opinions and more on the problems they are having. It limits discussion on what the developer has choosen to work on.
* Feature specifications - Few specifications from users that cant do the work can be expected to be accepted. I have seen specifications denied because there wasn't a step by step plan for implementing the idea.
* Mailing lists - This is the ultimate I can ignore you method.The developer has to choose to be a member of the list, sift through tons of email, and one of the developers lists isnt even open to users.
* IRC - How many people are in the channel?
*Wiki comments - Few and far between.



It's you who's coming up with the (over-generalizing) claim that "users' opinions aren't valued", so the burden of proof is on you.


Just as you are making over-generalizing claims that users opinions are valued. So no the entire burden of proof isnt on me. Since you havent given any, there musnt be any.


@Kilz
Yes, the development forum has:
"Please note that developers aren't very active here, and will most likely not receive the feedback you post here." but I've never liked it. Many developers to read the forum off and on. They are not what I'd call "active" for the most part, but many do skim/search for user problems, etc. The point should be that the forums is not the appropriate place to contact developers, file bugs, or write feature specifications.

Developer's do care about user's, in general, but they can't always do everything everybody wants. Creating a distro for hundreds of thousands of people, at least, every six months is very difficult. For me personally, and I don't think I'm anywhere near alone here, I simply don't know everything that's going on in Ubuntu development. I care *way* more about users than what I have the ability to change.

I can give you lots of examples of developers listening to users, sometimes despite their better judgment. Some immediate/notable examples are Network Manager, compiz, and tracker. I've personally seen the alsa maintainer go through the development threads look for users that are having problems. I'm also working on some backports for people because of the response I've seen in the Education & Science subforum.

The forums do take more time for a developer than other media (IRC, mailing list, bug tracker) to get the same amount of usefulness. I'm really not trying to knock or put down the forums here. I started out as an avid forum user. I'm simply saying that for development work it's not as suitable, so don't expect developers to start doing their work here. There is a lot of "sifting" that has to go on, even within a subforum (I frequent the development and Education & Science subforums almost daily). On a usual day I can get through about 1-2 pages of threads. I'd say 90% of posts are stuff I don't know about or what I'd term trivial.

Its nice to hear that a few people may be interested, like you. But I fear either there are just as many or more that dont, and/or those that really decide the direction of Ubuntu don't.

[23meg]

Just as you are making over-generalizing claims that users opinions are valued.

I'm not taking chances to make statements about whether "users's opinions are valued" or not; I'm responding to such statements, and not with an overgeneralizing claim such as "all uses' opinions are valued all the time by all developers". Your claim is a vague generalization, and isn't really discussable unless you go into specifics, and/or address at least some of the rebuttals to your claims.


So no the entire burden of proof isnt on me. Since you havent given any, there musnt be any.

By the same logic, same goes for you: since you haven't illustrated any cases, there mustn't be any; we can go in circles forever. Would you like to actually point to where and how and why users' opinions aren't valued, or shall we just go on with the rhetoric?

[Kilz]

I'm not taking chances to make statements about whether "users's opinions are valued" or not; I'm responding to such statements, and not with an overgeneralizing claim such as "all uses' opinions are valued all the time by all developers". Your claim is a vague generalization, and isn't really discussable unless you go into specifics, and/or address at least some of the rebuttals to your claims.



By the same logic, same goes for you: since you haven't illustrated any cases, there mustn't be any; we can go in circles forever. Would you like to actually point to where and how and why users' opinions aren't valued, or shall we just go on with the rhetoric?

I have in the past, now proove they are.

[Kilz]

Also , while a little old, more than half of the people in this poll (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=223474) thought that posting here was good enough. We know that isnt true. Yet people still do it. Since this is the method a lot of people use, should it be ignored?

[23meg]

* Bug reports - These have little to do with users opinions and more on the problems they are having. It limits discussion on what the developer has choosen to work on.

Bugs aren't fundamentally about problems people are having; they're about errors and shortcomings in the software itself. They get reported due to symptoms, but they're not essentially about those symptoms, but the underlying causes in the software. Answer trackers and support forums / mailing lists are about problems people are having.

If a user thinks the software shouldn't act this way but that way, or that a certain piece of software should be included in the distribution, or that a certain aspect of a certain piece of software is poor, those are valid reasons to file bugs in most cases. As such, there's plenty of room for subjectivity, discussion and feedback in or via bugs.


* Feature specifications - Few specifications from users that cant do the work can be expected to be accepted. I have seen specifications denied because there wasn't a step by step plan for implementing the idea.

True. I'll rephrase that in instant made-up statistics: 90% of all specification entries in Launchpad is useless simply because they're nowhere near what's specified in the "specification specification (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SpecSpec)". Most of them don't set out to specify anything, and don't even have URLs with details; they just consist of a summary: "Do this, do that".

It takes some technical insight to write a good specification, and the specification process isn't meant for "getting your opinions to the developers", as opposed to how it's mainly being used. Before you argue that this raises the barriers of entry, I'm well aware of that.


* Mailing lists - This is the ultimate I can ignore you method.The developer has to choose to be a member of the list, sift through tons of email, and one of the developers lists isnt even open to users.

Email is many times easier to sift through and manage than forum threads, and is simply the method preferred by developers. This has been put to rest many times. And once again (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=562529), ubuntu-devel isn't closed to anyone, but moderated for non-developers, and there's ubuntu-devel-discuss for non-moderated discussion, in which developers are very active.


* IRC - How many people are in the channel?

IRC is a means for instant communication; the number of people in the channels isn't really relevant. The point is that people can just launch an IRC client and start talking to the developers in a matter of seconds, without any obstacles. And logs are available all the time.


*Wiki comments - Few and far between.

Not really few in specifications and other pages where work gets done, where they're most relevant.

[23meg]

I have in the past, now proove they are.

Where have you said something in the lines of "the developers don't care about us" with specifics that hasn't been refuted? Links please.

[TuxMux]

We are going off-topic here... the point of this thread is to find and discuss means to improve user demand assessment, not a flamewar on whether current means are good or not...

I will do this website. I'd like to optimize it!

[23meg]

Also , while a little old, more than half of the people in this poll (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=223474) thought that posting here was good enough. We know that isnt true. Yet people still do it. Since this is the method a lot of people use, should it be ignored?

Of course not; it should be amended.

[Kilz]

Where have you said something in the lines of "the developers don't care about us" with specifics that hasn't been refuted? Links please.

Those are your words , not mine. I have never said developers dont care about users. But that they dont care about their opinions in general. They dont listen to them for the most part. That because of this the idea of a user driven website where users vote on ideas is a waste of time.
I think you have gone off on some tangent. Trying to make me prove that they dont care about users. I dont have to, I never said they dont care about them at all. Only that they dont value their opinions
That you may find a few examples or ways of getting opinions to developers does not prove they value them or use them. Even if you could find selective cases where they did, it still wouldn't prove that the any significant number of them care about the opinions of users.
That they read bug reports does not prove that they value the opinions of users , but that they want to improve flaws in their code. The same with all the other examples. The only one that could prove they do is specifications. But then again 90% of them are tossed out (your numbers). Then developers work on what they want, or what they are paid to do.
Again, the idea behind a website that has users vote is that the developers who would implement the ideas. But they in general ignore the users in forums. Why do you expect them to start listening just because the website is different?
Demanding links to places where they didnt value users opinions? Get real, look at this site and the specifications area where 90% (your numbers)of the specks are tossed out.

[American_Outcast]

Why not just give this a try and see if it works or if it doesn't. What will it hurt trying? If everyone gives it a fair chance and it works great. If it doesn't then maybe it would need to be altered. If it still doesn't work then at least it was tried and maybe it will lead to something different or better that does work.

[Hobbsee]

A couple of comments:

1. I'm in complete agreement with Laserjock here - if you actually read all of his posts in this thread, and comprehended them, you probably wouldn't still be arguing.

2. The people being attracted here are not the current ubuntu developers - they're prospective developers. It seems that some of the more vocal people on this thread think that it's a way of attracting the current ubuntu developers. It's not. Read it again if you need to.

3. The people on this forum really seem to have the logic that the current developers are willfully ignoring the user feedback from this forum. Let me give you a small piece of advice - even if the developers *did* read every single piece of feedback on this forum, or even this subsection, as you desire, they wouldn't suddenly have the time to implement it all - in fact, they'd have less time to implement interesting and cool things on ubuntu, due to the time spent here. Unless you've managed to clone people, or add more hours to the day, you cant really avoid this one. You can close your eyes, and wish really hard, but this hard fact still remains. It's annoying, i know - the developers wish it were possible too.

[23meg]

Those are your words , not mine. I have never said developers dont care about users. But that they dont care about their opinions in general. They dont listen to them for the most part. That because of this the idea of a user driven website where users vote on ideas is a waste of time.
I think you have gone off on some tangent. Trying to make me prove that they dont care about users. I dont have to, I never said they dont care about them at all. Only that they dont value their opinions

I'm not trying to make you prove such a generalism, or prove the opposite myself; on the contrary, I'm pointing to the fact that it's not really possible to prove one way or the other.


That they read bug reports does not prove that they value the opinions of users , but that they want to improve flaws in their code. The same with all the other examples. The only one that could prove they do is specifications. But then again 90% of them are tossed out (your numbers). Then developers work on what they want, or what they are paid to do.

We've been through this; let's just agree to disagree.


Again, the idea behind a website that has users vote is that the developers who would implement the ideas. But they in general ignore the users in forums.

They don't set out to "ignore users in forums"; as has been said a few times already in different words, they have too much to do and there's too few of them to properly participate in the forums, which are very inefficient in themselves. The forum ambassadors team tries to amend this to some degree, but we too are so few in number and have too many other things to do, in Ubuntu / FOSS and elsewhere. Every minute a volunteer developer spends discussing things is a minute they don't spend doing actual work, and forum discussions are huge in volume, not efficiently accessible, mostly go off topic after a while, and tend to be worse informed and less to the point than discussions in other places.

By the same line of thinking, they "ignore" plenty of users on mailing lists and IRC as well; it's impossible to respond to every query and listen to every opinion, simply due to the sheer volume of queries and opinions and the limit of the workforce. I too "ignore" many forum and mailing list posts and many questions in the answer tracker and IRC, simply because I have other (better) places to dedicate my energy and time. I'm actively "ignoring" two threads in this very forum that I could very well have posted useful replies to by posting to this one.

Do you expect politicians to walk among the public and listen to their problems directly all day, or sit down and do their work? If they listen to people and address their individual concerns all day, who's going to do the work that the general public is to benefit from? Rough and somehow problematic analogy, but it may help you understand where I'm coming from.


Why do you expect them to start listening just because the website is different?

As I said before, I don't.


Demanding links to places where they didnt value users opinions? Get real, look at this site and the specifications area where 90% (your numbers)of the specks are tossed out.

To re-rephrase, 90% of specs are "tossed out" because they're not really specs, not because nobody wants to listen to people who wrote them.



2. The people being attracted here are not the current ubuntu developers - they're prospective developers. It seems that some of the more vocal people on this thread think that it's a way of attracting the current ubuntu developers. It's not. Read it again if you need to.


Quoting for emphasis.

[Henrik]

I think this is a very good idea.

The forums (for example) do contain a great deal of information about user's experience with Ubuntu, but there is simply too much information for the development team to digest. A website that encapsulated the main ideas and had a voting system that would bring prominence to the main issues would be very useful.

[gweaver]

Slightly off topic but...

Is there anyone who actively trawls the forums for common requests and issues and then distills them and passes them on to developers?

Should a role be created to do this?

[23meg]

Regarding common issues, it's part of what the forum ambassadors team (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=235) has set out do, but it hasn't really been done so far, mostly because we've been busy doing other things and interest and participation in the team has been weak.

Common requests are those that get a lot of attention in the Idea Pool forum. We'd like to help people write specs and find interested developers to implement those after some discussion, but so far only five or so proper specs have come out of the hundreds of threads in the forum.

We'll fine tune the process and stress further the importance of actually taking the steps to get things done, once the Hardy development phase kicks off.

[bgturk]

A really cool feature would be a monthly vote on a spec that users would like to see implemented.


I agree. However, I think it would be more practical if users were to vote with their wallets and donate towards the projects they want to see implemented. Each project could have an associated fund to which users can add money, which can then be used to hire professional programmers to implement the desired feature under a GNU license, something similar to this site maybe:

http://www.getafreelancer.com

This approach would help align the developers incentive with that of the users as programs as projects with greater funds would have greater priority.

After the completion of each project, users who have paid and maybe some professionals at Canonical can give feedback on the quality of the code and the software, which would be reflected into the developers ranking and his prospects to be hired for other software projects.

[bgturk]

I'd love to see this breakthrough. And a bounty system is indeed against the spirit of ubuntu, and it might attract greedy programmers (or drive the existent ones into greed!), but it could also help the development of ubuntu, and FOSS in general, to really takeoff... I'd rather put my money into a bounty that everyone benefits from than buy a single-user license that benefits far less.

I do not think a bounty system is against the spirit of anything. A bounty system would enable people who want to contribute to FOSS, but are unable to do so either due to lack of skill or time, to pay others to do the job. It is vastly more efficient to pay professionals whose job it is to code to write programs under GNU than doing it yourself. Whether what motivates them is greed or the desire to feed their families is irrelevant, as long as they produce high quality open source software

It is high time people realize that there is no such thing as a free dinner, and that open source software too has a price. If people are to shift the cost of development on the shoulders of the developer entirely, we will be always in the situation that we are in right now with many users requesting features and demanding bug fixes and too few developers to fix them.

[Kilz]

3. The people on this forum really seem to have the logic that the current developers are willfully ignoring the user feedback from this forum. Let me give you a small piece of advice - even if the developers *did* read every single piece of feedback on this forum, or even this subsection, as you desire, they wouldn't suddenly have the time to implement it all - in fact, they'd have less time to implement interesting and cool things on ubuntu, due to the time spent here. Unless you've managed to clone people, or add more hours to the day, you cant really avoid this one. You can close your eyes, and wish really hard, but this hard fact still remains. It's annoying, i know - the developers wish it were possible too.

You are addressing something new here. No one has posted about working on any specific thing. Also the reasons why the developers do not interact has not been brought up.
I have this feeling some are posting simply to defend the actions of developers. They are not under attack. But the posting, at least that done by me is only about the feasibility of a site that would require them to pay attention to the wants and desires of users.
That they do not already do so leads me to believe they dont value user opinions. That a site devoted to it is a waste of time.
This has nothing to do with wanting them to work on any specific feature. In fact I have not requested any or filled out any specifications, posts, wiki entries or anything else for features for Gutsy or Gutsy +1.



To re-rephrase, 90% of specs are "tossed out" because they're not really specs, not because nobody wants to listen to people who wrote them.
Quoting for emphasis.

Demanding technical perfection from ideas is a way of limiting them.

[23meg]

Demanding technical perfection from ideas is a way of limiting them.

The specification system isn't for voicing ideas; it's for specifying in well defined steps the things the person or team implementing a feature should do. The "tossed" specs I'm talking about aren't just imperfect; they're almost devoid of substance. I can cite examples if you like. Some basic understanding of how things work and what exactly a feature specification is is required, not perfection.

"Ideas" should be posted to the Idea Pool forum, or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IdeaPool, and then once (or if) they mature into implementable plans, specs should be written for them.

[Kilz]

The specification system isn't for voicing ideas; it's for specifying in well defined steps the things the person or team implementing a feature should do. The "tossed" specs I'm talking about aren't just imperfect; they're almost devoid of substance. I can cite examples if you like. Some basic understanding of how things work and what exactly a feature specification is is required, not perfection.

"Ideas" should be posted to the Idea Pool forum, or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IdeaPool, and then once (or if) they mature into implementable plans, specs should be written for them.


Please, give me a link to a few of the incomplete ones.
Just a question.
How is the average ubuntu user, who may never have developed anything, going to know enough to write a step by step plan for development? If so many are imperfect are you sure that the person writing them understands what is required?

[23meg]

Please, give me a link to a few of the incomplete ones.

First, read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SpecSpec if you're not familiar with them.

According to those pages, a valid specification has to have a wiki page or some other resource where the job of actually specifying things is done, right?

The specs I'll link to, just like the "90%" of all specs (a figure I threw off the top of my head), have no such page, no assignee or drafter set; hence my calling them "not really specs". Their URLs aren't set; they just consist of a summary. The users who wrote them are probably under the impression that the specification system is intended as a "feature request" tracker, and that the request is to be written into the "Summary" field in the form of "Do this, do that" and that's it, the job is done. It's not; it's not even started.

Note that not every spec with no URL set is a "non-spec"; it may very well be in the process of pre-drafting discussion, which isn't reflected in Launchpad.

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/virtualbox
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/kome
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/wireless-ease
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/win-exe-help
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/screenlets-or-widgets-in-ubuntu
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/sata-dvd


How is the average ubuntu user, who may never have developed anything, going to know enough to write a step by step plan for development? If so many are imperfect are you sure that the person writing them understands what is required?

The non-technical user who of course doesn't have the hang of writing blueprints is meant to post their ideas to the Idea Pool forum. Then, if their ideas are feasible, and once they mature, the forum ambassadors team will assist them in writing blueprints. We're here to bridge gap you're pointing to.

[TuxMux]

Back to the subject, I have started to work on the website.

Based on joomla 1.5(RC3), the main lines were pretty trivial to put in place thanks to its powerful framework. Basic voting is on, and I will work on idea submission next.

In a few days/weeks I will put this online to get some feedback while I'm developping it. Especially I hope someone will help me on the design side :)

I will create a new thread in a more appropriate section then.


See ya!

[m0eman]

Last release cycle I read an idea about voting on ideas here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=440244). I think that this is a great idea and should be implemented.

An important point from the last release:

While I like the idea of voting, if a voting system is implemented, people need to recognize those votes for what they are--popularity among forum users, not necessarily priority for developers.

Ubuntu is, in many ways, a community-supported distro, but it is not a democracy. I don't know if there are any operating systems whose development comes out of a strictly democratic (the most votes for a feature gets that feature implemented) process.

I would be curious, though, to know which ones are the most popular. That vote could inform the developers decisions but not necessarily mandate what they end up choosing. I agree with Mathiasdm that "this will bring the 'hip' ideas to the top (graphical things like Compiz and flashy programs), while architectural ideas will be noticed less."

Even as our current Idea Pool area stands, the most controversial ideas are the ones that keep getting bumped, while some really great ideas (and feasible ones) got lost in the shuffle.

[Twintop]

I voted other: yes, it's a good idea, but not every idea that someone has should be voted on. Let the devs and forum moderators decide what to vote on, if anything at all.

[m0eman]

Sure I think that devs and moderators will have control over whether the voting is on or off for certain topics, but can you give an example of a topic that should not be voted on?

[Twintop]

It's more the general principle that if users are allowed to vote on everything, even trivial things like 'Should Firefox-Granparadiso be included on the CD even though it's a beta?', they will be less likely to vote on the topics that would be better suited by user input, such as, 'Should JRE 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 come with the default install at the CD space expense of some under-utilized games?' I'm fairly certain people wouldn't want to wade through 100 trivial polls just to find the 10 that could affect the release in a very important way.

[m0eman]

Touché.

[Choad]

i think it is a brilliant idea!

[m0eman]

Also, if you voted other, please post why.

[Zdravko]

I voted YES!

[m0eman]

In fact, if you voted at all please say why.

[gruvsyco]

I voted yes. I don't expect that all the positively voted on stuff would get put in but, it would at a minimum give the devs an idea of the kind of stuff user would like to see.

[Lozz]

I voted yes, it would really add to the community feel of Ubuntu &, apart from testing, its one of the few ways in which non-programmers can affect the next release.

[yelo3]

I also support a new forum section about ideas, in which only moderators can post new topics (with polls of course!). So the new idea forum does not populate with hundreds of duplicate ideas and posts with multiple ideas.
When a new idea comes to the normal idea forum, then a moderator will open a new topic. in this way we will have a more polish way to organize all the ideas

[maynoth]

Voting Ftw!

[Johnny K]

I was thinking how useful it would be to have an "Ubuntu Ideastorm" based on Dell Ideastorm (http://www.dellideastorm.com). For those of you who have never heard of Dell Ideastorm, it is basically a website that allows anyone to submit requests (or "ideas") to Dell. After an idea is submitted, anyone can vote on it. The ideas that get the most promotion get the most attention from Dell.

An "Ubuntu Ideastorm" would be a great way for the Ubuntu community to actively participate in the development of Ubuntu. It would allow us to let the developers know which improvements and fixes we would most like to see. Mark Shuttleworth has said that the developers search through the forums to get an idea of what people want, so an "Ideastorm" would make it even easier for them to judge what is most important. Additionally, it would really set Ubuntu apart from the competition, as the companies behind rival operating systems (cough cough...iCough) do not encourage this high level of community participation.

So, what do you think? Would anyone be interested in developing an "Ubuntu Ideastorm"? I haven't had much time on my hands lately (college), but if there is any interest in this I would love to help in any way I could (I know HTML, CSS, some PHP, and some MySQL).

[Roque2]

Yep think its a great idea. I think a great sub topic for this could be things that aren't in the repo to be added and then the dev's could decide if its a good program to add....But just my 2sec thought

[Johnny K]

Yep think its a great idea. I think a great sub topic for this could be things that aren't in the repo to be added and then the dev's could decide if its a good program to add....But just my 2sec thought
Yeah, definitely. dellideastorm.com currently allows users to organize their ideas into many categories (Notebooks, Gaming, Environment, etc). In the same way, an "Ubuntu Ideastorm" could have several categories, and "Repository additions" could certainly be one of them.

[Roque2]

pclinuxos forums has this. But you are only able to see this topic when you have posted so much on there forums. Its rather nice to see what people ask for to be in the repo. I would love to see ubuntu agree to this.

[aysiu]

For further reading, check out this thread:
Allow Us To Vote (like ideastorm, digg, etc.) On Ideas Here. (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=440244)

and this one:
Allow users to vote : website in the idea of Ideastorm (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=570364)

[phrostbyte]

Sounds like a great idea. :)

[some_random_noob]

They should also run official polls.

[Johnny K]

For further reading, check out this thread:
Allow Us To Vote (like ideastorm, digg, etc.) On Ideas Here. (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=440244)

and this one:
Allow users to vote : website in the idea of Ideastorm (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=570364)
Thanks for the links. It seems like people really want this, how can we get it off the ground?

[smartboyathome]

Well, it seems like a good idea (also bump).

[aysiu]

I've merged a bunch of these "vote for ideas" threads together.

Frankly, I don't see the developers going for this, but if someone wants to set up a third-party voting site, I'm sure people would go for it.

[KhaaL]

I'd go as far as saying to allow bounties too. If we can hurry development by capitalistic means, then do it!

[userid]

Super idea, in tune with the whole transparency-theme - who's gonna implement it? ;)

IMO windows popping up on OS with questionnaires VERY microsoft-like!

Furthermore, this would not permit the free posting of new suggestions.

[AliTabuger7]

First, what kind of framework would work best?

It has to be flexible. Wiki's and forums are only very poor substitutes to a community plumbing framework like Drupal. I hear even Wordpress is becoming more of a community plumbing.

There are plenty of viable options for community plumbing, but what would be easily incorporated into the official websites? Nobody here wants to have 5 different ubuntu accounts. I doubt that vBulletin (this forum framework), or mediawiki would translate easily into a community plumbing framework, and probably should. It unifies the site design, centralizes the management, and allows for more flexibility to expand in the future.

However, that seems unlikely. Companies seem to have some kind of attatchment to vBulletin, and developers seem to love wiki's. Maybe the answer lies in expanding the abilities of Launchpad. This seems like the most likely option to me.

In fact, it almost has been implemented into Launchpad, with the Blueprint feature. (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/)
However, the blueprint feature lacks the main component of this suggestion: the voting.

It shouldn't be all that hard to be implemented into Launchpad. Here is what I see the change requiring:

a new column in the blueprint overview
the values of popularity in the new blueprint column
a button for quick voting in the new blueprint column
a new column in the database
a button to vote in the blueprint's summary


This is already being suggested in the launchpad itself: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/launchpad-project?searchtext=vote

[Johnny K]

First, what kind of framework would work best?

It has to be flexible. Wiki's and forums are only very poor substitutes to a community plumbing framework like Drupal. I hear even Wordpress is becoming more of a community plumbing.

There are plenty of viable options for community plumbing, but what would be easily incorporated into the official websites? Nobody here wants to have 5 different ubuntu accounts. I doubt that vBulletin (this forum framework), or mediawiki would translate easily into a community plumbing framework, and probably should. It unifies the site design, centralizes the management, and allows for more flexibility to expand in the future.

However, that seems unlikely. Companies seem to have some kind of attatchment to vBulletin, and developers seem to love wiki's. Maybe the answer lies in expanding the abilities of Launchpad. This seems like the most likely option to me.

In fact, it almost has been implemented into Launchpad, with the Blueprint feature. (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/)
However, the blueprint feature lacks the main component of this suggestion: the voting.

It shouldn't be all that hard to be implemented into Launchpad. Here is what I see the change requiring:

a new column in the blueprint overview
the values of popularity in the new blueprint column
a button for quick voting in the new blueprint column
a new column in the database
a button to vote in the blueprint's summary


This is already being suggested in the launchpad itself: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/launchpad-project?searchtext=vote
I think it would be nice to see "Ideastorm" features (voting, a simple way to submit ideas, simple commenting, etc) incorperated into Blueprint, but at the same time I feel like Blueprint is a bit more complex and involved than would be necessary for a simple "Ideastorm" site. Granted, I don't really know my way around Blueprint but neither do most Ubuntu users, and the whole purpose of an "Ideastorm" would be to encourage participation from the whole community.

I think that using Blueprint is a possibility, but only if the "Ideastorm" features are presented in a way that anyone could easily use them. There would need to be a simple way to submit ideas, a simple way to vote on ideas, a simple way to comment on ideas, and most importantly a simple way to list ideas based on popularity.

But that is all assuming Canonical is interested in creating an "Ideastorm" website, which they may not be. If there aren't, would anybody be interested in developing an "Ubuntu Ideastorm" wesite with me? It doesn't seem like it would be very difficult to build from scratch, even without using vBullitein or the like. The only real drawback I see is that it would require users to create one more Ubuntu-related account, but I doubt anyone would mind very much.

[Johnny K]

I still think this is a good idea and would love to see it implemented. Does anyone else have any comments or suggestions?

[pkid]

From what I can see people make suggestions lots of them but you have to wade through 30 pages of forum threads to digest it all

True. It would be nice to have a clean GUI to vote for what we want. Would make it much easier especially if the ideas were grouped properly.

[JeevesBond]

Had a quick look at doing this, the only way to organise things sensibly would be to allow voting on Blueprints and bugs (as opposed to allowing users to entering any old rubbish). At least this way some degree of quality would be ensured, along with some hope of developer support. :)

Unfortunately I fell at the first hurdle: Launchpad doesn't support RSS feeds. These would be needed to import items into the Ideabuntu site. Otherwise it wouldn't be difficult to get a prototype working using Drupal (http://drupal.org) and it's Vote Up/Down (http://drupal.org/project/vote_up_down) module.

If anyone knows better than I and Launchpad actually supports feeds, then please provide a link. Otherwise I'll raise a feature request (am not holding out much hope though).

[Henrik]

Please try http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

[aysiu]

Let's consider this solved, then.